Disabling the Network

At some point, you may decide that running a network of sites isn't for you, and you may find that you want to disable the multisite feature completely. Before disabling the network, you want to save any content from the other sites by making a full backup of your database and any files that exist in the /wp-content/blogs.dir/ folder. Book II, Chapter 7 has detailed information about backing up your site if you need a refresher.

The first step is to restore the original wp-config.php file and .htaccess files that you saved earlier. This causes your WordPress installation to stop displaying the Network Admin menu and the extra sites.

You may also want to delete the tables that were added, which permanently removes the extra sites from your installation. Book II, Chapter 3 takes you through the WordPress database, including using a popular database administration tool called phpMyAdmin. You can use that tool to delete the multisite tables from your WordPress database when you want to deactivate the feature. The extra database tables that are no longer required when you aren't running the WordPress multisite feature include

  • wp_blogs : This database table contains one record per site and is used for site lookup.
  • wp_blog_versions : This database table is used internally for upgrades.
  • wp_registration_log : This database table contains information on sites created when a user signs up, if they chose to create a site at the same time.
  • wp_signups : This database table ...

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