WordPress MU

It was suggested Andrea may be able to help here by answering my concerns and pointing me to her book about migrating a WP blog to WPMU...

We currently maintain popular forums running on our Wordpress 2.8 blog at http://tripawds.com/forums/ using Simple:Press 4.0.3. We are about to launch a new WPMU blog service.

We had planned to do so at http://tripawds.net since we believed migration was impossible. And it very well may be, for us. We prefer not to allow each MU blog to have forums, rather we will maintain our current forums and the primary blog.

I've recently completed my test WPMU install at http://rvblogz.com and can do this with, the two different domains. But that of course means two log-ins for each user, and over 650 members who would have to re-register.

All feedback welcome. Thanks in advance.

So you want to eventually migrate all the stuff on the .com to the .net?

Or just the users?

Just the users should be pretty easy (well, compared to the first option), so at least they can have the same username/password on both sites.

The cross-domain cookies if you want them to *stay* logged in may be trickier though.

Thanks for the reply Andrea!

If at all possible (even if it means contracting someone to do it) we would consider migrating "everything" to WPMU and leave it running at tripawds.com to avoid the multiple domain/login/cookies issue altogether.

I'd be interested in finding out how to move the users over to tripawds.net in case I end up doing this myself though.

Our goal is to add the new mu blog service while still maintaining our existing primary blog and the SPF discussion forums. The only way I personally saw this as feasible was to launch the new WPMU site at our .net domain and leave our existing .com blog/forums as is. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

PS: Do you indeed have a book about migrating WP to WPMU as I was told or just the wpmu installation e-book?

I just have an installation ebook so far. :)

For migrating users, this might be helpful:
http://bavatuesdays.com/importing-a-single-wp-blog-to-a-wpmu-installation/

It's not terribly difficult, but not easy-peasy either. Just a lot of careful steps.

And what a great book it is!

Thanks for the migration article. Read that, big help indeed. But it still leaves the user import you allude to as bit of a mystery. And one comment even mentioned...

"...having tried to import users to a WPMU installation from a stand-alone Wordpress installation, one thing that I couldn’t work out was how to import their passwords - they didn’t seem to work out-of-the-box on the new system, which I suppose may have something to do with LOGGED_IN_KEY, AUTH_KEY and SECURE_AUTH_KEY settings in wp-config.php for both installations."

We've got 700 members and growing. Any tips for facilitating their clean migration to the mu installation is greatly appreciated. Especially considering they are all discussion forum members via the Simple:Press plugin which we plan to deactivate for member blogs.

PS: Does anyone know if the Maintenance Mode plugin works for use during WPMU configuration? And what's the best wpmu plugin management tool.

Sorry if I'm getting off topic. Thanks again.

"Any tips for facilitating their clean migration to the mu installation is greatly appreciated. "

If you look at the database tables, it's pretty straightforward. Done it a few times :)

Given that you're moving them to a second domain, you can do all kinds of testing before they'll even see it.

...moving them to a second domain, you can do all kinds of testing...

If I can make this work, I'll actually just migrate to MU on the current (.com) domain. But yes, testing is good. And I actually have the whole site -- forums and all -- up and running on the test domain!

...If you look at the database tables, it's pretty straightforward.

To some ... ;-) users and usermeta tables seem to be causing my first major roadblock. An import of both tables (without editing prefix) flat out didn't work. After reverting and attempting an insert of one user I get the following errors ...

1. The user was added to the primary blog, even though I did not edit the prefix to wp_1_
2. The user can log in but never reaches his dashboard. Safari throws the error below (FYI: I primarily use FF, but opened Safari so I could stay logged in as admin while testing the new user.

Safari can’t open the page.
Too many redirects occurred trying to open “http://tripawds.net/wp-admin/”. This might occur if you open a page that is redirected to open another page which then is redirected to open the original page.

Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks!

Update: Manually creating a blog for the imported user resolved the infinite loop issue. Is this the only way?

If so, I've only got about 714 users to go, and will hope they like the subdomains we chose for them! ;-)

OK. Still wrangling the user tables here ... after dumping my WP users & usermeta tables, adding the two fields for Spam and Deleted to the users table, dropping the MU users & usermeta tables, then importing the edited WP tables, the following anomalies still have me scratching my head:

1. All users import and get added to the main blog (Site Admin/Users) but no users are shown in the main Users tab.
2. A second admin from the old WP blog was not made an admin to new blog id #1.
3. Users still get stuck in redirect loop upon first login. Loop is resolved if they sign up for a blog, or I add one for them.
4. The drop down menu for Dashboard User Default Role (Site Admin/Options) has no values. See screenshot. (Same thing with the Users tab / "Change roll to..." menu. No values!)

If I can resolve these last few issues, I might just be able to give this a whirl for real and stop crying out for help here. Anyone?

OK. I'm still struggling with the migration of users from our WP blog to new WPMU install. I've got them all imported successfully, but they all need to be subscribers to the primary blog.

Can anyone help me with a script that will make all 726+ users subscribers to the primary blog? Editing every user manually to subscribe them is getting tedious.

Thank you.

Go look under Site Admin -> Options. Find the section for Dashboard blog.

If you pick the main blog, it should automagically find all the users with no blog, and add them to the main blog. Presto!

Thanks again, if only it were that simple. I've tried this without success...

When entering blog id 1 in this field, the field reverted to blank upon saving changes. Leaving it blank is supposed to do the same thing anyway, but imported users were not added as subscribers either way.

So I selected another blog I created (id 2), and only those users I had manually added as subscribers to blog 1 were moved to blog 2. Changing it back to 1 moved only those users back, the remaining 720± users remain in never never land with no access to a dashboard/profile page.

[sigh] I am so close ...

FYI: I created a new blog with the name "dashboard" and selected it in the admin options as the dashboard blog. Just confirmed that new users who sign up do get assigned to this blog so they have a profile to access upon logging in with no redirect issues. But alas, even after reimporting all the existing users, they still get redirected upon logging in with no dashboard to access.

At least (for some reason) they now get redirected to the Simple:Press forums page instead of getting stuck in an infinite loop. This is good enough for me.

I appreciate the thought you've put into this for me, but I may just go ahead with this migration for real and see how it goes. I can always just revert back to the old WP install and db ... right!?!?!? [crosses fingers]

EDIT: Setting dashboard blog option field back to the main blog (blank), results in even new users without blogs getting re-directed. Whatever. :-/

FYI for anyone else encountering this same issue: Running the following SQL query did the trick ...

UPDATE wp_usermeta SET meta_key = 'wp_1_capabilities' WHERE meta_key = 'wp_capabilities'

This automatically made all our 726 imported wp users subscribers to blog wp_1. Many thanks to Andrea and Ron for their help!

Hi guys -

I'm having a similar issue right now. I just installed MU - and now when I go to the url, I'm receiving this error (similar on all browsers):

Safari can’t open the page.
Too many redirects occurred trying to open “http://www.soulforce.org/qblog”. This might occur if you open a page that is redirected to open another page which then is redirected to open the original page.

Unlike agreda, I do not currently have any users...it's a fresh setup that I'm doing to start enrolling users.

Can anyone help me out - get me past this point?

BTW, I'm using CPanel - and since the only page I can get to is the error screen mentioned above, I'm not even sure where to access the admin panel for this blog setup...sorry - I'm new to sys admin. :)

Thanks!!!

One more thing - this whole redirection issue - here's what the url says after you type in the initial url:

http://www.soulforce.org/qblog/wp-signup.php?new=soulforce.org

looks like it's looping...?

now when I go to the url, I'm receiving this error

What url? Blog root or forums page? Got a link? What version of Simple:Press? Upgraded to 4.1.0 yet? Have you updated permalinks?

Looks like you have MU blogs set up in subdirectories instead of subdoamins like we do, so I'm not sure if that's making a difference. Wish I could be of more help ...

Is this the full query to make sure all users are automatically set as subscriber to blog #1? How do you set the meta value?

UPDATE wp_usermeta SET meta_key = 'wp_1_capabilities' WHERE meta_key = 'wp_capabilities'

then

UPDATE wp_usermeta SET meta_value = 'a:1:{s:10:"subscriber";b:1;}' WHERE meta_key = 'wp_1_capabilities'

?

I noticed not all user has meta_key of wp_capabilities ?