Sub-sites, Access Control, and Granting/Revoking Access based on Role

P.S. This means that student can’t access admin.mysite.com or teachers.mysite.com. However, administrative staff can access admin.mysites.com, teachers.mysite.com and app.mysite.com.

Does that make sense? How do I set up this kind of access control?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by scratchmaster.

Sounds like an big administration problem if not set up well :).

The NSUR plugin handles membership with subsites so that allows users to auto register with different subsites if its configured to allow access. this then gives users access to the subsites without anyone qualifying if they are teachers or admin staff or students. you’d need a real person to increase their access to allow the correct user content and access.

BuddyPress actually uses its own user registration and accessibility process (not the default wordpress) so you’ll need to use that if you want to use BuddyPress.

For my take on it, since the admin problem can be BIG if you have lots of people and sub-sites. I’ll personally set up a single sub-site and give people all the WP roles capabilities on there (this keeps it simple from only needing to maintain access to all subsites from one, otherwise you start taring your head out wondering if you have left access open somewhere). Have a look at https://justinandco.com/plugins/user-upgrade-capabilities-1/ to see what I mean. The other subsites (that hold different functions) all point back to the primary site where their accessibility is defined. So it would be a combination of NSUR and UUC plugins, but that’s just where I’d start from.

Thanks for your quick reply! I really appreciate your support, but I’m still utterly confused. Would you mind breaking it down into laymen’s terms? I’m new to this, and I want to make sure I get it right.

Ultimately I’ve chosen multisite and installed it today since I’m building an online English language school. I’d been slowly creating the site over the last month or two, but I recently came to the realization that it makes a lot more sense as a multi-site setup. It will be faster, cleaner, and separated by role as teacher/staff/student. It’s necessary in my view (which is why all of the universities go for multi-site, I guess!).

I have 3 primary users: teachers, students, and admin staff. I’ve added 4 subdomains and just started a fresh multi-site today. The subsites are called: teachers. / app. / demo. / admin.

I want to create access as follows:

Teachers = app. / .teachers
Students = app.
Admin = app. / .admin
Visitors = (regular site .com / the promotional .demo site).

How would I get this setup in the simplest way? I chose multisite because it would be too as a single-site setup. But I’ve never handled something this complex. I’ll need to tie in the BuddyBoss/BuddyPress platform alongside this setup.

Could you please help to give me a few clear steps on how to go about it? I’ve read the link you posted in the previous message, but it’s going over my newbie head a little ??

I sincerely appreciate your support. So thank you very much ??

how do they register as a new user.. themselves or will they get invited by an administrator of the WordPress network?

Student buys a WooCommerce product (a group of lessons), which automatically registers them as a BuddyPress/WordPress user after they pay at the checkout!

Teachers are invited manually after submitting an application form on the main page (www.mysite.com).

Thanks for your help.

over all it doesn’t sound like you need anything other than keep going with WordPress multi-site. just remember that if you use default wp and open up network user registration to the public you’ll allow them to register everywhere, so you could try NSUR to limit registration on one or a few subsites.

You’d need to check things too since I beleive buddypress hasn’t changed over the years and handles its grouping and role in a non standard WP way which may block you from moving forwards.

If I used NSUR, then how would I block students from accessing “teachers.mysite.com”? Could I use a membership plugin such as WishList Member? Would I be able to block them from “teachers.mysite.com” based on user role?

Please let me know. I want to feel confident in using this plugin, and would really like to know if it matches my desired result (or helps me to achieve it).

I’m not looking to have hundreds of subsites. Just two or three, for the purpose of education (like an intranet). However, the students should not be able to access this intranet. The intranet is simply for the teachers.

Let me know your thoughts! Thanks so much. I’m not sure if the NSUR plugin will help or not. If not, please let me know if a Membership Plugin would help (for example I could assign students as “customer” user roles, and admin staff as “instructors” for example. Then I could restrict customer user roles from teachers.mysite.com using a Membership plugin). I’m just spitballing ideas here! ??

Thanks again!

Without a plugin (e.g. a standard WordPress Network (“Muli-site” is the old name) ) you can allow users to register on the site and when they do they are sent to the main site on the network to register so that’s the first subsite which is normally the main site on the Network e.g the main domain. that’s all ok for a network dedicated to one area/school as you have. However, with standard WordPress (without a membership type plugin or other) after a user registers they have no membership with any site on the Network.

If you have made all sites Public then everyone sees everything on the front of the site and all subsites, so to limit students from seeing the teachers site front of site you need to make this site private (lots of plugins can help with that but they basically reroute you to the login page if not already logged in). What you are looking for is this for your subsites and add users to the subsites that you want to give them access to, if they are not logged in use a plugin to send them to the login page.

If you want to give users on a particular site the back-end access so that’s the admin side (www.site/wp-admin) they need an administrator to give them access (the role ‘subscriber’ just gives them the ‘read’ capability and this gives them the ability to see the admin side but nothing more. To get more admin or front of site functionality you can use a membership or role type plugin to add multiple roles to a users and or explicit capabilities to give them the access they need. Oh and to limit students from seeing the back-end admin side you only need to make sure they are never given access or become a member of that sub-site, which would be the main administrators role to control.

so getting to NSUR, this allows you to override the standard WordPress experience of registering for a user account on the main site only, as NSUR allows users to register with individual sub-sites and also goes ahead and gives membership immediately with this sub-site, it basically takes some of the maintenance burden away and allows you to be a bit more flexible to have users register with only the subsite they are interested (and allowed) to register with.

I suggest that you do some reading up on WordPress Networks and just get your hands on it.

if you trial NSUR you will not break anything (although a disclaimer that everyone says “backup your database regularly”) as you can disable after and the site will revert to normal WordPress registration (unless you have other plugins active to help).

Let us know how you get on, for now I’m going to close this ticket.. good luck !