WordPress MU

Anyone have any good backend tweaks for MU that will simplify the user interface, allow after login and logout to be redirected to their page or the main page. This is something I am definately interested in as the current backend look can be a bit cluttered and over informative.

Tiger admin. ;)

I just tried Tiger admin. It's great. Thx lunabyte.
Is there a tweak to make this a mu-plugin?

Yeah I have dropped the plugin into the plugins dir and activated it but nothing happens. Didn't know if it was ported or maybe I was doing something wrong. Also have yet to figure out how to automatically only allow certain plugins to users. For example say you have 10 users currently you add in tiger admin. It shows up on everyones plugin list.

Well make sure you got correct permissions. It may use mod_rewrite too. Not sure about the later tho'.

There is a mu-plugin manager that activates plugin's globally for all users. "Selective" plugin addition is seriously lacking. Someone here is trying to do something like that.

I had to just replace the files in wp-admin to get to work myself. Needs a fair amount of work though. Right off the file uploader is broken. Lots of minor stuff also. Probably just needs new divs added in.

edit: Oh, and it doesn't load in ie6 for some reason.

Just notice that drmike. Too bad. Well that one goes on the back burner.

Tiger Admin won't load in IE. Since IE can't draw its way out of a paper bag, if the user is unfortunately using IE, they get the same ol' dashboard.

I had to go ahead and replace the original css files for them to get picked up.

I like the design but I guess I'm stuck with the original.

Hehehehe...lunabyte you break me up.
BTW, what did you do for the upload problem?

Yeah I am launching it in Firefox and wont show up. Dr mike what did you do to get it to work?

Thanks Gum, that's my "job". :D

As for making it work, I haven't used it in a while. I do something completely different now, since they redesigned TA a few months ago. It just didn't sit right for me visually.

Well what I am going for is a professional community website of blogs and forums that runs on WP transparently. I adore Wordpress.com current theme for their site but cant seem to get my hands on it either.. as far as anything close to it. I needed some way to simplify the backend to a basic interface without the extra fluff for the users. Any input is great as it seems I am gaining about 3 users a day at this rate.

Extra "fluff".

Sorry, but you're going to have to be pretty specific as to what you want to see, and what you want it to do.

Well lets see here your going to enjoy this ;):

I would like to:

- Rip out almost all of dashboard so that it only shows a customizable field inside the current 'dashboard' box so that admins can customize its look using a editor. Slim down the menu of the backend to a more narrow look, maybe even a highlight over drop down style. Mostly show a clean professional look instead of the over informative clutter it seems it has now.

- Eventually allow for the Dashboard to show any awaiting PM's, friends online, latest posts on the forum... etc stuff that can be module like widgets.

You could modify index.php for starters, and then go from there.

Take out the RSS feeds, although I personally like them since it's one way to make sure users get information from your site that they may need to know, then pretty much just reformatting the content of the dashboard to make it more like what you would like.

From the "end user" standpoint, a lot of them like being able to see people who have recently linked to them, as well as a recent list of comments. Recent posts are helpful on a multi-author blog, too.

Have you considered perhaps a set of assistance pages, which explain different areas available and what they do? Thus instead of "taking away" information for everyone, it empowers less knowledgeable users with information about what their site can do.

My "fix" in regards to the admin area between using TA and what I've done now was simple, but it worked well. I reformatted a little of the admin css file, and added 2 new classes.

In a nutshell, I moved the sub-menu items over to a list down the left side. Mainly because if you have a few plugins activated, it can get pretty cluttered up top. The sub menu is generated in an "if" statement, so I set a variable prior to that, that had the original class name for the main admin div that holds all the content (wrap). Then in the if statement I overwrote that var with a new value (wrapsub).

Then, I went through all the admin files and found where the class was set to "wrap", and had it echo the value of the variable I set.

This effectively narrowed the "wrap" div, so that if there was a sub-menu present it had room on the left.

It worked, and made an easier presentation for less savvy folks, yet all it did was move a few links for those knowing what they were looking for.

The reason I moved away from that was I got tired up updating and merging all the files when upgrading. Granted I still have to do so for some stuff, but it's a whole lot less than it was.

I'd like to see a theme system just for the admin area, but it's been something discussed over and over since "back in the day". The priority seems to be front-end first, which is understandable. That's where 90% or more of the "action" is.

The backend has come a long way though, although "less savvy" folks still have some adjusting to do with it. But then again, that's the case with anything, is it not?

Well some great input and maybe I should start heading that way too since it seems TA will not work with IE which im sure a huge chunk of people are going to be using. If you wouldn't mind sharing do you mind taking a snapshot of your dashboard so I can get a better idea of what your referencing?

<Thanks Konshu, link removed>

TA doesn't work with IE. No way around it. If it smells IE when loading, it doesn't load the new css since IE can't handle standards. But I won't get into an IE rant.

Since this is a quick look, let me know once you've seen it.

Awesome thanks I have seen the image. Question off hand though. Would you know how to at least do the top micro bar that TA has? I have been playing with the code for half an hour and comparing the two against each other to figure out what will work best for me. I also got to figure out why wpmu doesn't auto login to bbpress. You can log into each of them with one database but its a bit annoying for a user to have to keep relogging in.. another issue another topic :P

And be IE compatible?

Not without some heavy modification to the backend in the header and menu files. Although (untested) you might be able to just "hack" the css file a bit, and put a margin at the top, then make the id or class (whichever it is) an absolute positioned element up top. Although at that point even then you might still have to add in a conditional statement for IE and have it pick up an additional stylesheet if you have to further hack for IE's dumba$$. lol

Ripping apart the admin area is something I'd personally recommend against, as it's a PITA to upgrade when you hack apart the core. Miss one little change, and it can really spoil your day.

Konshu, your bbPress/WPMU login problem is caused by cookie setting. Check your config.php in bbpress.

Another admin customization is using the SpotMilk admin. It can be simply used an user plugin.