Managing multiple WP installatios with ManageWP.com

[Torben]

I have taken ManageWP.com for a test drive. ManageWP.com is a hosted service for managing multiple WordPress installations (maintenance, upgrades etc.)

The concept is very cool indeed. Manage all your installations from one control panel and upgrade all installations with one click.

I have used it for a 3 weeks and I have been happy with the results. However, I have a lot of concerns that are keeping me from using permanently.

The one click "pain relief" button could potentially be a self destruct button. If are doing something to all your sites at once you better be 110% sure that it's going to work the way you expected. ManageWP is know administrating more than 10.000 WP installations, which makes it a target for hackers.

There is a selfhosted version available but they asking for $6.000 the first year and $3.000 the following years. The hosted solution is $1 per month per installation.

If you have enough installations to justify the cost and you trust them not to crash and burn all your sites it's an interesting offer.

Personally I'm gonna stick with my maintenance and upgrade scripts

[ukgimp]

>>Personally I'm gonna stick with my maintenance and upgrade scripts

Can you give us some insight into this Torben? Eg platform, types of things it does and does not do etc. It would be interesting.

[Torben]

I'm just using shell script but it's very effective. However, that requires SSH, which is not available on shared hosts. We running the most important stuff on a VPS and the more simple but spammy stuff on shared hosts. That's why I was looking at ManageWP

Regarding the shell scripts it's simply a matter of collecting all the commands you would normally use in a script.

I have a test site which I use to make sure that plugin upgrades behave nice and don't break any of our themes. If they pass the test they are copied to a deployment directory. I then use an upgrade script to copy all plugins to the production sites. If WordPress needs upgrading I use SVN to upgrade all sites.

The scripts are based on http://birdhouse.org/software/2010/08/wordpress-mass-management/ but modified to match my needs.

[Torben]

I have attached a script I use for quickly making a test site copy of a production site.

The script will copy mysite.com and make it available at test.mysite.com.

It updates the WP DB and sets 'siteurl' and 'home' to test.mysite.com.
copies a wp-config.php where you define settings usefull for testing.
copies a .htacces which restricts acces and blocks robots.

When the script is done you are ready to start testing. No further changes are needed.

Be aware that I have made some small changes to script in order to maintain sequrity of my setup, so you may have to do some bug fixing.

[Drastic]

I've looked at wp mangager dx (wpmanagerdx.com) before, and another that escapes memory atm. $100 or less iirc.

[GerBot]

I've put 200 sites into 2 managewp.com account.

I really like it.

Free now but he'll be charging soon.

[Torben]

>I really like it.
with 200 sites i would take a look at the self hosted version

[ergophobe]

Thanks Torben. I saw this a while back and was specifically wondering how you would compare it to the methods you mentioed here:

http://th3core.com/talk/web-development/the-thing-i-hate-about-wordpress-is/

Thanks so much for the updates!

However, that requires SSH, which is not available on shared hosts.

I have occasionally run across shared hosts that don't allow SSH or cron (or recently trying to set something up for a friend, he was paying $8/month for hosting and they would allow cron for an extra $25/month!), but the vast majority of shared hosts that I've come across in the past several years allow SSH. The three that I use most regularly now both do, two requiring you to tunnel in through a firewall server, the other letting your log straight into your server. These are all rock bottom super cheap accounts (one is a free university shared server).

[GerBot]

I've been working with the guy at managewp.com to deal with larger portfolios.
He now looks after 250 sites for me.

still holding up so he must be doing something right

[Torben]

>still holding up so he must be doing something right

Except it doesn't work when you have W3 Total Cache installed