[Basem Aly]

Hi there. I’m mulling over allowing users in our Commons-in-a-Box instance to create blogs and sites without having to create a group first. Is that advisable from a technical point of view? Or is there a compelling reason to always have site-creation be coupled with a group? Some users are only interested in creating a blog and have no use for the Buddypress groups associated with it.

Secondly, can anyone recommend a plugin or some other method to enable non-admin users to create their own site, similar to the dashboard link to /wp-admin/network/site-new.php but possibly through the front-end? Thanks

[Scott Voth]

Hi Basem – If you want to restrict the privilege of creating a site, I believe there is  a setting that you can use, as described here – http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-install-and-setup-wordpress-multisite-network/

Here is a extract from that url that pertains:

Opening Your Multisite Network for Registrations

The Registration Settings section on the network settings screen is probably the most important setting in your network setup. By default, both user and site registrations will be disabled on the network. You can choose to open your site for user registration, or allow existing users to create new sites, or allow both user and site registration.

You can check the box next to Registration Notification to receive email notifications every time a new user or site is registered.

If you want to allow the site administrators the ability to add new users on their sites, then you can check the box next to Add New Users.

Limited Email Registration options will allow you to limit site or user registration to email address from specific domains, then you can add those domains here. This is particularly useful if you only want to allow people from your own organization to register and create users or sites. Similarly you can also ban certain domains from registration.

I am pinging @haystack since he can probably shed some light on this issue.  One of CBOX’s plugins (BP Group Blogs – https://commonsinabox.org/documentation/plugins/buddypress-groupblog) deals with group blogs, and I am wondering if you can shut off member site creation while still enabling group blog creation (i.e from group admins).

[Christian Wach]

Scott, your instructions are spot on. Group blog creation is independent of the setting for creating sites. There’s nothing wrong with allowing sites to be created, nor anything wrong with restricting that ability. @baly in the end, it’s up to you – WordPress and CBOX will work just fine either way, no need for extra plugins.

[Basem Aly]

Thanks, guys. That’s really helpful. So basically, unless you use the Group Blog plugin, I have to enable site creation through the Network Settings page. If I enable site creation in Network Settings, then what URL should I offer users to create a new site? Is there a front-end form or plugin they can use? I’m reluctant to link to the dashboard’s site creation menu (…/wp-admin/network/site-new.php). I’d rather give them a menu similar to the Group blog creation menu.

Speaking of the Group Blog plugin, I noticed one of the options is to redirect the Group homepage to the blog homepage.  However, it seems I can only enable this option for all new site creation in the future. Is there a way to enable redirect for an existing group? That is, I’d like the default group landing page to be the blog homepage for an existing group blog. I tried looking at the Site settings, but can’t make heads or tails of it.

[Christian Wach]

If I enable site creation in Network Settings, then what URL should I offer users to create a new site? Is there a front-end form or plugin they can use?

You should see a “Create a Site” button on your “Site Directory” page at whichever URL you have assigned to it. This will take you (and others) to a page where sites can be created. If you haven’t created a Site Directory, you can do so in BuddyPress’s Network Admin page on the “Pages” tab.

[Basem Aly]

I enabled Site registration for logged-in users, and set the Site Directory. But I don’t see a “Create a Site” button. Is it supposed to be at the top? Here’s a screenshot:

 

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[Christian Wach]

That’s odd. It’s supposed to be in the same place as the “Create a Group” button is on the Groups Directory. See attachment. Do you perhaps have any other plugins that might be interfering with this?

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[Basem Aly]

I’ve been trying to figure out why the “Create a Site” button isn’t appearing on my “Sites” page. I disabled all the plugins that I could, but the button still isn’t showing. I also looked through the C-Box and other settings to make sure site creation isn’t turned-off somewhere in the settings, but so far no luck. I switched back and forth between my C-Box child theme, the main C-Box theme and other themes, but it hasn’t appeared. Any further suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Can someone send me the URL this button points to so I can try to replicate it on my site?

[Ray]

Can someone send me the URL this button points to so I can try to replicate it on my site?

The URL should be the Sites directory permalink with the ‘create’ slug appended to it.

Assuming your Sites Directory permalink is example.com/blogs/, then the “Create A Site” link should be:

example.com/blogs/create/

I can also confirm that the “Create a Site” button should appear on the Sites Directory page.

[Basem Aly]

That’s strange. I’m getting a ‘page not found’ error when I try to go to the /blog/create/ url you suggested above. Could this be a clue as to why the ‘create site’ button isn’t showing up? It’s weird because I can create sites using the Dashboard (wp-admin/network/site-new.php) and I can create a site using the Buddypress Group Blog plugin. I’m not really sure how to troubleshoot this. I’d like to avoid having to create a new C-Box/ Multisite instance from scratch. Any suggestions?

Is there another a front-end version of /wp-admin/network/site-new.php or a different plugin I can use that enables sub-sites to be created from the front-end?

[Ray]

The “Create a Site” link also shows up in the WP Admin Bar under “Howdy, USERNAME > Sites > Create a Site”.

If you are not seeing the button or link and you have enabled site registration where Scott has shown you, your problem is most likely due to a plugin conflict.

Check your plugins or code snippets to ensure that you are not restricting site registration in any way.

[Basem Aly]

Woohoo it was the Network site registration settings. Thanks, Scott!

[Author]

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