Multisite/Mirrored Environments

How To
, ,
1

Hey Bricks Fam!

Got a random scenario where a new client and potentially dozens more sites, will be requiring mirrored versions of one another (theme, plugin stack), except for the data. These are essentially local market sites for a contractor who wants to run different domains for each of the mirrored sites but have different content via MetaBox or ACF in order to rank locally for each.

Our Questions - Requesting any tips/feedback:

  • What would the best method(s) be for us to introduce a “template” site that could be quickly scaled to 25+ sites?

  • Need to be able to keep a “parent” or official template site that any updates to the theme, plugins, layouts or Bricks templates will be made and then pushed out to each of the other 25+ sites.

  • Is this more of a WP multisite thing or could we implement this via hosting and just push the changes from a staging to 25+ production environments?

  • Has anyone done something to this scale yet with Bricks?

Thank you!

2

I’ve done something similar to this (on a smaller scale) and used only 1 WordPress installation without multisite. I opted to use the Multiple Domain Mapping on Single Site plugin and create templates for to feed the data into. It worked as expected but is no frills.

There’s also the Domain Mapping System | Manage Multiple Domains in a Single WordPress Site plugin that has a paid version with more functionality.

Either of these plugins might be worth a look before investing time into other solutions as they are likely to be more complex. With Bricks theme styles, color palettes, and a little custom php, I think this is a pretty good solution.

3

@FranklyCo were you able to find a solution to your scenario? I’m currently looking at basically the same situation, and am considering much the same options as you listed here.

1 Like
4

We explored a few options but ultimately decided to maintain separate environments for each but maintain local templates to copy over once the next one comes online. Quite a bit of our core functionality has been added to the child-theme (eventually a lightweight custom plugin) to maintain universal ACF features/Bricks enhancements to all the sites.

Get back to you in a bit with more details tonight on this.

1 Like