Many owners run more than one WordPress site: for example tracking and email on the main site, and a membership on another. Each Hub only sees its own site, so the main Overview would show nothing for the membership. Linked sites fix that.
How to link two sites:
- On the site you want to show elsewhere (for example your members site), open the Hub, then Settings, and in Linked sites press Create a link code.
- Copy the code straight away. For safety it is shown only once.
- On your main site, open the Hub, then Settings, then Linked sites, paste the code into Paste a link code and press Link this site.
The main site reads the other site straight away and tells you whether it worked. Keep both sites on the latest version of the Hub.
If your main site cannot reach the other site, for example because a firewall turns it away, the other site can send its numbers instead. See When Your Main Hub Cannot Reach A Linked Site.
What you see:
Your main Overview gets a block for each linked site, under that site's name and address, with when its numbers were counted and an Open that site button. Inside it are that site's own Mailer, WP Sync and Membership sections, exactly as they look on that site. A section only comes across when it has something in it, so a plugin that is installed there but not used does not add an empty panel. If none of the three is in use there, the block says so. If a linked site cannot be read, its block says why, in plain words.
The Every plugin at a glance cards can use a linked site's numbers too: if a plugin is switched on here but used on a linked site, its card shows that site's numbers and names the site.
What is added to your totals, and what is not:
The same person or the same sale can exist on both sites. A marketplace sale, for example, can be recorded by WP Conversion Tracker on one site and by Membership on the other. So a linked site's numbers stay in its own block and are not added to your main Revenue, New people or Emails sent tiles. The one exception is Membership's own checkout, which nothing else records: those sales are added to your main Revenue, and the tile's source line names the site they came from.
What travels between the sites:
Only counts and chart numbers, plus names such as the site's name and address, broadcast names and subjects, WP Sync bridges and destinations, and membership levels. No email addresses and no licence keys. The code holds the other site's address and a random secret, never a licence key. Every request is signed with that secret and refused if it is more than five minutes old, so a copied request cannot be replayed later.
How fresh are the numbers?
The main Hub reads each linked site when it counts its own Overview, and keeps each answer for ten minutes. Refresh on the Overview reads them again straight away. The linked site answers from its own saved numbers, so the main site never waits for it to count everything.
Checking a link:
- On the shared site, Linked sites says the site is shared, which Hub reads it, and when it was last read
- On the main site, each linked site is listed with when it was last read, Not read yet, or the reason it could not be read
Stopping or changing a link:
On the shared site, Stop sharing cuts the link off straight away, and Create a new code replaces the old one, so the main Hub stops reading it until you paste the new code there. On the main site, Remove takes a site off your Overview. Each of these asks for a second click within five seconds to confirm.