More sites than in the directory, how to add missing?

That’s awkward. I’m not familiar with any plugins that create sites in batch, so it’s possible that this is why some sites are missing.

The way this plugin works is that when you first activate the plugin, it simply asks the database for the current sites that exist, and creates an entry in its Directory for each one (with the exception of sites that are marked “spam” or “deleted” of course). So, if you create the sites first and then create the Multisite Directory, the directory should identify up to 10,000 active sites (by default).

Then, new entries are added to the directory automatically when you create a new site if and only if the creation of the new site triggers the built-in WordPress “new blog” action hook. If you create a new site in some way that doesn’t trigger this hook (and while that’s possible for a plugin to do, I would consider that a bug), then you’ll need to manually add the site to the directory by using the admin screens.

If this turns out to be a common thing that other plugins do, it might be useful to have a tool that re-syncs the directory with the set of currently existing sites. Alternatively, you can try to decative and re-activate the Multisite Directory plugin and see if that successfully triggers the “check all existing sites” routine.

Yeah, it’s quite possible that it is the batch creation and/or cloning process that is not triggering the correct action, I’m not familiar with the inner workings of these plugins (i’ve tried a couple, mostly WPMU DEV Batch Create and WPMU DEV Cloner). Or maybe the process is supposed to call that action but something goes wrong in the cloning/creation process. (I could try to pinpoint exactly when it happens, but right now I’m onto other things and not using the Multisite Directory, just wanted to report the issue.)

Anyway, deactivating and re-activating did not create the missing sites.

Okay. If you meant this plugin, its description says it copies database table data. If it’s not also triggering a wpmu_new_blog action when it does that, that would explain it. Might be worth filing a bug report with that plugin’s developers.

I’ve tried that one too, but I meant Cloner from WPMU DEV and Batch Create from them as well. Most of my sites were created with Batch Create. Maybe they to are missing the the same trigger, haven’t looked at the code.

Anyway, it would be nice to be able to trigger the “check all existing sites” manually from your plugin.

Not only to scan missing sites, but to also to retrieve name changes. (Before I understood how this plugin worked I was a little confused, trying to change names in one place and it dit not reflect in the other. )

Before I understood how this plugin worked I was a little confused, trying to change names in one place and it dit not reflect in the other.

For what it’s worth, this is intentional. I wanted it to be possible to have a different name in the Directory than in the actual site’s title. This way you can customize the directory without making changes to the sites themselves, which is useful in a context where different people in an organization are responsible for the directory (“main site”) than a network’s subsites.

Ah, I see! That could be useful, indeed.

So, getting back to this. I still have more than hundreds of sites outside the index. Do I have to manually delete entries in the database to trigger a re-scan of sites? Or just change some setting? (Turning plugin off/on does not seem to trigger a re-scan.)

I’ve encountered the same problem. I have a development environment with approximately 1,000 sites. These were all created manually. On network activation the plugin created entries for 98 of them. Looking at the code, I think the problem is that wp_get_sites (now just get_sites), returns a maximum of 100 sites by default. You can override that with the number parameter.

@mackensen, you’re correct, of course. I seem to recall reading somewhere that setting the number parameter to null will return “all sites.” This should be done on line 184 in multisite-directory.php. Does doing that fix the issue for you on activation? See the latest development tip on GitHub.

I was working on this some months ago but never got around to fully testing the newest changes and did not release a version, but the bulk of the coding work has been done for this.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Meitar.

@meitar I didn’t wind up trying that because I ran into the issue that get_sites returns objects instead of an array (which I see you’ve addressed). I tried passing null to the limit parameter for wp_get_sites but that didn’t work. Raising it to 1200 did, though it took a little bit. I expect with an even larger installation there’s a risk of a timeout.

Oddly, I got this message at the end:

Fatal error: include(): Cannot redeclare class wp_multisite_directory in ../wp-admin/includes/plugin.php on line 1882

Despite that, it did network-activate.

@mackensen, good to know, thanks.

Yeah, I just need to find time to get back to this if the plugin is going to move forward. The correct solution here is to create a scheduled job that adds 100 or so sites at a time (in batches) to the directory, sleeps, and then continues its work a little bit later, so as not to degrade site performance or to hit the PHP timeout limit for super large installations. But again, I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. ?? (After all, no one pays me to work on this.)

Anyways, if you’re interested, obviously GitHub is a better place to discuss this for me than this support forum, and I’d welcome patches as well.