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cannot get plugins to work after multisite install

cannot get any plugins to work on any of my multisites, i went in admin dashboard as normal and network activated plugins, went to each sub and the plugins werent even listed on either of my 2 sites plugins, help?

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  • James Dunn

    Goodday @kevin_shick

    Welcome to WPMUDev - glad you're here and hope you enjoy the community.

    This is one of those things that is probably very confusing for most people new to WPMU (multi-site WP). Please allow me to try to explain it. If I don't explain it thoroughly, then just ask me (or someone else) to clarify.

    Network Activate:

    Upon initial look, one would think that "Network Activate" would "activate" them so that users of subsites can activate them on their sites if they wish.

    However, that is not the case. Network activating a plugin is similar to (if not the same as) placing them in the mu-plugins directory. Plugins that are network activated are activated on every site on the network. No user can go into their subsite dashboard and deactivate them.

    If you want to have the plugins visible at the subsite level, then you will need to Network Deactivate them. At that point, they'll show us as installed for each subsite. Then, each user on their respective subsite can choose to activate or not activate the plugin - depending upon their needs.

    Not all plugins can be network activated. Well, they can be, but the results may not be what you expect them to be. It's usually best practice to only network activate plugins that the developer says can/should be network activated. Otherwise, you may get a surprise. That surprise many not be today or this week, but you may get one.

    Hope this helps you. Post back if it does or if it doesn't.

  • James Dunn

    BTW @kevin_shick

    I was working with a client's multi-site tonight and remembered using this plugin:

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/multisite-plugin-manager/

    It allows you to define what plugins are automatically enabled on new sites, which ones the user has the ability to enable, and several other functions that I've not dug into. Plus, using this in conjunction with our ProSites Plugin here on Dev will allow you to charge users for the ability to activate plugins on their subsites.

    I've never used it in that manner, so maybe one of our other Dev members can contribute some valuable insight on that if you're interested.

    James Dunn
    Athens, GA USA

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