Configuring Network Settings
Now that you have setup the multisite network, it is time to configure network settings.
You need to switch to the ‘Network Dashboard’ to change network settings, add new sites, and configure other settings.
When you take your mouse over to the ‘My Sites’ menu in the admin toolbar, a flydown popup will appear. Click on the Network Admin » Dashboard.
This will take you to the multisite network dashboard. You will notice that there are new menu items to manage your multisite network. You will also see a “Right Now” dashboard widget that allows you to create a new site and add new users.
To configure network settings, you need to click on the ‘Settings’ link in the admin sidebar.
The first option on network settings page is to set your site title and admin email address. These fields will be filled automatically with the network title and admin email you entered during setup.
Opening Your Multisite Network for Registrations
The ‘Registration Settings’ section on the network settings page is probably the most important setting in your network setup.
By default, both user and site registrations are 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.
If you are opening your multisite network to registration, then you can check the box next to ‘Registration Notification’ option to receive email notifications every time a new user or site is registered.
If you want to allow individual site administrators to add new users on their sites, then you can check the box next to ‘Add New Users’ option.
Limited Email Registration option allows you to limit site or user registration to email addresses from specific domains. 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.
New Site Settings
The ‘New Site Settings’ section allows you to configure default options for new sites created on your multisite network.
You can modify the welcome emails and the contents of first default post, page, and comment in these settings.
As a network administrator, you can change these settings anytime.
Upload Settings for Your Multisite Network
It is important for you to keep an eye on the usage of your server resources. Under the Upload Settings section, you can limit the total amount of space a site can use for uploads.
The default value is 100 MB which is probably good for at least 100 photo uploads. You can increase or decrease this space depending on how much disk space you have.
The default upload file types are images, audio, video, and pdf files. You can add additional file types if you want like doc, docx, odt, etc.
After that, you can choose a file size limit, so that users can’t upload insanely large files to the server.
Plugin Menu Settings
Next, you can jump to the menu settings. It will allow you to enable the administrative menu for the plugins section on your network sites.
Enabling this will show plugins menu to respective site admins. They can activate or deactivate a plugin on their individual sites, but they cannot install new plugins.
Once you are satisfied with all the configuration settings, make sure to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.