WordPress MU

I'm about to create a new multi-blog site, but I'm a little nervous to use WPMU because I understand that the code base for WPMU will soon be merged with normal Wordpress and then WPMU will no longer exist as a separate project. I had trouble finding clear info about plans for current WPMU users to transfer over to the new multiblog-capable WP when it's released. What are the chances that plugins/themes/etc. will clash with the future WP? Basically, should I just do the site with WPMU now, or will I be making lots of work for myself 5 months down the road??

(Side note: I was planning to do this site with Drupal but today just stumbled upon WPMU -- looks promising, though I'm nervous about it being separated from the support/testing/forums of the main WP community. Any reassurance will be appreciated!)

Themes won't clash for sure.

The plans are to do the merge carefully enough so that any WP or WPMU site will be forwardly compatible. That is, after the merge, should you have started with WPMU and then upgraded, it will still work.

They use this software for wordpress.com. Merge doesn't mean phase out. :) There isn't a lot of released info about plans simply because no plans have been released.

Drupal and WPMU really serve different goals.

WPMU is very specifically designed to provide secure blog hosting with some customization through themes and plugins. How Posts/Pages function is very pre-defined. The site-admin (overall server admin) pre-determines the themes and plugins available to all the sites. Then to create a new blog a user (or the admin) simply types in the new site name. Because the use-case of it being a blog is already known, the site can be deployed and be instantly functional to the user. WPMU is about providing a fairly simple self-service site to end users.

Drupal is designed to be a flexible site-building framework. Unlike WPMU, it doesn't pre-define the functionality of the site. Instead it gives the administrator a blank slate to define the content types such as blog post, news article, pages, etc with very granular control over the fields that make up each content type. A default install includes a blog content type and some basic user roles, but they are more for example than fully functional for deployment. Superficially there are similarities in Themes and Modules, but Modules are more like adding core functionality to develop on top of than wordpress plugins that are typically more drop-in functionality (dunno if I'm explaining that clearly).

Both are very capable systems and which you choose to use really depends on the goal of your site/service. If you are looking to build a blog hosting service, I would definitely recommend WPMU. If you are looking for custom site development for multiple independent sites that may not be blogs, I would look at Drupal (or multiple separate standalone and customized WordPress sites).

The merge of WordPress and WordPress MU is really inconsequential. The real question should be what your site/service goals are.

Andrea, thanks for the reassuring clarification (and your seemingly tireless efforts to help folks on these forums!), and kgraeme for the useful distinctions.

I'm working on a site for a national organization that wants to host sites for its local groups, but both the national & local sites will mainly be blogs.

For now I'll start building with WPMU because it seems so much more lightweight, and hope I don't run into any unexpected need for Drupal's "very granular control".

Again, thanks to you two. I'm still amazed by the dedication and patience of everyone I've encountered in the world of open-source CMS.

Jlm99,

I have setup several multi-site arrangements with WPMU and I like to think of myself rather sharp at it. You can see a few of them linked from my site.

Let me know if I can help any, give me a shout at http://stableit.com

Eric

I'm creating a website that's not really a blog at all, but want to do something like http://www.TastyKitchen.com. Because of its ease and flexibility, I want to use WP and Buddypress. I don't need multiple blogs, but to use BP, I need MU.

From this post, it sounds like I can do my development with WPMU and BP and when the merge occurs, all should still work.

Am I missing something?

Nope, you got it. Just turn off blog signups with MU.

For most people -- even most "national organizations" -- Drupal is overkill. If the primary use of the site is to post content, such as blogs, then WPMU is your best bet. All the other features you might need you can download or have someone code up for you.

I am really very interested on merge of wp and wpmu. Anyone know about it when it can be released?

http://wpmututorials.com to keep up with news

tentative plan for release:
http://wpdevel.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/per-recent-development-chats-weve-wor/

I have a new multi-lingual project which was planned on WPMU. Just now I realized WPMU v2.9.2 has been its last version expected. Glad that the project starts only around mid of April so we still have time to adjust.

So is there any pointer for me to find out which functionality will be picked up by WP3.0 from WPMU? Will WP3 handle multi-lingual blogs or domain mapping?

It'll work pretty much the same way as MU does now, only with a couple of the niggly little bugs fixed.

Domain mapping works in 3.0.
Multilingual works in 3.0 (why wouldn't it?)

How about independent sets of content (post, page, user, upload, template, widget...?

How about it?

Dunno what you mean, really. It'll work just like it does now.

How about all the current mu-plugins? I manage a WPMU site for a university, and I'm using quite a lot of mu-plugins. Will those continue to work as expected? Will I have to move them into a different folder (ms-plugins, maybe)?

I've got a WPMU test site somewhere around here that I can upgrade to find out all this stuff, I just don't play with it much, and can't remember where I left it.

Looks like there's a beta of Wordpress 3 out - http://wpmututorials.com/news/wordpress-3-0-beta-is-out/ - Anyone played around? I don't have the resources right at the moment to set up a local instance but it's on my to-do list.

An arcanely specific question about the consolidated codebase -- right now, WPMU gives each blog its own set of tables (e.g., wp_3_posts, wp_4_posts...) Any chance that the consolidated Wordpress 3.0 only have one set of tables shared by all blogs (e.g., plain ol' wp_posts), with a blog_id column? It would make third-party interfacing much easier.

In any event, thanks for the excellent work, as always!

Nope, still uses the multiple sets of tables for each blog, just like wpmu.

Will those continue to work as expected?

They should, but you'll still need to test.

Will I have to move them into a different folder (ms-plugins, maybe)?

Uh, no. there's been mu-plugin folder support in single WP for months now. They call it "must-use".