How to Share Users Between Sites of a Multisite Network
The usage of this multisite user management plugin is pretty straightforward; however, the whole process is broken down for you below, step by step.
1. Activate the plugin for the whole multisite network
If you need to share users across different sites in your WordPress multisite installation, then the plugin should be activated network-wide.
To do so, you need to go to Network Admin > Plugins and click the “Network activate” link:
2. Global settings
The plugin’s settings page is available at Network Admin > Settings > Network User Sync. Let’s start with configuring the global settings first.
The settings on this page apply globally, regardless of which site you’re syncing a user to at the moment. Currently, the following options are available:
- Allowed User Roles – it allows you to limit the users who can be synced between sites by their role. Let’s say that you only want to share users with a “Subscriber” role, then you just need to specify this user role in this setting field.
- Role Sync – it may happen when “Site 1” has a specific user role, for example “Shop Manager”, but other sites don’t have this role registered. It means that if we want to sync users with this role from “Site 1” and to preserve their original role, we need to register this role on the target sites as well before doing the user sync. Or, you can just use this option, and the plugin will do it for you.
- Auto Mode – when this option is on, users will be automatically added to all allowed sites.
These are the global settings, but you can also do some configuration only for specific sites of a WordPress multisite network.
3. Site-specific settings
More user synchronisation settings can be found if you go to the Sites > All Sites page in your network admin dashboard and then click the “Edit” link near any site.
These settings are applied only when syncing users from or to a specific sub-site of the multisite network.
- Allow User Sync To – uncheck this checkbox if you don’t want to share users to this specific site (deleted, archived, and marked as spam sites aren’t allowed by default).
- User Role – this setting allows you to decide what user role should be applied to users on this particular site when they are added to it.
- Allow User Sync From – uncheck this checkbox if you don’t want the users from this site to be shared with other sites of the WordPress multisite network.
That’s pretty much it for the plugin settings. Now, let’s discuss when exactly the multisite user sync process is triggered.
4. Trigger the user synchronisation
| Scenario | How it works |
|---|---|
| A user is added via Users > Add User in the Network Admin dashboard. | On this page, it is possible to select specific sites to which the user is intended to be added. Or, if “Auto Mode” is activated, the user will be shared with all available sites. |
| A user is being edited from the Network Admin dashboard. | Selecting a checkbox near a specific site will add the user to that site; unselecting a checkbox will remove the user from the site. |
| A user registers on one of the sub-sites. | If the user synchronization from this specific site is allowed and “Auto Mode” is on, the user will be automatically shared to all allowed sites. |
For example, when editing a user from the network admin dashboard, you can see a list of sites to which the user is currently synced. Unchecking a checkbox will remove a user from that specific site.
5. Bulk user sync
The plugin comes with a convenient bulk sync/unsync feature, which is available from the network dashboard, the All Users page.
What it allows you to do is to select as many users as you want and to add (sync) or remove (unsync) them from a specific sub-site of your multisite network.
