Multisite: How to store global options vs. site options?

Question

Hey there I am pretty confused on how to store network wide options within a WordPress multisite installation.

The usual way to store any settings in WordPress is:

add_option();
update_option();
delete_option();

However the wp_options table is created for each site within a multisite installation.

The following tables are subsite specific:

myprefix_siteid_commentmeta          
myprefix_siteid_comments             
myprefix_siteid_links                
myprefix_siteid_options              
myprefix_siteid_postmeta             
myprefix_siteid_posts                
myprefix_siteid_term_relationships   
myprefix_siteid_term_taxonomy        
myprefix_siteid_termmeta             
myprefix_siteid_terms                

The following tables are network wide:

myprefix_blogs // multisite specific
myprefix_blog_versions // multisite specific
myprefix_registration_log // multisite specific
myprefix_signups // multisite specific
myprefix_site // multisite specific
myprefix_sitemeta // multisite specific
myprefix_users
myprefix_usermeta

Do you see the problem? There is no adequate table for storing options for the whole network, which sucks in my opinion.

However I assume that you store network wide options in the base wp_options table (myprefix_options). However I cannot use add_option() and update_option() and so on without using switch_to_blog(1) before.

Is there a better possibility? If not, how can I get the base wp_options table prefix?

Answer 1

There are functions for saving and retrieving network-wide options:

add_network_option();

update_network_option();

get_network_option();

The values of these options are stored in wp_sitemeta.