Consider removing WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE

[ericlewis]

I'd like to suggest removing WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE altogether, a constant which controls whether or not Tools > Network Setup is accessible (defaults to false).

I've heard that multisite is gnarly currently, and we should only allow users access to multisite after we clean up some big ticket issues. I think this flag only reestablishes multisite's second-class citizenship.

[Denis-de-Bernardy]

I kind of like that it's a constant, personally. As a site admin, I wouldn't want to see extra cruft -- on the contrary, I actually need to use a plugin to get some of it out of my sight.

How would you imagine the multisite install screen appearing without the constant getting explicitly set to true?

[jeremyfelt]

I think it belongs for the foreseeable future.

This screen - ​https://cloudup.com/cUp4Q3nHv17 - is only a precursor of things to come if you click Install. There is no friendly way to undo that process and the result itself can be pretty unfriendly. You could go back by removing the remaining defines and live in single site mode with some extra tables, but it's an ugly process.

The admin interface and workflows for a single site are much more developed than they are for multisite. A completely different experience awaits. I think for now it's nice that someone needs to lookup how to create a network before doing so.

I think I'd like to work backward and see constants like MULTISITE and SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL become less important first before opening the doors completely.

[jeremyfelt]

Related #32285

[ericlewis]

Closing this out, as this is just the tip of the iceberg in improving the multisite installation experience.

[peterwilsoncc]

#60792 was marked as a duplicate.