How to use WP Rocket in a multisite environment

If you want to use WP Rocket on a multisite environment, there are a few details you should consider at the moment of  purchasing your license and activating the plugin.

License for multisite environment

If you set up multiple sites within a Multisite network, one of the following patterns would apply:

• example.com, example.com/subsite-1, example.com/subsite-2… etc. 
  
  -OR-
• example.com, subsite-1.example.com, subsite-2.example.com… etc.

Thus, you will be using one and the same top level domain across your network.  
In this case (again, as above) you may use one and the same license key for all the sub-sites in your network.

Exception: top level domains for sub-sites

If, on the contrary, you use top level domains for your sub-sites, you will have to use multiple separate license keys—one for each of your your sub-sites.

Although  Site URLs for those sub-sites would technically share the same top level (network) domain, in operation they could, in fact, provide content totally unrelated to each other, and not even their domain would indicate they were part of a Multisite network. That’s why in this particular case, they can not share one single license key.

Activate WP Rocket on a multisite

WP Rocket should not be network-activated in a WordPress Multisite installation. Instead, it should only be activated on each sub-site individually.

At the moment, we chose to make WP Rocket work in this way for technical reasons: if a plugin is network activated, all its options will be automatically applied to every sub-site in the network. 

But, as an example, if one sub-site in the network has a problem with minification, and the only solution would be disabling this option, all the other sub-sites will be affected by this choice, and they couldn't use minification anymore.

Network deactivate issue

If WP Rocket was previously network-activated, the "Network Deactivate" button won't work. This is because the deactivation modal is intended to work for each specific sub-site only.

In this case, you can still deactivate WP Rocket for the network by right-clicking the "Network Deactivate" button and selecting the "Open link in new tab" option.

Domain mapping

If you use a domain mapping plugin on your multisite, when activating WP Rocket, you must access your wp-admin area using the mapped domain, that is, the domain that will be used on the front-end of the site. Otherwise WP Rocket will not be able to detect the correct URL to update our configuration files. 

If you have a folder-based multisite  at www.example.com/site1  and you use domain mapping so that visitors access the site at: www.examplesite.com ,then you need to log into your site at:  www.examplesite.com/wp-admin and activate WP Rocket there.