WordPress MU

I'm working on a hosting solution via WordPress-MU to provide CMS-lite hosting to a specific user community. It will be a paid service with additional features that appeal to this group. Anyway, the plan is to offer a set package of features/plugins for the 'base' subscription price and add-on features if they want some additional specialized functionality. I've been toying with the code and here's the long view of what this plugin will hopefully do:

Place a 'hold' on new site creations until approved via admin approval, confirmed payment, etc (configurable)

Top Level Domain creation/management/conversion (based on cafespain's work http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=2076)

Allow configuration of 'prices' for plugins. A plugin can be activated for a site by the admin (individually or site wide) or via confirmed payment for feature. THe thought is for each installed plugin set a group of options (price, one time/monthly/free, etc) Probably will extend this feature to be able to handle themes as well, but I expect not initially.

Include code that will get Site Admin to show all blogs even if top level domains are used IF it can be contained in the plugin.

I expect given their no fees deal for 2007 that I'll support Google Checkout first. The trick is 'subscriptions' PayPal Pro supports monthly subscriptions, but it may be easier to have the plugin handle the notification of users to pay their monthly bills. Need to read up more on Checkout to see what they can handle. Still debating this.

ANYway - the reason for my post is I believe in trying to build out the framework of an application to support as many 'future' things as possible to make it easy to add them, so.. Sort of like what was noted here: http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=2439 I'm looking for ideas from you all on what else a plugin like this MIGHT do. I can't guarantee that I'll add the feature, but for some ideas at the very least I'll probably make sure the table schema and framework can support them down the road.

This is my main project for the time being so we'll see how it goes.

Great initiative baptiste, which I think many will be gratefull for.
Can you also look into adding paid plans for disk space and bandwidth allowance, or are these outside your remit?
Cheers

I am very, very interested in this as I support several patient communities with illnesses that, unfortunately, attract the radical right and left with condemnation to the participants. It is absolutely VITAL for us to be able to control who creates blogs. (This is a support network also working for better research, coverage by insurance, etc.)

How far are you along with this? Do you need beta testers?

Pax,

MLO

Has any progress been made on this? I've been searching for a way to require admin approval on new blogs without success. I don't even want to get paid, this is for a closed community, but I want to make the process of creating a domain as easy as possible and only approve it on the backend. Hoping against hope that we're close or someone knows the answer.

We're very interested in a plugin like this. Is there any update?

Did you try contacting the OP?

While I'm not aware of a single plugin that does this, there are some options put there that cobbled together will do it.