Wordpress Mu Plugins Installation, sitewide Plugins vs. per blog plugin

If you are either new to wpmu development/use or probably switched from wordpress,you might have faced this dilemma.

In standard wodpress,there is only one plugin directory inside wp-content named “plugins”.

If you have installed wpmu or got a chance to work with it,when you will navigate to wp-content folder,you will find two directories named “mu-plugins” and “plugins” as shown in the image below

Plugin Directories in wordpress Mu

Let us take a look at the differences:-

In wordpress there is one blog only,while in case of wordpress mu the same installation can have hundreds or thousands (even  bigger if you see wordpress.com) of blog hosted on it.

So,wordpress Mu provides two sorts of plugins,one is the plugins which are globally available(my be you can tell them site wide plugin).

To install a plugin which are automatically enabled for all blogs on a wordpress Multiuser installation,you just need to put it in mu-plugins folder.

If you put a plugin in “mu-plugins” folder,It is automatically activated,there  is no need to manually activating the plugin as in case of standard wordpress plugin.

Now there are times ,when you want your user to use some plugin,but they may use or may not use it.So to give the flexibility to your users, you just need to put it in “plugins” folder.

This plugin will be available to all the blog owners(blog admins) on your website and them may enable or disable it on their will from their dashboard.

So,the two plugins directory are required because of the nature of the wordpress Mu sites/blogs.

I hope,It will help someone looking for the differences between site wide plugin and per blog plugin.

I encourage you to leave a reply,if you have any suggestion,any questions,I will reply promptly.

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