(Multisite is not an option here.) I have five separate WordPress installations, currently residing in 5 separate databases on the same server. My goal is to combine the users for all 5 sites into one site, while also keeping all the rest of the data in their separate (original) databases. Some of these have been in existence for several years with real data in them.
I've found these solutions for combining user data across multiple sites:
- How to Share Logins and Users Between Multiple WordPress Sites
- Share users database on different WordPress installs
But the one issue I have with these is that it forces me to combine all of my data across all the databases into one database. I understand that tables will still be separate, but even still I would like all the rest of the data for a given site to reside in an individual database (except for the users). Eventually these database may need to exist on separate servers.
Another challenge will be remapping all the post data to their updated user data ID in the consolidated users database.
I'm thinking that this might all be possible with the help of the HyperDB plugin, but this is a new adventure for me so I'm posting here to solicit help and suggestions, while also using it to document any progress that I make and provide an actual solution when I get to the end of this.