anaging a large number of WordPress sites from within the control panel of each site is considered a matter that consumes a lot of time and effort, as you need to log in to the site you want to manage every time.
In this article, you will find a complete guide on how to control a variety of different WordPress sites that you own or manage, but from only one main control panel.
Through this unified control panel, you can access the control panel of any site, and you can also apply many changes to a group of sites at once, such as updating add-ons on several sites at the same time, and other distinctive procedures.
Let us tell you that the most important advantages you get if you manage a number of WordPress sites from within one main control panel:
- Log in to any website with just one click from within the main control panel without having to log in with your username and password every time.
- Move between one site and another easily and in a short time.
- The ability to update versions of WordPress, plugins, and templates with just one click, without having to log in to each site separately to apply the required updates.
- The ability to easily back up all sites from within the main control panel.
- Applying security measures, such as running a security scan on a group of sites at the same time.
- Manage members on all sites and create new members on any of the sites from within the main control panel.
- Publish articles or pages on more than one site at the same time.
- The ability to upload images or files within the media library to more than one site at the same time.
The most important plugins and tools used to manage a large number of WordPress sites from within one control panel
There are many tools that help you create a unified main control panel to manage a large number of WordPress sites at the same time.
One of the most popular of these add-ons is iThemes Sync , which provides the ability to create a main control panel to manage multiple sites at the same time. You can add your WordPress sites to it, control them easily, and apply modifications to them in one sentence. The add-on also provides some additional options, such as performing a security scan of the sites, and the ability to back up the sites.
There is also the mainwp add-on , which provides you with a main control panel to manage a large and unlimited number of WordPress sites for free, but you may need to purchase a paid version of it when you need to enjoy the additional features it provides, such as making backup copies of your site, improving site SEO, or other features. Advanced procedures.
There is also the infinitewp tool , which is very popular among WordPress site managers, as this tool is used by large and famous companies and institutions, and it provides many options for controlling a group of sites powered by WordPress from one place. It also provides many options related to security, backup, and others. .
Use infinitewp tool
In our practical explanation, we will rely on the infinitewp tool due to its wide popularity and users’ trust in it, as well as the fact that it provides a free version that many website managers can start with, and after that you can subscribe to one of the paid versions to enjoy more options that the tool provides to owners of multiple WordPress sites.
The InfiniteWP tool is a web application or custom software add-on to work in conjunction with the Infinitewp-client WordPress plugin . In order to upload it to your WordPress site, you must follow these steps:
First, you need to log in to the official website of the add-on and register a new account using your personal data. Then, go to the Download tab at the top of the page, and inside it you will find a link to download the application as shown in the following image.
When you click on the Download Installer Plugin link , the application will be downloaded in a zip file on your local device.
Once the download is completed, go to the control panel of one of your WordPress sites, and go to Plugins << Add New, then click on the ( Upload Plugin ) button. Locate the compressed file by clicking on the Choose File button.
After installing and activating the InfiniteWP plugin on one of your sites, you will notice a tab called IWP installer appearing within the WordPress control panel.
You will see a welcome message with a button below it ( Install InfiniteWP admin panel ) to install and set up the main control panel and manage all your sites from within it.
After clicking on the installation button, the installation interface will appear in front of you, asking you for some basic required data, such as specifying the installation folder, which is named (iwp) by default, and the WordPress database data (which is filled in automatically). It also asks you to enter an email and a password of your choice in order to You use it later to access the main control panel
After completing all the necessary data for the installation process, a button to go to the main control panel (Open my admin panel) will now appear in front of you.
Click on this button, then the add-on will start installing some software add-ons on your site. After completion, click on the Click here link below to refresh the page and finish the installation process.
Now you can access the main control panel of the Infinitewp tool through the link: https://yoursite.com/iwp/
Taking into account replacing yoursite.com with your site link.
After that, you need to enter your site’s WordPress control panel and install another add-on to complete the installation process, which is the Infinitewp-client add-on . You will need to install this add-on on every site you want to add to the Infinitewp main control panel to easily manage this site through it.
The plugin is installed by going to Add-ons in the WordPress control panel, then searching for the Infinitewp-client plugin and installing and activating it on the site . After activating the add-on, data will appear in front of you that you must use to link the current site and add it within the main Infinitewp control panel
Copy this data, go to the main control panel of the InfiniteWP tool that you installed in the previous steps, then click on the (Add a new site) button and paste this data that you copied so that the site is linked and added within the main control panel.
Therefore, to add any of your WordPress sites to the infiniteWP main control panel, all you need to do is enter the site’s control panel and install the InfiniteWP-Client add-on in it, then copy the linking data provided by this add-on, and go again to the main control panel and click Click on the Add new website button and the website will be linked and added within it.
Explanation of the main control panel of the InfiniteWP tool
The following image shows the main control panel of the infiniteWP plugin. From within this control panel you can easily control all of your sites, as the control panel is divided into two main parts:
- The first part on the left of the screen contains a list of the sites that you have added within the main control panel. You can click on any of those sites to open a complete control panel of its own through which you can manage the entire site and apply the necessary changes to it.
- The second part on the right of the screen contains important notifications that the add-on suggests to you regarding sites that need updates or other suggested actions. This part also displays the control panel tools for any site that you choose from the list of sites on the left.
Here we have added 3 WordPress sites to the main control panel in the same way as we explained previously. As you can see in the previous image, the plugin shows automatic notifications in red on sites that need to apply updates to WordPress, plugins, or templates installed on it.
From within the infiniteWP main control panel, you can easily update your sites or update plugins and templates that need updates, by clicking on the Update button that appears with a notification of the required updates as soon as they are available:
General administration menu within the infiniteWP main control panel
When you open the General Administration menu located at the top of the infiniteWP main control panel, you will be able to perform many actions on one of your sites or on more than one site at the same time. Here is an explanation of the most important elements of this menu, as follows:
1 . Updates
Where you can access it to view the updates report, which contains all the sites, templates, and add-ons that need to be updated.
2 . plugins & Themes
The option in which you can control the templates and plugins installed on all your sites
As you can see in the image above, when you enter the option to control templates and plugins, two tabs will appear in front of you at the top.
- Manage tab from which you can choose the site where you want to manage the templates and plugins installed on it
- Install tab , through which you can install an add-on or template on one of your sites or on more than one of your sites at the same time.
3 . Posts & pages
Through this option, you can control the articles and pages published on your sites through the Manage tab . Also, through the Add new tab, you can add an article or page within a site or within more than one site at the same time
For example, if you want to publish an article on one of your sites, you can click on the Add new tab , then choose the site where you want to publish the article or page (you can choose more than one site to publish the content on), then write the title and content of the article you want to publish, Finally, click on the Publish button after completing all the information for the article to be published immediately within the site or group of sites that you have chosen.
4 . comments
Through this tab, you can see all the comments that have been published within the content of your site, and you can also control those comments by modifying them, transferring them to the trash, or other actions that the add-on provides to you.
5 . Users
Which is used to control the members of your sites. It has two tabs as follows:
- Manage through which you can control all users already registered on any of your sites. And
- Create new user , which enables you to create a new user within any of your sites:
6. The sixth element: InfiniteWP users
Through which you can manage the administrators of the main control panel for sites, or add a new manager to it to control one of the sites or all of the sites that have been added.
Where you can enter the Add new user tab to invite another person to manage and control the account, where you need to put the name and email of the person you want to invite to manage the account, and create a password of your choice, and an invitation will be sent to him to enter the control panel and start controlling one of the sites or All of them depend on the permissions you give him during the process of sending the invitation.
Other menus in the Infinitewp main control panel
In addition to the main control menu, Manage, whose elements we explained in detail and how to use it to control website content with ease, there are also many other menus, the benefits of which we will summarize for you in the following lines:
- Protect menu: This menu contains many security options and detection of security vulnerabilities on sites. You can browse this list to see the most wonderful tools that help you enhance the security of sites.
- Monitor menu: It contains some useful tools, such as the invalid link detection tool, the Google Analytics link tool , and other tools that help you monitor your sites’ statistics.
- Maintain menu: through which you can perform maintenance or cleaning of one of your sites, such as cleaning the database from unimportant data, which contributes to increasing the speed and efficiency of the sites.
- Tools menu: It contains some important tools, such as a tool for adding code into a website’s files, as well as a tool for uploading files and media to websites in one sentence, and other useful tools.
In addition to all of these tools and options that we explained in the previous paragraphs, you can also get additional control options for your sites from within the infinitewp add-on with ease, by placing the mouse cursor over any of the sites in the left menu of the control panel to open in front of you a screen containing Multiple control tools and options that you can also use to manage and control the site in a more professional way:
As the image above shows you, once you click on a site, a menu appears containing many options that help manage the site completely, such as going to the site link, publishing a new article on the site, opening the site control panel, making a backup copy of the site, or Delete the entire site from within the InfiniteWP dashboard. And other options..
What is the difference between managing a site collection within the same control panel and creating a multi-site site?
In a previous article, we explained how to create a network of WordPress sites from within just one control panel, but the matter is completely different from managing a number of sites within the same control panel, since if you create a network of sites from within the WordPress control panel, every site in that network It will be subordinate to the main site, and plugins and templates on sub-sites will be affected by the main site and changes made to it.
But if you manage multiple sites within one control panel, each site will be self-contained and separate from the rest of the sites, and changes in any site will not affect the rest of the other sites.
Therefore, what we have explained in this article is completely different from the idea of dividing the WordPress installation into several sub-sites that can be managed from within the main WordPress installation control panel.
In the end, if you own more than one WordPress site or manage a group of sites for your clients, it would be very useful to consider using a plugin that helps you manage and control all of those sites from within just one control panel instead of managing each site separately. Therefore, we advise you to use these tools that help you facilitate your work better.
