WordPress MU

Alright, starting in about two to three weeks i'm going to have a hell of a lot of time on my hands. So, i've decided that i'm going to take on the task of coding a major feature for wpmu. Below are a few ideas that I came up with but if you have your own please tell us about it. Basicaly i'm going to leave it up to you guys to decide which feature you'd like best.

1) Calendar System - This could be done either by allowing a user to import data through a service like Google Calendar or a custom calendar script could be written just for WPMU.

2)Photos - I'm up in the air on this one because I can't decide whether it's worth it to build from scratch a photo management script when there are services like flickr that are extremely cheap. This feature would also require you to give your users more space and let's face it, unless your wp.com most people can't aford this.

3)Messaging system - Basically it would be a giant PM (Private message) system for wpmu. There would also be an xmlrpc type setup where users would be able to send PMs to other WPMU sites running the plugin. Basically userA at bunnyblogs.com could send a message to userB at rabbitblogs.com. To make it simple, the address for cross system messages would be similar to email "userb@rabbitblogs.com". Think of this as "Blog Mail" if you will.

Anyway, those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. If anyone has another idea feel free to tell us about it. :)

To keep from having an endless debate on this i'm going to set a deadline of May 13th (Saturday) for any new ideas, then i'll setup a simple poll the next week for you guys to vote.

I vote for #3. :)

I vote for #2! Photos are an important part of blogs/web sites, and I think offering a photo management system would really be compelling.

I have not yet launched WPMU yet but a lot of my existing hosted sites use Coppermine to upload/manage their photos. It would be great to have a photo manager with Albums built into WP for each user without having to reply on Flickr or an outside script like Coppermine or Gallery which is a lot more difficult to set up and support. I actually think there will be a costs saving in this set up as compared to using other gallery solutions.

The other two features are good, but they are more community/forum oriented.

I think a photo management system is something more webmasters/bloggers could make good use of on their blogs.

I am voting for all three features

#3 would be the biggest benefit that I can think of.

My first choice would be some sort of global categories / tags.
http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=568&replies=4
maybe revive this?

#2 and #3 definitely.

Global tags please... a system that allows you to set a number of admin tags (i.e. 10 fixed tags) and then builds organic tag structures based on categories plus tags.

Not much to ask is it :)

I agreed Farms and waiting these. Thanks!

The only downside to tags is that if you go about it the wp.com method (which I believe is the best method) there will be a VERY large db table for you guys to deal with. I believe farms is running on dedicated equipment now so he'd have no problem but if anyone is on a shared server they might see a bit of a slow down.

I would still waiting for the BULK-INVITE previously requested. Also blogging via email/mms woul dbe appreciated. :)

#3 is good. Other ideas,blogging via email and mms would be much appreciated. Cheers to you andrew! :)

I think the three are only "nice-to-haves".

More important is probably:

#4 - allow site admin to send mail to all blog owners

#5 - blog activation after registration through site admin

#6 - more features that Wordpress.com offers :)

I vote for #2 .. photos are really want users want to do, and why have two seperate services (like going with flickr)? The average user will want everything in one tidy package..

i vote for #2 but it'd be nice to add custom file types for it. Some people are using blogs for work and need to share documents (doc, pdf, etc). adding thumbnails with icons would be a nice feature. Even to be used in regular wordpress :)

I'd have to vote for better integration with scripts that already do these jobs. Why reinvent the wheel? You can bridge with a gallery script, vBulletin, etc.

My vote goes to #2. Gallery is something people really want...

Maybe you could modify some other existing wp plugin and make it work with wpmu...

I vote for #2.People like to add pictures to their blogs.

Lazyest gallery is a nice one you might be able to modify .. it has lightbox support as well as using the "publish to web" feature from xp ..

The problem with Photo plugins is that you need to be prepared to offer your users a lot more storage than the 10 or 20MB that most do. The best photo plugin for a MU site would be FAlbum but I believe that it needs some work to make it compatible with MU - especially with the htaccess rules. FAlbum doesn't store any photos locally - users can store their photos on Flickr and display them nicely on their blog.

I Vote for #3, #2

I vote for #3, ... then #2... and

how about #7 a mail / webmail service where the user get's an email address which maches the blog-name:

blogname.yourhost.net

blogname@yourhost.net

??

I hate to be the more materialistic one here, but how about instead of adding new features right now, the major bugs get fixed?

After that.. I would love to see an email feature, though that might be difficult and would depend on what each person was running from a server/mail cliend/control panel stand point.

Then again all the features would be nice, eventually, but I think everyone will agree, we would love to see a fully working version first.

I would love to do more, where can i go to join the dev team?

FAlbum style photo album would be fantastic for blog hosting. Also, global categories rules.

What I'd love to see though... is a single install WP installation where one can select if one want's a multi site installation (wpmu style) or single blog and the ability to change from 1 to the other (of course one would have to delete all the MU blogs before going into a single mode). This would also encompass a standard way of handling plugins/widgets so that when they are release for version X (all in one install) then they'll work in either scenario. Plugins directory could be just a single directory but with the option to select which are sitewide and which are blog optional.

Last but not least, enable each blog to have it's own meta data within the head tag. Thus enabling ppl to use ClaimID and other features without the use of plugins.

I'm sure I can write all night but I'm guessing your weeks of spare time is already over!!

Cheers!

Btw, I haven't forgotten about this guys. I'm just waiting for 1.0.

Makes perfect sense... else you'll spend twice the time fixing it to work with final release... smart move!! Take a vacation... it may take some time ;)

Yeah, I tried playing with a few things but I got tired of things changing around in the nightlies so I just decided to wait. I am however using the time for another WPMU related project so all is not lost.

As for the vacation, I actually have one planned. :P I leave August 5th for a 7 day cruise. :)

What's a vacation?

I dunno myself - I've heard of them.

vacation... a new theme ... maybe?