[wp-hackers] Running several WordPress sites on the same server

[Mike Schinkel]

On Aug 22, 2012, at 6:19 PM, Ryan WP Mailing Lists <ryan.wpmailinglists at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am looking to run several WordPress sites on a server. I'm talking like

> 100+. The way I see it each wordpress site is the same except for
> wp-content directory, wp-config.php and the database. Therefore my thought
> is to have one install where wp-config.pho can use a central database to
> dynamically designate the correct db as well as a unique wp-content
> directory based on the domain name.
> 
> How would this compare to more of a shared hosting type setup with vhosts
> and a full copy of the wp source for each site. Any downside to my method
> or other considerations I should be aware of?
> __________________________________________
> I should have figured someone would say this.
> 
> Of the numerous sites some themselves will need to be multisite for other
> reasons. Also each site will need a unique users db.

> __________________________________________


Hi Ryan,

We've implemented something very similar.  We chose to go with single site because it's less complex than multisite and there are fewer plugin incompatibilities with single site.  We chose a shared architecture so that we can have one installation of a set of custom plugins with different databases and uploads directories.  

However, we handle all the admin so we don't give the end user access to plugins or themes.  We have a shared /wp-config.php which loads a "/wp-config-{domain}.php" file and then our uploads directories are "/wp-content/uploads/{domain}/."   I'm not sure this structure would work if you give end users full admin access.

Maybe it would help if you can better explain your use-cases?  Why will you have 100+ sites, and are they similar or different? What makes your situation unique?

-Mike