WordPress MU

I know this isn't going to be a popular post, but I had to post SOMETHING here, after going through 3 days of troubleshooting, and FINALLY getting this thing to work.

I start off with the first user in setup - the admin username - the front page showing the blog from "admin" - that's great - site updates can be on there, etc. THAT would be the main page. So I add another blog with a new username.

And guess what? It doesn't exist on the main page.

It has it's own domain, and no reference to it, on the main page. Where is MU different from Wordpress? They are THE SAME for all intent purposes. I needed to be able to setup a main page, just like Wordpress has, that shows ALL blogs on it - has tags you can click on, etc. THAT is what I had thought MU was - it's not.

I really am disappointed by this. Does anyone know of a way to have a main blog page, with multiple members and their posts/blogs can be shown on the main blogger page?

Thanks, and I hope I didn't insult anyone - it just should be clarified in the description, that this is NOT a way to open your own "Wordpress site".

"Does anyone know of a way to have a main blog page, with multiple members and their posts/blogs can be shown on the main blogger page?"

Yeah, it's all over this forum. Usually under such search terms as most recent posts, aggregating and home page.

By default, no - WPMU does not do this. But it never said it did. Just like when you install single-user wordPress, you have to customize it.

"I needed to be able to setup a main page, just like Wordpress has, that shows ALL blogs on it - has tags you can click on, etc. THAT is what I had thought MU was - it's not."

Were you expecting WordPress.COM in a box? Then no, it's not.

All those WPMU-based sites you see with that info on the main page went and coded them. There are various plugin and even themes that help you do this, because - here's the kicker - everyone who sets up WPMU wants something different.

Further reading:
http://wpmututorials.com/themes/anatomy-of-a-home-page-wordpresscom/
http://premium.wpmudev.org/themes/
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/List-All
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/search-results/?cx=partner-pub-3374715123484136%3A2p7d6i-tont&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=recent+posts&sa=Search#1501

At least you realize that from the beginning.

I believe the "Is MU for me?" sticky at the top of the forums covers a lot of this as well. The first paragraph of the readme file as well. :)

it just should be clarified in the description, that this is NOT a way to open your own "Wordpress site".

Actually it is. It's just not the only thing you have to do to start one. Takes a lot of hard work, time and effort. Many folks don't realize this and expect to have everything handed to them. Considering most of us do these sites, consult, or full blown hosting, that's not going to fly. Doesn't stop the "F-U A-H!" emails I get when I start quoting prices and refuse to offer my services for free of course.

Thanks, and I hope I didn't insult anyone

At least you were polite about it. Better than a certain few folks with their "It's my way that you need to do it since I'm telling you so" attitude we seem to get around here.

[I see the forum cache is mucking up yet again]

[I see the forum cache is mucking up yet again]

I personally think if you're going to run MU you need to realize you're going to have to cutomize it to get everything you want.

I wanted something to show all my blogs on the front page and ended up writing it myself. I've discovered that I enjoy writing my own tweaks and stuff to MU to get it working how I want it to.

It's not going to be perfect out of the box, you're going to have to work at it. But if there is something you want and it doesn't exist, why not ask here? I'm sure someone else can help out (I know that when I've finished tweaking my site I'm going to try writing some suggested/wanted features).

I am very glad it isn't wordpress.com out-of-the-box.

Heck, I'm thrilled it isn't, it should be hard, very uneasy and very difficult to create a neat site with WPmu. That's why I am not too happy with buddypress....

Exactly.

Make it easy for everyone and suddenly everyone has a site just like yours.

...with the inability to provide client support.

For a good time, look at some of the sites listed on Andrea's WPMU Blog Hosts page on her site. *sigh*

@andrea_r I agree too.

I really like my MU site, and it has taken a lot of hard work, time, research, and lastly a few friendly helpers. The result is a site that is mine, of course it still needs work, but it is mine.

I have a BP site as well, and, although it is customizable, the quality of the out of box theme means that everyone can basically have a production site out of the box. I changed the colors of mine, but many of the sites that have gone up so far, bar a special few, haven't even tried that baby step. If WPMU came with a wordpress.com theme it would be the same thing.

In other words @Woodk1 wpmu never claims to be what you are whining that it should be. If you would like something like that, I am sure that someone here would be more than willing to put one together for you....... at a price that they would more than deserve and I would have to think about selling my kidney for.

wow Woodk1, use the search feature will ya.

You do need to do some work to get what you want. MU itself and its countless plugins already do most of it for you. All you have to do is tweak them and design your theme, just as you would with regular Wordpress.org

I've been working with wpmu for about 5 months now, pretty much full time. Getting it installed and configured properly wasn't exactly easy for me. I didn't expect it to be.

I did some research and found that I'd have to learn how to admin a linux box, the apache server, learn php and the wpmu code base. I'd have to learn to customize a theme that somewhat fit what *I* wanted to do with my mu site.

I wanted to create a local community site that allowed individuals and organizations to have their own blogs. I wanted a community forum that allowed everyone to discuss community issues. I needed to tie those elements of blogging and forums together somehow.

I explored a variety of other options before I found wpmu. Drupal, Joomla and other CMS solutions just didn't fit. They didn't really do any one thing well. It was the blogging, the ability to hand someone a blog and show them that *they* could have a voice in the community. A voice on the internet for all to hear. Small organizations, individuals. Everyone. Blogs allow me to give the community individual, relatively easy to maintain and create web sites.

wpmu was the perfect solution for me. I still needed to tie these people together as a community of individuals with specific common interests. People form social groups, activist groups, bowling leagues and neighbor hood groups. Groups, groups, groups. Ya can't be human and not be a part of some group. It's our nature.

I couldn't find any group solution so I decided to write one myself and plunk it down on top of wpmu and forums of some sort. While I was designing this I ran across buddypress and knew immediately that it provided the social solution I was looking for. It was perfect. I had the three things I needed to create the site I wanted. wpmu for blogs and the multi-user core. buddypress for the social interest groups and bbpress for the discussion forums.

I gave up my worthless day job to become just like you people. To be a linux site admin, an apache guru, to learn php and how to create unique and wonderful web sites based on wpmu. Like yours. By the time my savings runs out in about 2 months, I may or may not have succeeded.

If I do succeed it will be in large part your success as well. Everybody walks into this alone knowing nothing. Within 10 minutes I found out that help was available, freely given and earnable.

Earnable.

Very nicely said, burdasit. :)

If WPMU came with a wordpress.com theme it would be the same thing.

That's what we saw when Luke released the old edublogs theme.

I wanted to create a local community site that allowed individuals and organizations to have their own blogs.

One of the installs that I host is in that form. The IT department had tried to set it up themselves but 1) they're a windows based network (boo, hiss, boo) and 2) the concept of reading documentation seemed to have escaped them from the story I heard. We did the basic install and they pretty much turned it over to one of the php classes for management.

I gave up my worthless day job to become just like you people.

Oooo, we're a lifestyle choice. :)

"I gave up my worthless day job to become just like you people."

Oh, forgot to mention - welcome to the club, hope you stocked up on your drug of choice. :D
(booze, caffeine, chocolate...)

...runescape, world of warcraft, webcomics,...

@tdjcbe: If I'm a lifestyle choice then god help everyone, we're probably not going to be around much longer. Sleep, pah..., You mean there is an outside?

Again, I'd like to apologize - I've seem to offend some, with the comments that I am "whining", "Need to learn to use a search feature", or "not willing to work for a nice site". (I've run a website since 1996 and realize what work and long, long hours are involved).

What I was shocked at, is how raw of a program this is.

The front page of the site says "ever dream of running 100's or thousands of blogs from one install of Word press?". Well, it does DO that, but coupled with it saying you can have a "Blog Network", is where I got confused. You cannot "run a network" with WPMU out of the box, like it infers on the front of the site.

Networks tend to have a consolidated area, of all those that have joined - OUT OF THE BOX. To me, that meant installing WPMU gives you a program to RUN and administer those sites or those that have signed up, just like I imagine Wordpress owners can do.

Take the Myspace network for instance - all those individual accounts, are there - just like a WPMU install would be. But myspace has a main page, where all members are consolidated by interest, or category. You can FIND them in a main area. To relate WPMU to a message board software - imagine installing phpBB where people can sign up and post, but you have to go to each members page to read each post - and there are no posts in a main forum. To me, that is what WPMU is, out of the box.

A front page area, that consolidates all the blogs and lists them, and an admin panel where you can administer all the people that have signed up to your Network (their blogs) is what I thought was in this. I had some initial install issues that I figured out by myself, and after 3 days of tinker got it to work - I guess I was just voicing my frustration of finding out WPMU didn't have any of this as a default - again, I apologize to those I offended.

Now, Andrea has listed some GREAT links for me and I appreciate that - thank you very much Andrea. It does appear that WPMUDev will be getting at least $50 from me, because they seem to have a plugin available, to put up a main page that WPMU is missing.

I don't mind spending the money for their hard coding work, but maybe a better clarification on the front page of what WPMU is and isn't should be in order? It has the CAPABILITY (or appears too based on the blind purchase I'm going to make on WPMUDev) to create your own network, but it DOES NOT DO THAT, out of the box.

I'm curious - why is a main consolidation page not included in the install package? Seems like that would be two POWERFUL additions to it!

Anyway, thank you to everyone for your help and again to Andrea for the links. I wish you well on your sites!

You cannot "run a network" with WPMU out of the box, like it infers on the front of the site.

Yes, you can. You install it on a server, set up your db and people can start creating blogs and using it straight away. It doesn't look pretty - but it is a "network" and it works.

why is a main consolidation page not included in the install package?

This seems to be the jist of your "disappointment". There is no main page. The reason there is no main page is because everyone's main page will be different. I use WPMU for a different purpose than, probably, pretty much everyone else. I don't want a "standard" consolidation page, infact a standard page displaying recent posts would be of no use to me whatsoever.

James over at Edublogs wanted specific things on his consolidation page, so he wrote the code to grab those things and display it (and kindly released the code and theme to do it for other people to use - search for it).

Andrea_r maybe wanted to display some slightly different things, so she wrote the code to get the bits she wanted.

politicalbear - different again.

Just as WordPress standard isn't an all singing all dancing blog system "out of the box" - hey you gotta download all those plugins and find that jazzy theme.....

Neither is WPMU. Work is rewarding, get used to it :)

Or, go have a look at BuddyPress. It's a plugin for MU, and when installed correctly (it comes with a theme for the main blog) has all those consolidating features out of the box. :)

I think you need to give WPMU more time. They say all over this site that WMPU is not for the faint of heart. It requires time and commitment to setup it a nice to look at way. But in another sense it is rather easy since most all WP plugins and themes work with it. If you so desire the only thing that really needs to be good and customized is the main page and that isn't too bad once you put some work into it. It also helps to have Donncha's sitewide tags (IMHO)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/

Edit: I don't think you offended anyone here, you just need to give the program a better chance and spend more than just three days on it.

Also a lot of ppl seems to be thinking WPMU is some sort of a CMS with social networking functions. It's not, it's a blog and so it blogs. With the default install it does just that.

I love the fact the WP doesn't by default include more than it's supposed to do to keep it simple and customizable.

After that I can choose with plugins / themes / widgets / crap I wish to use.

Yep its a blog that is very extensible and can be used as a CMS if you set it up correctly (which takes time).

Just to reiterate andrea_r. You should really go the BuddyPress route for out-of-the-box social networking. You will still need to work for solid customization, but at this point about 90% of the tools are there and fairly easy to get working. Use the SVN if you really want track that project. It's getting better every day.

It gets a little complicated the more you dig into it. Especially when you integrate WPMU and BBPress. BUT well worth the effort.

http://buddypress.org/