WordPress MU

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the forum. I use Wordpress, and love it. I have customized my own themes, etc. Now, I am considering using Wordpress MU to create a community. The problem is, I want the end-user experience to be much easier. I want to redesign the Admin page and dashboard. Is this possible?

I want to remove and rearrange options in the admin to make it simpler, and give new options, like friends between blogs. Any thoughts?

Considered using other CMS, but I am familiar with Wordpress and would like to customize it to suit my needs if possible.

Thanks,
Chris Johnson
http://christopheraaronjohnson.net

It's PHP. Anything is possible.

Yep it;s possible already with plugins out there or manual hacking.

Also friend's lists are available too.

Plugins are your friends :) It's not easy, but you can change the look and style of the administration side of things quite a bit without actually touching the main MU code - which is what you want to aim for to allow for easier updating later.

So let's say I just want to remove 'pings' and 'comments' frome 'Write Page'. What would plugin code look like? I believe it's only 3-5 rows of code... or not?

boonika: It all depends on how advanced and how savvy you think your users are :)

If there is no filter for the entry (which I don't think there is for pings and comments) then you can create a plugin that adds a stylesheet as the last entry in the header and hide the ping and comment boxes:

add_action('admin_head','hidemystuff',999);

and then in the style sheet hide the relevant boxes:
#commentstatusdiv {display:none;}

Another option is slightly more complex and involves finding an action just prior to the block you want to remove and an action just after it and use ob_start, ob_get_contents ereg_replace to alter the output prior to sending it to the browser.

I will write this method up on a tutorial, as it can be very useful for a lot of things.

Maybe Andrea would let me write it for her tutorial site :) if it's not too technical....

Yep, email me a post and I'll read it & post it. :D

@cafespain

THANKS!

@cafespain - Holly raviolli:)

This is actually your web site: http://blog.clearskys.net/
Thanks a lot for great plugins! I still have some problems with implementing them but I ain't complaining:) Keep it up.

boonika :)
Yeah, cafespain is an old (and still to be resurrected) site and username, but I thought I'd use it as it already existed.

@cafespain,

Up a few posts you said...

Plugins are your friends :) It's not easy, but you can change the look and style of the administration side of things quite a bit without actually touching the main MU code - which is what you want to aim for to allow for easier updating later.

Would you be able to provide a link or two?

I am trying to learn the best way (or plugin) to change the colors and content that my blog admins see when there logged in. I would like to have all blog admin colors the same (to match the color scheme of my main site), and then have the content on their dashboards be feeds from my main blog site.

Any suggestions?

awarner20: I'm putting together a quick tutorial on some basic admin panel customisation - I'll post here when it's ready (been translated into something vaguely readable).

The dashboard has hooks in it you can replace the deafault content with via a plugin. Nope, haven;t seen anyone actually write it yet :D. not sure if the hooks are still there in the newest latest version.

@ cafespain

I would really appreciate that. I have been trying to avoid customizing the core files and have been trying to figure out the best plugins to use to accomplish my goals...

1. Make all user blog dashboards the colors I choose
2. I choose what feeds are displayed in user dashboards by default.

I'll just stop being a wus and start editing. I have a text file that I document all my core file changes in anyway;)

I don't mind editing the core files, but I do keep original backups. Can anyone tell me which core file to edit to change the dashboard feeds and menu options?

Depends. What specific version are you running?