How users work on multisite?

When you have a website network using the multisite option, users are managed a bit differently.

Users belong to the entire network while permissions are given on a site-by-site basis. This means that one user can share the same login details across multiple sites, while having different access levels for each site.

For example, a user could be administrator on Site A while only having author access to Site B, and no access at all to Site C. Only sites that you have access to will show in the quick site switcher.

All this means that there are two ways of managing users:

• On a network level as a super administrator.
• On a site level

Network Level User Management

As a super administrator with access to the network admin, you can manage the master set of users by going under the Users item in the navigation bar.

On this screen you will see a list of all users. You can filter this by role. You will also see a summary of which sites they have access to.

While you can add users from the Add New section here, we recommend adding new users on a specific website instead.

Give a user super admin privileges

To give a user super admin privileges for the network, open the desired user from the users list.

You will find a checkbox on the user profile page “Grant this user super admin privileges for the Network.”. Check this and save the user. They will now have access to the network admin, as well as all sites.

Controlling user access to individual sites

To give an existing user access to a specific site, or to add a completely new user, the steps are the same.

First, under Sites, find the site that you want to give the user access to. Click on it in the list to bring up the website details screen.

Clicking on the Users tab will give you a list of all users with permissions on this specific website.

Add an existing user

To add an existing user to this site, type their username or email into the Username box. The system will automatically begin to search for users as you type. Select the correct user from the list.

Next, select which role you want the user to have and finish by clicking on the Add User button.

The user will now have access to the website and it will also show up in the site switcher.

Add a new user

If you want to add someone that doesn’t have access to any website already, you want to add a new user.

Note that if a person has access to another website in the network, you want to add an existing user (above).

For username, we recommend going with the person’s first name and last name in one word, lowercase (John Doe => johndoe). The user will not need to remember this however, as they can login with their email address.

Make sure that the e-mail address is correct. A confirmation e-mail will be sent to the user where they must confirm their e-mail and set a password.

What’s that 1Password thing you see? If you haven’t already got a password management app we highly recommend 1Password. It’s been making our lives easier for a decade.

Finally, select which level of access they need on the website and click Add New User below the fields.

The user will now have access to the website and it will also show up in the site switcher.