WordPress MU

Hey all. Just thought I'd ask for your thoughts.

I'd like to have a menu of blogs in a hierarchy just the way categories allow parents and children. I don't need the urls or paths do anything different than the standard install allows. I just need to have each new blog get categorized as having a "parent" blog so I can have this "blog tree" menu.

I'm curious if there is a kinda simple hack I'm over looking since categories allows an easy interface to build a hierarchy, just not of links to blogs. :(

The blog topics and blog categories plugins don't seem to really cut it so I'm at a bit of a loss. Can I hack "links" to make subcategories or extra children? Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

An easy hack? No.

Even modifying the blog topics plugin to support heirarchy is likely not trivial.

Thanks for the response kgraeme. I'm a little bummed as everything else I've hoped to do with wpmu (even with my limited know how) has been super smooth up to this point. Even multi sites.

I just spent a bunch of time playing with custom taxonomies but that doesn't help any as you can't use a blog as the object your are taxonomizing. Blah.. I just need hierarchical links which I read WP did have at some point back in the day.

It's certainly possible. Just not trivial.

I did think of a way to do it without coding anything specifically. Pages can have parents. The Page Links To plugin can make a page link to any URL. So you could create a collection of pages that are just links to blogs.

To display the heirarchy you can just use the regular pages widget or something like Flexi-Pages which gives more control. If you want it to look like page content, you could develop a custom theme template that makes a "sidebar" that is in the page area. Or you could use one of the plugins that lets you add a widget to a post/page content via a shortcode tag.

Thanks! I'll go look into it!

Can't really see a way for users to categorize the sites blogs this way but it was a good tip. Thanks.

"I just need to have each new blog get categorized as having a "parent" blog so I can have this "blog tree" menu."

You can have a parent category for blog, just not a parent blog. :-/ not sure how you'd do that.

unless just a page would suffice.

Right, I can have a parent "category" but not a parent "blog". Unfortunately pages won't do.

I played with WP v2.2 which allowed links to be in regular hierarchical categories just to see how it was done. But even that was not quite what I was searching for.

I guess I'll need something custom that can let users generate a hierarchy off of returned links from get_blog_list. Phooey. Each blog is a place within a place kinda thing and I think it would make navigation through the blog "network" so much better.

Oooohhhhh.. so you mean the blog category is in the permalink?

Like,
mysite.com/food-blogs/andreasblog/ ?

Oops no. Sorry.
I just mean I would like to let users create the site navigation hierarchy of blogs so they can browse the site like so.

Blogs are for places. Each of the below links would be blogs not pages.
mystate.com/ > mystate.com/somecounty > mystate.com/sometown > mystate.com/someplaceintown

Ehh.. here is what I've got so far. A list of "blogs" are in the dropdown on the right. Maybe you can see why this kinda navigation would be handy if I ever got anyone using it.

Andrea- got your multi site plugin the other day btw. So worth it. Thanks.

Edit: I'm looking to create a craigslist-like navigation for cities, regions, neighborhoods etc. with a blog being each place at each level.

Hrm. Well, the closest I've ever done is something like this:

city.state.mainsite.com

But I get what you;re trying to do now. Just no idea how. :D

Must. Resist. Diving. Into. Code.

Dude, seriously. :D

An interesting puzzle, no?

Totally interesting. And, I have some ideas. But, say it with me...
Not. In. The. Schedule.

(at least not right now....)

Oooh... I hope your schedule permits some day Deanna! Glad to have some other good brains at least thinking about it. Thanks.

Not. In. The. Schedule. (at least not right now....)

Yes. :D But the "ooo shiny!" factor is there...

That's for sure a lot interesting, but certainly is not an easy hack. WPMU has a lot of restrictions on blog creation.

I coded a small and ridiculous category plugin (http://vinicius.soylocoporti.org.br/wpmu-blog-categories-plugin/) but the perfect feature would be categorize blogs as we categorize posts, hierarchically, with slugs and so...

Well, the Blog Topics plugin groups the blogs by category quite well.
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Blog-Topics

It just doesn't have the slugs & breadcrumb trail.

(but I use it a lot and it works quite nicely)

Updating the link to the plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/blog-topics/

haven't tested yet, but looks exactly like what I want. cheers Deanna!

I need something ridiculously simple on the front end, like viniciusandre above created:

List the blogs with the category provided.
blog_categories_list($category)
http://vinicius.soylocoporti.org.br/wpmu-blog-categories-plugin/

However I need something less ridiculously simple on the admin side, like the admin functionality of Deanna's plugin, where you create categories first, then assign one on each site's back end.

Anyone wanna help with that?

Also, does anyone know if the Wordpress 3.0 merge with MU will include any blog category functionality?

does anyone know if the Wordpress 3.0 merge with MU will include any blog category functionality?

It won't. 3.0 was to merge the code in and clean up the UI. No new sitewide features were added.

@raskull - although it's not talked about in the documentation, there is a function exposed in blog topics that lists the blogs by topic:

cets_get_blogs_from_topic_id_html($topic_id = '1', $max_rows = 0, $blog_id = 0, $orderby = 'last_updated')

$blog_id is the current blog id (so that you don't repeat the current blog in your list of blogs) or any blog id you want to leave out.

The rest should be self-explanatory.

Well! That works, doesn't it? Thank you!

Does the addition of the slugs with this plugin now allow a hierarchy of topics if used correctly? Did I totally miss this?