How WordPress Multisites work in Glow

Glow’s WordPress Multisites feature allows you to manage an entire Multisite Network from the same place as all your regular WordPress sites.

Connecting a Multisite Network

You connect a Multisite Network to your Glow account in much the same way you connect a regular site.

Head over to Websites > Add new and in Step 2 when Glow asks you for the website URL, make sure you add the 'main' / 'parent' site in the network, not one of the child sites.

In Step 3, download our plugin and install and activate it on the main site in the network.

When you return to Glow the main site will have connected and Glow will have found every site in the network. Glow then asks which sites to manage: the main site only, or the subsites you pick. You can change this later from Manage subsites on the network.

Note: Choosing subsites needs version 4.5.1 or later of the Glow plugin on the network. Subsites that live in a folder of the main domain (for example example.com/shop) are listed but can't be added yet.

Note: Each site you manage in a network counts towards the website limit on your plan. Eg. If you manage the main site and 4 subsites, you are adding 5 websites to your plan. Subsites you don't manage are not counted.

Core, plugin & theme updates

Plugins, themes and WordPress core are shared by every site in a network, so you run their updates from the main site in Glow. Each update applies to the whole network at once and is counted once. Safe updates work on networks too.

Subsites show their plugins, themes and core version, and their updates run from the main site. Every update is recorded against each site in the network in Timeline, and each subsite's client report lists the updates run from the main site.

Note: Updates on a network are held until it runs version 4.5.1 or later of the Glow plugin. You can still update the Glow plugin itself from Glow, which releases the hold.

Updates made from within the WordPress network admin are still picked up and recorded too.

Note: Eg. Let’s say Yoast SEO is installed on 5 out of 10 sites in the network. You update the plugin. Timeline in Glow will then show confirmation that this update has been performed on those 5 sites and not on the other 5 (where Yoast SEO is not installed/active).

Backups for Multisites

For backups, Glow integrates with UpdraftPlus. You don’t need to pay for UpdraftPlus for the majority of their functionality. However, if you’d like the ability to backup your Multisite network, you’ll need their premium subscription.

Note: We will be able to save you money a premium subscription with Updraft, so ask our support team before purchasing.

Once you’ve got this in place, Glow will record all backups and they will sync with client reports just as they do with regular sites.