Multisite use case

[chrismc]

Hi,

I am chewing over options about how best to take my WordPress business forward. I build site for clients using WordPress and have sometimes used single WordPress installs and sometimes put their site on a multisite set up that I use (by multisite I mean WordPress Network)

Where a client wants to use their site quite actively and develop a community around it then I have given them a single installation of their own.

Where the client just wants a few pages and a contact form and will not be having subscribed users and may not even have a blog ons the site then I have added them to the multisite set up using domain mapping. I design their sites using a child themes of various theme frameworks - including Genesis.

I can see when multisite is the best solution - for a community of sites/blogs sharing the same user base within a niche or particular community. But it also seems to me to be a great solution for quickly and easily building sites for small businesses who have nothing in common (other than being my client) as I mention above.

However, I have seen mentions elsewhere that multisite is not a good  solution for building small business clients websites but I am yet to be convinced that this does not make sense.

I was wondering what other members here thought about using multisite in this way for small business clients.

[nickthegeek]

I use multisite for development. I do not host for clients so I don't deal with anything like that.

That said, one huge advantage to multisite if you are building the site and hosting is you can limit the themes, their ability to edit the themes, and the plugins. So if you are building, hosting, and maintaining then it might be a good solution for you. If you build it and then give it to the client so they can use it, like I do, then it just doesn't make sense.

WordPress.com hosts tons of blogs that have little in common. They use domain mapping and generally have a great service.

[Author]

Posts