WordPress MU

I have been trying to decide whether MU is right for me or not for over a month now (the sticky thread on this was helpful, thank you) and have ultimately come up with this scenario that I would like to have someone do, IF, I can get some of the brains on here to approve it as possible and feasible.

I am the only author of my website, but I want its expanding sections to look and function independently while still integrating with each other - specifically - I want each section to have its own theme and plugins, while still be able to share other plugins, registered users/commenters and tags.

Right now each section (things like video, blog, original video, articles) is a separate wordpress install, which i dont like. So what do you guys think about me having someone hack a single install so i can achieve the kind of separate-but-together harmony ive described?

I am not smart with any of the technical "must-knows" described in the "is mu for you" thread or the multiple domain hack linked within it, so I'm relying on you giving me a tip here, be it "ya, try to describe that to a programmer and if he understands it then it should be easy" - "no, this is a bad idea because you are asking for error messages, crashes or at least an inability to upgrade the WP software in the future" - or "dude, wtf are you talking about? you cant do that. you're a noob and you suck. go away" (hopefully not that one though).

thanks!

and ps: if my scenario is dumb, i welcome and appreciate (redundant? nah) suggestions on achieving this through other means if you have ideas.

If you are the only user, go for it - use WPMU. You have some experience keeping a Wordpress site already, sharing themes, plugins is as intuitive. Achieving fluid content that's "separate-but-together" across multi-blogs may be challenging for a newb.

Displaying content from Blog B+C+D on Blog A may not be intuitive. Writing scripts to querie the database will be required, but a few WPMU plugins will get the ball rolling in the right direction. There are really very few if any aggregator-type plugins that WPMU admins just install and go. Many scripts to aggregate content are tinkered with endlessly.

Your scenario is not dumb, sounds like a common sense approach to me.

Troll recent plugins at wpmu.org and wpmudev.org to get a feel for what's in demand.

How do you envision tying the multi-blogs together? Perhaps there are current plugins that meet your needs.(Blog Topics, Sitewide Tags, etc)

For me I'd rather learn to hack WPMU to enhance "togetherness" than hack WP to enhance "multiplicity".

Well, I like the idea cause I also ant to do something similar for one of my domains. But first I have to finish WPMU project I started few months ago.

I suggest that You try WP-Universe plugin. I haven't tried it myself but by it's description that could be the plugin which can help you a lot.

http://wpmu.org/wpuniverse/

"For me I'd rather learn to hack WPMU to enhance "togetherness" than hack WP to enhance "multiplicity". "

Agreed. Go with MU.

3 suggestions for Mu. cool. The only reason I stopped considering Mu were the many warnings amounting to "know how to operate this list of technical behind-the-scenes things or don't dare attempt this undertaking" so I imagined intimidating things like the dashboard being plain html that you had to punch code into to navigate and the day-to-day managing being a heavy-duty task.

From what I'm hearing here though, is the managing more like regular wordpress and the technical knowledge requirements are more so in the installing and hacking or what? Because I would have a professional install it and do the hacks needed that existing plugins won't accomplish (thanks for the tip to wp-universe. im looking into it now).

I think you can solve this by using regular wp and using the wp-hive.com plugin!

Wow George, Get around much?

Am I missing an inside burn on the George comment?
Does anyone have further comment on wp-hive?

George left the same comment copypasted in a few threads.

I think MU for what you want is pretty simple, considering half of what you need is built in.