There are three ways to build out a WordPress SaaS (WaaS):
- WP Multisite (usually with WPUltimo)
- Individual Sites with a central control plane
- Multi-Tenant
Of course, each option has its advantages and disadvantages and, for a long time, WPCD supported only the first two.
But now we’re happy to introduce support for Multi-tenant deployments as well.
Features
Our implementation of Multi-tenancy offers the following features:
- Versioning
- Distributed multi-server deployments
- Rolling upgrades
- Tight integration with Git
- WooCommerce Integration
- Lifecycle hooks
- Managed via the WPCD UI
and more!
Versioning
You can create a new version of your template at any time.
Versions are used for deployment or simply to capture the state of the template at a point in time.
Rolling Upgrades
When you have a new version of a template it’s usually a good idea to initially roll it out to just a subset of tenants to make sure everything works properly.
In support of this philosophy you can upgrade all tenants or just a subset of tenants to any version at any time.
You can also upgrade just a single tenant.
WooCommerce Integration
You can setup site (tenant) subscriptions with our WooCommerce module. The module has been updated to detect when a template is a multi-tenant template and deploy tenant sites instead of standard sites.
If you’ve used our WooCommerce features before, you’ll notice that the template site drop-down in the WooCommerce product definition screen has a lot more information in it (when Multi-tenant is enabled):
We fully expect that this will be the most common method used to deploy tenant sites.
Multi-server (Horizontal Scaling)
You can setup template sites on multiple servers and deploy tenant sites across as many servers as you like.
Start With A Single Server
You can start with a single server that includes your Template sites, Template Versions and Tenants. Then, scale out horizontally as needed.
Customization and Control
As with all WPCD code, everything is open-source. And there are hooks, filters and bash extensions that allow you to fully customize tenant deployments and upgrades.
Availability
Our Multi-tenant features are only available as part of a combined software + support + services package. The features are not offered on a stand-alone or self-service basis.
The reason is simple – this feature has a lot of moving parts and we fully expect that there will be lots of questions as well as requests for help in building out the usual custom plugin features that all serious WordPress SaaS apps need.
However, the code is opensource on GITHUB and experienced ALL ACCESS developers can use it as they see fit. Just keep in mind that this is not an install-and-go feature – it does require at least a smidgen of developer level work (hence the necessity for the services and support package).
If you do purchase the Multi-tenant services and support package from us, one of the items we deliver is a highly customized operations document that contain sections similar to the following:
And, if you include a WaaS services package, we add additional customized sections similar to the following:
Documentation
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