Boise State
Boise State University operates an extensive WordPress multisite network serving its diverse academic community. With approximately 600 individual sites managed by roughly 2,000 editors across departments, schools, and administrative units, the institution relies heavily on its web presence to communicate with students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. This decentralized content management approach empowers various departments to maintain their own web properties while benefiting from centralized technical infrastructure and support.
The Challenge
Boise State University faced a critical infrastructure challenge that threatened to derail their hosting migration plans and significantly increase operational costs. Their WordPress multisite installation had ballooned to over 350 GB, creating a cascade of technical problems that demanded immediate attention.
The primary issue stemmed from WordPress’s default image handling behavior. When editors uploaded images to any of the 600 sites, WordPress automatically generated derivative copies at every registered image size—creating thumbnails, medium, large, and custom-sized versions whether they were needed or not. Over time, with thousands of images uploaded across hundreds of sites, these automatically-generated derivatives accumulated to consume 60-70% of the total storage footprint.
This excessive file storage created several urgent problems:
- Backup failures: The hosting provider’s backup system couldn’t complete a full backup cycle within 24 hours, meaning backups would restart before finishing—creating a never-ending process that left Boise State’s data inadequately protected
- Migration roadblock: The university needed to transition to a new hosting environment but couldn’t proceed until they resolved the storage issue
- Cost escalation: The hosting provider proposed converting the single multisite into 10 separate multisite installations to manage the data volume—a solution that would dramatically increase hosting costs and administrative complexity
Boise State needed a solution that would reduce storage consumption without compromising image availability or requiring massive editorial workflow changes across 2,000 content creators.
Our team developed a custom WordPress plugin that fundamentally changed how the multisite network handled image derivatives. Rather than pre-generating every possible image size upon upload, the plugin shifted to an on-demand generation model—creating derivative images only when a browser first requests them. This “lazy loading” approach for image processing meant that only actually-used image sizes would consume storage space.
After deploying the plugin across the multisite network, we systematically deleted the accumulated derivative images, confident that any needed versions would be regenerated automatically when requested. The plugin architecture was specifically designed to function seamlessly across the entire WordPress network, ensuring consistent behavior across all 600 sites without requiring individual configuration.
The Outcome
The results exceeded expectations and delivered immediate, substantial benefits:
- Storage reduction: The multisite installation shrank from 350 GB to 117 GB—a reduction of approximately 67% that eliminated the storage crisis
- Backup restoration: With the reduced footprint, complete backup cycles now completed in approximately 8 hours, well within the required 24-hour window, ensuring proper data protection
- Cost savings: Boise State avoided the proposed 10-multisite architecture, maintaining their single, manageable installation and saving significant ongoing hosting and administrative costs
- Migration success: With storage under control, Boise State successfully completed their planned hosting migration on schedule
The custom plugin continues to manage image derivatives efficiently across the network, preventing the problem from recurring while maintaining full image functionality for all 2,000 editors. The solution demonstrated that thoughtful technical intervention could resolve what initially appeared to be an infrastructure scaling problem, ultimately saving Boise State substantial money while improving system reliability.