Title: multiple WP instances, shared plugins folder
Last modified: September 24, 2021

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# multiple WP instances, shared plugins folder

 *  Resolved [rapidasia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/rapidasia/)
 * (@rapidasia)
 * [4 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-wp-instances-shared-plugins-folder/)
 * Hi –
 * I’ve got a cpanel account with a primary domain and several addon domains.
 * I’ve created a WP site for each domain (they’re multisites).
 * to save server storage space, I’m hoping use a single wp-content/plugins folder
   on the primary site and make the plugins available on the addon domain sites.
 * I played with wp-config.php with
    define( ‘WP_PLUGIN_DIR’, $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’].‘/
   home/primarysite/public_html/wp-content/plugins’ );
 * in the desperate hope that the plugins would magically appear in the network 
   admin dashboard. they didn’t. whether it was permissions or path or just not 
   how it works, I don’t know
 * has anyone figured a way to do this?
 * thanks
    -  This topic was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by [rapidasia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/rapidasia/).

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  [Kuldeep](https://wordpress.org/support/users/soberbanda/)
 * (@soberbanda)
 * [4 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-wp-instances-shared-plugins-folder/#post-14909054)
 * [@rapidasia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/rapidasia/) I do not think this
   is a good idea but someone tried doing this: [https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/175143/sharing-the-wp-content-folder-over-different-wordpress-multisite-installs](https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/175143/sharing-the-wp-content-folder-over-different-wordpress-multisite-installs)
 * Let me know how it goes 🙂
 *  Thread Starter [rapidasia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/rapidasia/)
 * (@rapidasia)
 * [4 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-wp-instances-shared-plugins-folder/#post-14917364)
 * [@soberbanda](https://wordpress.org/support/users/soberbanda/) thanks for the
   tip
 * I think the issue with plugin updates hitting the database makes my idea impractical.
 * Ended up deciding to give WP Multi-Network as try. I know it will make cloning
   and decoupling sites tricky – but the resource savings is what is more important
   for this project
 *  [Kuldeep](https://wordpress.org/support/users/soberbanda/)
 * (@soberbanda)
 * [4 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-wp-instances-shared-plugins-folder/#post-14917713)
 * [@rapidasia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/rapidasia/) Agreed 100% – Best
   of luck 🙂

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘multiple WP instances, shared plugins folder’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Networking WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/multisite/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Kuldeep](https://wordpress.org/support/users/soberbanda/)
 * Last activity: [4 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-wp-instances-shared-plugins-folder/#post-14917713)
 * Status: resolved

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