Your WordPress Network Just Became Your Biggest Liability

Here's what makes a Multisite migration genuinely complex: each subsite has its own prefixed database tables (wp_2_posts, wp_3_options), but everyone shares a single wp_users table with per-site capabilities baked in. Media lives in separate /sites/[id]/ directories. Serialized data holds domain-specific references scattered throughout. Extracting one subsite means remapping all prefixed tables, rewriting serialized data without corruption, migrating media paths, and handling per-domain DNS — then doing that again for every subsite in the network.

For domain-mapped subsites, we handle DNS cutover per domain, SSL certificate provisioning, and 301 redirect implementation from the old domain to its new path structure. Each custom domain gets its own Google Search Console property update and dedicated indexing monitoring. We coordinate cutover timing to minimize downtime across all domains — staggering where it makes sense, batching where it doesn't.

WordPress Multisite stores all users in one wp_users table with per-site capabilities like wp_2_capabilities and wp_3_capabilities. We extract each user's per-site roles, map them to Supabase Auth, and assign location-specific permissions using Row-Level Security. The end result: a single login with the right access level per location, without anyone seeing content they shouldn't.

We build 301 redirect maps for every URL across every subsite, including domain-mapped custom domains. Google Search Console properties get set up per domain with updated sitemaps submitted on launch day. We monitor indexing for 30 days post-launch across all former subsites to catch anything that slips through. Worth noting: the performance jump from static HTML typically helps rankings rather than hurting them.

Timeline scales with network size. A 5–10 subsite network usually takes 8–10 weeks. Networks in the 25–50 subsite range run 12–16 weeks. Enterprise networks with 50+ subsites, complex domain mapping, and custom functionality can take 16–24 weeks. The audit phase nails down an accurate timeline for your specific network — the numbers above are starting points, not guarantees.

WordPress Multisite networks are high-value targets precisely because one plugin vulnerability hits every subsite simultaneously. After migration, your sites are pre-rendered static HTML served from a CDN — no PHP runtime, no database exposed to the web, nothing for a plugin exploit to grab onto. The attack surface drops to essentially zero. No more Wordfence alerts at 2am. No more emergency patches. No more holding your breath every time a plugin update drops.