[wp-hackers] Two multisite installations, same users

[Andrew Nacin]

You can share user tables across cross installs. Just make sure you are
using different table prefixes.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Custom_User_and_Usermeta_Tables
On Oct 18, 2013 10:56 AM, "Dobri" <dyordan1 at ramapo.edu> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm dealing with a problem that I'm trying to resolve in the most elegant
> way possible. I work for an educational institution which has about 200
> sites on a WordPress multisite installation. They want to rip out some of
> the content from their public domain and put it in an Intranet that's
> restricted in access from only campus. So they decided to create a separate
> WordPress multisite installation. Now, I'm trying to figure out how to have
> users on the two sites sync up without running into permissions issues. We
> have about 150 users and we constantly add and remove them so it's
> impractical to keep two sets of users.
>
> TLDR: Two multisite installations, need to have the same user accounts.
>
> Here are two solutions I was considering:
>
> 1. Have the second multisite installation read/write to the users and
> usermeta tables of the first one, kicking up blog_id to 2^32+1 (so it's
> halfway through the range of blog_id)
> That way, I hope, usermeta will not have any permissions conflicts because
> at that point the two wordpress multisite installations become one in terms
> of user permissions, just with a huge hole in the ids
>
> TLDR 1: second multisite read/writes to wp_users and wp_usermeta. blog_id
> for wp_blogs on second installation is bumped up to avoid collisions.
>
> 2. Have the second multisite installation READ ONLY from the users table,
> keeping its own usermeta table and then have a service that runs at
> midnight for usermeta maintenance (copy over first/last name, etc. from
> main installation and clean up if user was deleted, make sure to not touch
> permissions on second site except for the case when a user is removed,
> etc.). This solution seems safer but users cannot be created/deleted from
> the secondary installation and users will not be able to change their
> password (and other things stored in wp_users) on the secondary site.
>
> TLDR 2: second multisite only reads wp_users and maintains its own
> wp_usermeta.
>
> Which one do you think seems like the better option? Do you have any other
> suggestions that might work better? Thank you!
>
> ~Dobri
>
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