Do you know that you can run multiple eCommerce businesses at once with your single WordPress website by turning it into a WooCommerce multisite? Fortunately, it’s very simple to setup WooCommerce multisite with the right guidance. Today we will show you how you can create one within 5 minutes.
What Is WordPress Multisite?
Let’s start from the basic, what do multisite mean? From the terminology, you get the basic idea that it is something related to managing multiple websites at a time from the same place. WordPress Multisite allows you to add more than one site to your installation of WordPress. It is a WordPress built-in feature that you can add to either an existing or newly created website. Activating WordPress Multisite requires adding a few lines of code into a couple of files in your single WordPress installation. After that, you create sites in the network. With the site’s URL unchanged, the existing site remains there while the new sites are added on top.
Who Should Know How To Setup Woocommerce Multisite?
WooCommerce is the most trusted plugin for eCommerce owners with 5+ million active users. This popular plugin will help you to create an online store from scratch without coding. Now, who needs WooCommerce multisite? Not every eCommerce site owner needs multisite! You will need WooCommerce multisite if you manage one online store but plan to reach different buyer personas according to geography, market niche, product niche, etc.
For online retailers who need to make similar edits or upload content across multiple sites of a network at once, WooCommerce multisite is the solution. Suppose you want to design different website appearances based on countries for pricing and inventory management, then you should setup WooCommerce multisite. Similarly, you have online fashion clothing store but need to have different websites for different category apparel, then you will need one. In summary, online jwellary stores, furniture stores, electric gadget stores, and many more can setup WooCommerce multisite if they need to manage multiple websites altogether.
3 Biggest Headaches Online Retailers Face On A Daily Basis
As our main concern is to provide the WooCommerce users with the best possible way to manage their websites, let’s see what they have to deal with without WooCommerce multisite setup. Here are the top hassles online retailers have to deal with.
🚩 When online retailers have more than one WooCommerce website, without setting up WordPress multisite, they have to manage and update all websites differently. It will kill a lot of time and manpower. Moreover, it’s hard to keep track of all the small updates if you manage all your websites manually.
🚩 If you display the same inventory items across all WooCommerce sites, then that can be easily managed centrally. However, if you want to display different types of products across the websites from the same inventory, then that becomes a significant hassle. You will need to go for code experts to build exclusive functionality.
🚩 Maintaining transparency can be difficult when managing multiple sites at once. When you’re growing quickly, it becomes difficult to keep up with all the orders coming in. The problem also makes it more difficult to keep your inventory levels up-to-date, which can lead to overselling – leading to unhappy customers.
Is Multisite a Good Way to Manage Multiple WooCommerce Stores?
WooCommerce is multisite compatible. As a result, you can easily implement WordPress multisite for your WooCommerce store. Time to check out the immense benefits of setting up WooCommerce multisite.
✅ All the websites in a WooCommerce multisite installation will use the same theme, plugins, and can be accessed under one hosting account. All subsites will have domain names based on the original site URL.
✅ Things get even more complex when e-commerce functionality is added to WordPress website. Creating a WooCommerce multisite means keeping track of orders, users, purchases, and so forth from one central hub that enables you to access and monitor all of them.
✅ If your online store needs to restrict customers based on geographical data, WooCommerce multisite is a great solution. The management of all your websites can be done from one website, so you don’t need to create multiple websites.
✅ Hosting multiple groups’ sites on a WooCommerce multisite network will save money and increase the chance for those groups to network together. Site users can buy products from multiple sites simultaneously and communicate with each other on the admin screens.
✅ Normally, WordPress gives you a single administrator role with full management access to your website. WordPress Multisite offers multiple access levels for easy management. Therefore, multisite is a configuration in which each site has its own administrator, while the main website has a “super administrator” who is able to see the content on all of the subsites. Furthermore, a “network administrator” has the ability to manage network-wide content.
How To Setup WooCommerce Multisite: Step-By-Step Guideline
Time to check out the ultimate guide to creating a WooCommerce multisite. Follow this step-by-step guide to setup multisite for your WooCommerce multisite without coding.
Step 1: Enable WordPress Multisite From Dashboard
The first step is to make your WordPress website a multisite network. You can make your website multisite in 2 ways: directly configure from the hosting provider or manually do it. Ocean WP, Namecheap, Blue Host, etc are popular hosting providers which provide the facility to enable multisite. If you want to do it manually, then go to your file directory and open the wp-config.php file.
Have to add a few changes to the file. First, find out the below line in the code editor.
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
Just above this line, copy and paste this code line:
define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );
Don’t forget to save your file. Now, from your website log in to WordPress dashboard. Then navigate to the Tools → Network Setup tab. From there you can turn your site into WordPress multisite.
Note: Make sure you have deactivated all the present plugins of your website. Otherwise, you cannot enable multisite from your dashboard.
On the page, give your network title and network admin email. This will be your mother-site.
On the next page, you will find some commands like the below. Copy these command lines and then paste them into wp-config.php file. You have to keep a backup of wp-config.php and .htaccess files elsewhere before making further changes.
Here are the command lines to copy:
define( 'MULTISITE', true ); define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true ); define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'essential-blocks.local' ); define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' ); define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 ); define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
Now, go again to your website dashboard and refresh it. Then you will find a new tab ‘Sites’ on your dashboard. Congratulations! Your WordPress website has converted into multisite. The next step is to create all other sites. You have to give a new site slug, site title, site language, admin email, etc details. Then click on the ‘Add’ button. In this way, you can create all sites one by one.
Step 2: Get WooCommerce For Your WordPress Multisite
Adding new plugins to a multisite is similar to adding them to a regular installation of WordPress. The only difference is that you must install plugins on the network. When a plugin is installed for a network, you have the option of deciding which websites should use it. Nevertheless, a website cannot install plugins that aren’t enabled on the network as a whole.
As you are planning to manage your all multisite from one place, go to the mother site and have to install and activate there. Then you can easily access the same online store from multiple sites. From Plugins tab, search for the WooCommerce plugin. Then install and activate the plugin.
Step 3: Create Online Store & Start Adding Products
Right after activating WooCommerce on your website, the beginner setup wizard will auto start. Wizard will guide you in page setup, store location, shipping details, payments, themes, and others.
When you are all ready, the next step will be to upload products. After you have created your store, go to Products → Add New tab. The process is exactly the same as it is in any other WooCommerce version. By following the WooCommerce guidelines, you can upload products with proper images, tags, titles, titles, etc.
To attract potential customers, you have to give your online store a stunning appearance. That you can do easily using WordPress templates. Without coding. Templately– the ultimate template collection for WordPress comes with 2000+ beautifully designed ready templates. You can also design your products pages, products detail pages with the Elementor or Gutenberg templates without coding.
With WooCommerce multisite, you can create as many sites as you want with different currencies, products, etc. If you are done following the above steps, then your WooCommerce multisite is completely ready. 🎉
Afterward, share your WooCommerce multisite with everyone, promote the websites, start engaging customers, and so on. WooCommerce multisite definitely helps you to target customers efficiently and skyrocket sales.
💡 Tips To Remember While Managing WooCommerce Multisite
As easy as it is to create WooCommerce multisite, managing it is also a breeze. If you are using WooCommerce in a multisite network, you’ll need to keep a few things in mind. Check it out:
- Users’ registrations are not shared among the stores in your network.
- When a product is registered on one site, it can’t be accessed by the rest of the network.
- WooCommerce can only be updated at the network level of your eCommerce site.
- The WooCommerce plugin does not need to be enabled on every website on the network. You can activate some multisite and use them for other purposes like blogging, and more.
- Since multisite networks all use the same theme, a versatile theme is usually the best choice. You’ll have more options when it comes to personalizing the look of each store in your network this way.
Here’s the end of the ultimate guide to setup WooCommerce multisite easily. If you enjoy this in-depth tutorial then don’t forget to share it with other WooCommerce online store owners. Also, to get more tutorials, guidelines, blogs, etc. subscribe to our blog now.