WordPress MU

OK, I have the basic MU set up now, and now I'm working out how to configure it. I have literally read through all the plugins in the MU directory, and so am now thoroughly confused.

1) My original plan was that I would have the number 1 blog as a general blog about the site itself (occasional items) but pulling in the latest posts from the other blogs set up in MU.

Is this possible? I've seen plugins that will add in content from non-master blogs, but they need PHP adding to the template, so it would seem that the blog would run [master blog content] followed by [other blog content] rather than integrate the two.

Also, now slightly concerned about the effect of duplicate content on SEO?

2) What site wide plugins are worth using - sitewide search, etc.

1) We've been using the main blog as the host of the sitewide posts. This was the posts are under the main url of the site. You can modify the home theme to only show the_excerpt instead of the_content which shows the entire post. We've moved the main blog over to a subblog. (ie blog.wpmu.tld)

2) It's up to you. Every site is different. Having the site wide posts on blog 1 means you can use the search for that blog as a site wide search though which saves a step.

#1 - get the sitewide tags plugin and use it on the main blog.

Example site doing this: http://blogs.queercents.com

As for duplicate content, I think Google is concerned more about it on *the same site*. It sees subdomain blogs as mostly separate.

Honestly, Google LOVES mu-based sites like crazy.

#2 - it depends. :) Tips here:
http://wpmututorials.com/plugins/top-ten-plugins-for-wordpressmu/

Thanks for the replies. OK, so I think I will try for the original idea of the master blog pulling from the subdomain blogs.

I don't think the sitewide tags plugin does that though, does it? The blogs.queercents.com seems to do what I was thinking of (main page pulling from other blogs, though not sure if it also allows its own posts from blog #1?) but how is that achieved?

UPDATE: Ah, Sitewide Tags is a misnomer for the plugin. it actually does seem to offer the ability to integrate subdomain blogs into the main one.

In case it helps others, this is the plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/

UPDATE 2: Hmm, can't get it to work, which I think relates to this message in the interface for the plugin "Remember to to add a post loop to home.php in the theme directory if it exists." to make it appear in the main blog. But what is a post loop?

Yes, the QC blog I mentioned uses the sitewide tags for that. :) I built the site for the owners.

In the backend, all you do (after installing the plugin) is check that checkbox. Don't worry what it says about the loop - every theme has it if the theme shows posts. It just means if the theme has a home.php and you want to show those posts, you'll have to add some code. 90% of the time, you don't.

Ah, Sitewide Tags is a misnomer for the plugin.

Actually it collects categories, not tags, so I agree. :)

Which explains the difficulty I was having. As I'm in testing stage, I had no categories, so nothing was appearing in the "master" blog. I added a category, and it all appeared in the master blog main page as it should have, so lesson for anyone else doing this - it will only work when you have created a category that isn't "Uncategorized" and assign a post to that category. Then you're good to go.

Argh! This is so stupid. I edited the "Hello World" blog entry in the second blog (my first subdomain blog) and created a Test category and assigned the post to that (no other changes). I updated the post, and as I said previously, the post then appeared pulled into the master blog, which is what I was aiming for.

So, I deleted the category and post, created a new, real category and wrote the first real post. It's published, but this real post isn't being pulled into the main, master blog. Any ideas, please?

Solved it! It's a "feature" of Sitewide tags, which could be documented a little more clearly.

I wondered if it had to do with deleting a category, but poking around the the MySQL database changed nothing. I wondered if it was because I had turned off search engine access in the sub-blog, but turning it back on didn't change anything, until I found this post...

http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=10977#post-66075

The solution for others who may need it is that you need to turn on search engine access and then edit and update a post. The post then reappears in the master blog.

Okay I'm late to this discussion, so if you enable "Site Wide Tags" and you already have a couple of sub-blogs with posts...

You need to manually go in and edit and update each post for it to show up on the "Site Wide Tags" aggregated blog?

Is there an easier way for Site Wide Tags to detect existing posts?

I use WPMU Powertools

http://plugins.paidtoblog.com/wpmu-power-tools/

and execute the following snippet

http://pastebin.com/fe375d1

Thanks for replying, dsader.
I'll have to check that out and test it.

Thanks again!

I’m trying to do the following with Wordpress MU. After weeks of trying and searching, I’ve just about given up : /

What I want to have is a master blog (ID 1) who’s content will be translated into many languages manually by translation experts. Each of the translation experts will have a login for their own version of the blog:

http://www.site.com/sp/ - Spanish
http://www.site.com/de/ - German
http://www.site.com/fr/ - French

etc…

The content of all these blogs will be controlled by the master blog (ID 1), but they will all be in their own languages. When content on the master blog is added/edited/removed, all the sub blogs update as well with the changed content. I don’t even care if they all update in English; they just need to all update.

I found a plugin that seems to do this called Multipost MU, but I can’t even get it to work on my installation. It installs but does nothing when I turn it on. My master blog is done and working fine. All I need to do now if find an effective way to administer all the blogs at once.

Has anyone found a solution like this? I think I’ve come as far as I can. Thanks all. Running WPMU 2.8.6