[user724]

I apologize for the late reply to this topic, and thank you for your clear answer.

I understand that this is not the general way that WP Multisite deals with plugins, I think what confused me was that a multi-site installation has one user table for all sites. All sub-sites have several tables for nearly everything else, but in the whole database there is one users table to rule them all (unless a plugin or some other config option changes that), whereas WP eMember creates its own tables so they are unique to the site it was installed on.

So, after reading more into the database structure of WordPress’s Multisite as compared to the single site version, I came to learn that the specific features I was looking to have and content restriction level I wanted is actually already there for me to work with. It’s built in, just needs some settings and minor configuration. Once again, it turns out that for this particular project, I don’t need a membership plugin since WP Multisite will take care of my users, their roles, and permissions, too – with a little custom coding.

In my particular case, I have a network with a public main site where people can register (as subscribers). Then I have several sub-sites with a privacy setting to make them viewable only to “subscribers”.

By default, WP Multisite generally allows main site users to “view” all unrestricted content in the network, but because I locked the sub-sites based on the subscriber role/capabilities, the main site members can’t access that content without getting a specific user level and the capabilities needed for that sub-site. This I can either assign to them manually, or give the users a way to manually subscribe to that sub-site. Once they have that access, by simply logging into the main site, they have access to that and all the network sites they are subscribers of.

This works for me perfectly, as this is a personal, simple e-learning project and has no payment/eCommerce factors attached. I wanted to avoid using an LMS plugin because they came with far more than I needed.

I honestly had no idea WP Multisite had these capabilities or that it could be customized in such a way. It’s good news, as it resolves my issue, but I have to admit I was really hoping to finally have an excuse to use WP eMember for at least one project 😅 (since I’ve purchased it it has been active only on localhost for my test sites 🙄).

I did come across tutorials on how to change the default users tables for all the network sites, and wondered if I could tweak them with the WP eMember tables instead… but right now I figured since the core features – with some customization – deliver what I need then perhaps it is best to stick with it.

Anyway, thanks again for your answer here and all your other articles on WP Multisite. They – and others I’ve found online explaining the WP Multisite database – have really helped point me in the right direction.

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