Hello all,

I have a very active, 6-month niche blog (in the mental health arena), and I’m now planning for a major “next phase” and need a little advice on the best path forward. I’m not sure which will serve our needs best: a single WordPress installation, Multisite Network, or multiple installations of independent, single WordPress sites.

Here are the pieces I’m trying to piece together:

• Blog / Online Magazine (active on a VPS now)
• Woocommerce-powered Store (selling both physical and digital stuff)
• Learndash-powered Academy (we track student progress for CE credits and award certificates of completion, so we wanted something more “schoolish”, hence LearnDash)
• bbPress-powered community discussion forum
• ByddyPress-powered niche social network
• (Maybe) Paid Membership Pro plugin

I’m concerned about possible conflicts with these various plugins when it comes to login and user management.

So what would the WordPress gurus suggest as a good approach: a single WordPress installation, Multisite Network, or multiple installations of independent, single WordPress sites to power the above-listed components?

And any specific gotchas I must be aware of?

PS: I’ve managed WordPress sites for over a decade now. But I’m more of an infrastructure guy and not a developer. So, while I can certainly put the pieces together and fix minor issues, I can’t dive deep enough to deal with major integration/compatibility issues. And this being a labor of love, there’s very little funds to hire someone to help.

My only advice would be to use the BuddyPress login pages as a base because they seem to be a lot nicer (in my opionion at least) than the ones from the other plugins.