To Multisite or not Multisite – need advice on architecture

  • I have a client, they have two domains. One is the base (example.com) and contains the WP install and all the site. Client wants to install a membership service and have example2.com domain point to that membership service with it’s own SSL. We have Hostgator for hosting. One dedicated IP and a single SSL key. Client wants SSL used on the example2.com domain and silo that to the membership services.

    So now I am thinking.
    Do I setup a multisite with normal domain pointing to once instances in one sub-domain and then just the membership site setup in another sub-domain with example2.com using the dedicated IP and SSL?
    OR
    Do I setup a single WP site and then have example2.com domain using the SSL and use redirects to any membership pages to use this silo’d domain?

    First time I have run into this actually where the domains cannot cross pages/site, especially with Google likely penalizing for duplicated content if I allowed that.

    P.S. I am going to use s2Member for the membership program, and they want to know specifically what domain you will be using this membership service on for single license, or I have to get multisite license if I go the other way..so that is why i am stuck here.

    Any advice or questions welcome. I will be on in a couple hours. Heading home from work.

    Thanks!
    Jim

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Do the two domains interact with each other? Will they share users or content at all?

    If the answer is “yes” then use multisite. If the answer is “no then do this as two separate installs.

    I’d also recommend that you ask your hosts about the SSL certificate. Some places are easy going, but some will only let you get an SSL set up for the primary domain, and they can only do one SSL per account, so just in case you haven’t asked that question yet, I would ask it now. ??

    Thread Starter Cascus

    (@cascus)

    Thanks @catacaustic, I will ask immediately!

    The two domains will not overlap or interact with each other.

    The premise is that one Domain is to the marketing side, landing pages, upcoming events, blog, contact info, etc.

    The other Domain will be secured and handle only the Membership and Store interactions. So it will have a membership area, s2Member, to start with and then later have WooCommerce activated to handle digital and non-digital purchases.

    If you, or anyone, can think of any good practices I should follow, or traps to beware of, for this setup with the second installation and having WooCommerce and S2Member I would appreciate it.

    Thread Starter Cascus

    (@cascus)

    I actually like @catacaustic main point.

    If the user has to be logged in to access each site, then create a multi-site.

    If there is no login needed and it is more like a Craigslist setup, I would imagine you would also want a multi-site here as it is easier to manage one set of Plugins and one WP Core than 10-15 single installations. Imagine the headache of having to update the CORE and Plugins in each installation vs one and done.

    Hope that helps.

    If updates are done with wp-cli or other server command line scripting, is there a list of arguments for the multisite or against the multisite installation? I would be very grateful to find a clean list like this that focuses on performance, resources. Is multisite a good solution for high traffic sites?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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