iControlWP is a Software as a service (SaaS) for managing multiple WordPress sites. MainWP is not SaaS-based and it will never be.
It is very easy to change over from iControlWP to MainWP to manage all your clients’ sites.
- First, you will need to install MainWP Dashboard to create a Dashboard site to manage all of the connected sites. It is always recommended to use a fresh WordPress install for the MainWP Dashboard site. First, install the MainWP Dashboard plugin, then activate and walk through the steps of the setup wizard.
- Once you have set up the MainWP Dashboard site, you will need to install the MainWP Child plugin on the sites you want to connect to your MainWP Dashboard site.
- With the MainWP Child plugin installed and active on the site using iControlWP, you will need to add that site into the MainWP Dashboard site.
- Go into the iControlWP manager, and you can remove that site from the admin panel.
- Once you have connected the site in your MainWP Dashboard site, go into the site and deactivate and delete the iControlWP plugin.
Websites Cleanup
iControlWP will have created a number of option values in the site’s database. The next step will be to clean up the options tables of data no longer needed. Log into phpMyAdmin, and click on the sites option database table, then click on Search. In the option_name value, you can enter *icwp*. This will find all of the option values that iControlWP created in the site’s options database. Once you have searched for the option values which match *icwp*, you can now select and delete those option values. You will need to connect each of the sites you want to manage with MainWP using the previous steps, then you can delete the site in iControlWP manager, and deactivate and delete the iControlWP plugin on the WordPress site.
The next step will be to clean up the remaining options tables of data no longer needed. Log into phpMyAdmin, and click on the sites option database table, then click on Search. In the option_name value, you can enter icwp_%. This will find all of the option values that iControlWP created in the site’s options database. Once you have searched for the option values which match icwp_%, you can now select and delete those option values. You will need to connect each of the sites you want to manage with MainWP using the previous steps, then you can delete the site in iControlWP manager, and deactivate and delete the iControlWP plugin on the WordPress site. When the plugin is deactivated a number of some of the created option values should automatically be removed, but a number might still remain.
MainWP will make it easy to manage multiple sites, and you’ll be confident that the solution you are using is self-hosted and open-source, as well as easy to use.
