Multi site, sub domains or what?

[Cure123]

Hi,
Thanks for all your help thus far. I am trying to create country specific areas of my website. I wanted to do it without a plugin that blocks certain areas based on IPs in case it gets it wrong. I really just want a country specific landing page, and every other page on the site exactly the same. I thought that I’d hit on a great idea using subdomains to keep them seperate and a Convert Plus pop up to give them the option of going to the country specific subdomain rather than the “international” home page but I don’t want to have to buy multiple licences for what is essentially going to be the same website with subtle differences. At this stage it’s pretty small, and I’m self funding the charity website (so all donations can go to medical research not running costs) so I want to keep the monthly/annual costs low. If it was just your theme then it wouldn’t be too bad but I’m running multiple paid plug ins in addition so the thought of quadrupling or worse my costs doesn’t appeal. I might just need to pay for a geo plugin but I’ve been reading about multi-sites. What’s the deal with multi sites? If I set my wordpress up as a multisite can all the sites and subdomains underneath run with your theme licence and existing plug ins or do I still need to purchase additional licences?
Thank you for your help!

[thai]

Hi There,

Thanks for writing in.
One license can be applied in multisite installation as long the other sub site/domain is the same entity as where license is assigned to. In which it promote the same and single site.

Licenses work on multisites or even multiple isntalls as long as they are on the same domain. For example http://www.yourdomain.com/region1 to http://www.yourdomain.com/region7 will work, however region1.yourdomain.com will not work and will require separate licenses for each if you are doing separate installs.

You would need to do a WordPress multisite install and validate on the main domain meaning set the API key for that domain. In a multisite install you can set it to use folders (www.yourdomain.com/region1) or subdomains (region1.yourdomain.com) the main domain controls the theme settings accross all sites so if you validate there it gets passed down to all sites within the multisite network.

Hope this helps clear things up. Thanks!

[Cure123]

Hi,
Thanks I think so. Essentially if I do a multisite that operates like a single site, then I only need one licence. If I do a multisite for example yourdomain.com with subdomains nz.youdomain.com, au.youdomain.com which are essentially replicas of the original youdomain.com except with unique landing pages; regardless of whether I do it as a multisite or not I’ll require additional licences for each subdomain?
Can I just clarify - if instead I do www.yourdomain.com/region1/home www.yourdomain.com/region1/support etc… and www.yourdomain.com/region2/home www.yourdomain.com/region2/support etc… that would only require one licence? do I need to go multisite? I guess in theory I could create seperate regional sites by having region1 menu that only shows in youdomain.com/region1/xyz pages? and a different menu for region 2 etc… and constrain people to the regional site that way by removing the internal links without multisite. But once they got on the blog or portfolio page I don’t know how I’d send them back to the region 1 home page without having to offer all the choices. Is there a way to have multiple pages displaying the blog/portfolio? eg yourdomain.com/region1/blog and yourdomain.com/reion2/blog where both are different pages with different menus but the automated blog input is the same (without doing a grid). Would multisite give any advantage with this?
Thank you once again for your continued patience and excellent support.

[ruenel]

Hello Jane,

Thanks for updating in! Having a multisite set up will only require you to have one licenses. You may need to update the theme manually since automatic updates in multisite may not always work especially if you are not using the theme in the main site.

For sub domain which may have its own separate WP installation, you will need a separate license. And if you only have one, you can simply revoke and revalidate each sub domain when you are going to update the theme.

Hope this helps.