WordPress MU

As I have permission I'm gonna use this 'Your WPMU' thread to do a bit of boasting :)

We've MU'd MU! Yep, that's right, we've made WPMUMU (heh) ... you can now go and set up your very own WordPress MU site in under a minute without any hosting / FTP / wildcards / required!

Check it out: Blogs.mu

You gotta love the domain name too, Blogs, MultiUser styleee... geddit?

Would love to hear peoples feedback - critical or otherwise - I'm guessing that this project has a long way to run and will have much added to it / tweaked before it reaches maturity so we're all ears!

Cheers, James

Your welcome on the permission...

If there is anyting else I can help you with in the future please let me know!

God bless you my child.

wow, sounds awesome. still I'd be interested in the exact pricing structure...

besides, how is support going to work? Obviously, though being site admin, one still doesn't get "full control" of ones wpmu isntall but rather relies on your support, right?

Very nice James! I'm glad to see your company expanding, and certainly happy to see your efforts at enriching the WPMU landscape have scarcely ceased. :)

@Ovidiu - grab an account and check it out for yourself, I reckon you'll be pleasantly surprised :)

@Farms:

doing so right now :-)

###edit###
one more important question: what are my reseller options ? ;-)

what I mean is, i.e. I get a big supporter pack, how do I get my users to pay me? I mean I could get a supporter pack for 100 blogs, then have my users pay me for the supporter status?
Or would my users directly buy supporter status from you bypassing me?

@Ovidiu: I'm going to write a post on this with a few more insights and technical details because it was really quite challenging, but effectively we've added a new layer on top of Site admin called System admin - so whilst you get "full control" of your site, there are some elements controlled, or at the least "defaulted" from a parent level.

On top of that, at the heart of the entire system is a vanilla, unmodified WPMU installation. We made no core hacks or changes at all, everything is "plugin powered".

Good question re: reseller - I think incorporating our Pay to blog by PayPal could be quite a nice feature!

At the moment in terms of making money from it there's the advertising options, asking (or messaging) your users for tips (you can even get a single user on your site to upgrade it for you for free!) or becoming an affiliate: http://blogs.mu/about/affiliates/

I think integrating the pay-to blog or somehow offering US, the side admins, the chance to somehow re-sell your supporter option would be a great idea.

hope that makes sense to you?

Very much so! It's getting higher on the list :)

Any other ideas / requests / recommendations are more than welcome.

Do you have any specifics on the pricing structure? I looked at becomign a supporter, but couldn't find out exactly how much I would have to spend to do certain things.

The only thing I got from it was that I can have 9 blogs for less than a $1 per month. When will you have a specific pricing structure? Highly interested.

if you sign up there are very precise prices listed.

We should probably make the pricing page a bit clearer / nicer to look at too.

You can actually have unlimited free blogs, and as Ovidiu says once you sign up just click on the 'Supporter' tab and it's all there.

"if you sign up there are very precise prices listed. "

Put the precise prices before sign up. I know the features and do-dads that you have, but if you want to move beyond the choir of MU users to others who would like your product, they need to know the price beforehand.

Most people don't have time to sign up and activate their email for one CMS just to know what they are getting into. I ask that to expand your market start up the hook and bait before someone has to type a registration.

You don't have to give up all the info up front. But :

"As a site supporter you buy a pack of upgrades. For example, if you have 15 blogs and you buy a 10 blog pack then 10 of your 15 blogs get the “supporter” features. If you want to stop being a supporter you can remove your support and all 15 blogs would be back to free blog accounts without the supporter features.

Pricing starts at US$9 p/month for 10 blogs - that’s less than $1 per blog!"

This is confusing. What are pack upgrades? When I first read it, I thought you had to pay to become a supporter. Free accounts vs. Premium?

This is a great site, and I will sign up. But the initial approach and wording gave me a brain jolt. Just some criticism for your marketing.

What are the server specs and bandwidth for these bad boys?

The pricing is great. Was wondering if there could be pricing for Multiple MU for ex:

MU1 = 500 blogs = $XX per month
MU1, MU2, MU3, = 500 blogs total = same price

Is this possible, or am I reaching? Or is the multi-site plugin the savior?

It's in no way an answer to your question (or even close) but one quick comment :)

Most people don't have time to sign up and activate their email for one CMS just to know what they are getting into.

Activate their email?

Registering:)

I agree that we can improve the pricing page, for sure, really appreciate the feedback!

"server specs and bandwidth for these bad boys"

Don't worry about that, we've got it all under control! We'll put a detailed hosting post up on http://wpmu.org one of these days (it's already overdue) about our massive serverbeach edublogs config (which blogs.mu will be sharing eventually)!

If you've got three networks at http://blogs.mu then you'll have to pay for them each separately I'm afraid.

It'll certainly make yer life easier though :)

@redsoxmaniac: Ah ha, yeah. We removed the requirement for, and sending of, activation emails, they were a bit unreliable in testing, which is probably why that part threw me :)

And on that note, we've also released (on Premium) the plugin we developed for disabling / removing activation emails from signup.

This may sound silly, but, are there any plans for releasing the plugin(s) that make Blogs.mu work? I've been searching for weeks for a way to make a site just like that. Something that would allow team leaders to have their own WPMU install and then their team members have a normal WP install, but 100% of the installs are under MY control.

Yep, saw your tweet :)

To be 100% honest we don't have any plans to release the core code although we will be releasing some of the new and improved functionality (like advertising) etc. as we go along.

It's taken years of thought (literally) and months of coding and testing to put together - so you'd probably have to be an Incsub client before we'd consider reusing it on another site (and that would definitely come with conditions).

Sorry - like I said we'll be sharing as much as we can, but right now (at least until we're, y'know, in a position of world domination ;) there's a limit.

I understand Farms direction.

Although the MU CMS should be all open source, their ability to create an auto-MU system is in itself amazing, and having the function being created outside the open-source community is beneficial in terms of how they will utilize the function.

Bravo, Farms! Your ideas are amazing, and I hope there's a lot of good that will come of Blogs.MU.

I wish I knew of a way to auto-implement just one MU, let alone a platform for nearly unlimited MUs. The days I have wasted bringing up just one MU directory have taken so many days off my life.

I envy you so. But I hope success for your blog platform.

Thankyou - it might be of interest to ya that all of the plugins we do release on Premium or on wpmudev.org are GPL... and just as soon as we conquer the know universe we'll probably release our .mu code too :)

Bahahaa @ world domination. At this point, seeing all of the amazing work that you guys come out with, I'm surprised it's taking so long.

You saw my tweet and heard/saw the desperation in my voice/typing and you didn't answer me? *gasp* Do you know I stayed up til 6am just trying to figure out if the plugins were somewhere? I'm just kidding. I wouldn't release it yet either. It's too freakin cool to just say "and here ya go folks."

Awesome job! You guys are incredible!!

@Farms "To be 100% honest we don't have any plans to release the core code..."

Typical...

I wonder what Donncha & team have to say about this...

http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-plugins/

N.

Well as they don't release a lot of the code used on WordPress.com, I doubt very much at all.

The GPL only applies to plugins that are distributed.

Will it be possible to move my network to my own MU install in the future once I'm established?

We're working on that - at he moment it's bog by blog.