WordPress MU

Hi!
I have been looking all over the net for days on how to do this, but I am not finding the right solution.

My site is for a class, I am the admin and teacher. I am using the newest WPMU, with Buddypress (and a bbpress thrown in for good measure). You can see it here: www[dot]osculum-inimici[dot]com.

The ONLY thing I want students to be able to do is write in their OWN blog. That's it. No appearance changing, no reading other people's, no other menus at ALL. I have tried all of the plugins available, but everything allows the dashboard menus (left side) to slip through because the user is the "administrator" of his/her own blog. I want them to be able to write only, without any sort of control over the interface, appearance, etc. Should this be hardcoded into the installation? Or is this something I can do with a plugin...?

In other words:

I make a new user named Steve. I want Steve to be able to write in his own blog (Steveblog), but do nothing else. I want Steve to be a subscriber to the main blog, and NOTHING to any of the other blogs by default--no left side menus for Steve. How do I do this, and still make Steve a writer in his own blog, Steveblog?

By the way, I am going live with this in two days, so help soon would be ideal... I suppose I should have started earlier... but oh well. :)

Oh, I am already using "Ozh's Drop Down Menus" and the "Menu" plugin by dsader. Dsader's plugin only hides Ozh's menus across the top, not the ones that appear on the left side in the dashboard.

Steve shouldn't be able to get to the dashboard on any other blog other than his own and the main blog. If he is, double-check it's redirecting him to his own place.

If you really want them to just be able to write posts - don't make them admins on their blogs, make them Editors or Contributors.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilites

Also - if there's only one theme to choose from, they can't really change the appearance of anything.

Yeah, like Andrea_r says:

Make each use Author of their blog first. See what menus remain. You can use a mu-plugin to set new users to author instead of admin:

function ds_new_user_meta($blog_id, $user_id) {
add_user_to_blog($blog_id, $user_id, 'author' );
}
add_action( 'wpmu_new_blog', 'ds_new_user_meta', 10, 2 );

If it is a small class, you can log in as SiteAdmin and switch their role under User menu one by one, too.

I just installed BuddyPress and The Menus plugin together. All seemed well - the Menu plugin doesn't hide the BuddyPress menu, but that's to be expected. I tried leaving only Post menus active and it worked for me. The plugins may be colliding under certain conditions, can you reproduce the error and any steps I could follow to do the same?

I installed "Ozh's Drop Down Menus" and the left menu sidebar vanished, and the drop down menus behaved as expected. I can't reproduce your error. So . . . maybe it's something else.

When I installed Ozh's plugin initially, the file permissions needed to be set to 755 or the css magic wouldn't work. Perhaps it's a file permissions thang.

Admins vs editors/contributors:
I tried altering this, but it has never worked for me. Perhaps I have the code in the wrong place? Role Manager caused something to crash.. i don't remember what, but I would prefer to avoid the plugin if I can. (Although I am willing to suck it up and deal if I have to).
If I use that little piece of code, put it in mu-plugins, right? I am extremely confused about the difference between plugins and mu-plugins, but that is for another day.

Ozh and The Menus:
Screenshot
If you look at the shot, the top admin bar is gone (like it should be), but the other menus (the dashboard for this example blog) remain. I want to get rid of the crap on the left side. I like my students, but I do not trust them to do things like make pages and whatnot.... it'll just end in tears.

So it's not an error with the Menus, it's actually the default behavior--and I think you hit the nail on the head, Dsader, these must be buddypress menus--I assumed they were wordpress generated.

If that's true, then is there any way I can rewrite buddypress to get rid of these for a certain role (i.e., Authors)?

Thanks a million!

Adding the code to mu-plugins (I just save it as makeauthor.php)caused this:

function ds_new_user_meta($blog_id, $user_id) { add_user_to_blog($blog_id, $user_id, 'author' ); } add_action( 'wpmu_new_blog', 'ds_new_user_meta', 10, 2 );
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/oscudod6/public_html/wp-content/mu-plugins/makeauthor.php:4) in /home/oscudod6/public_html/wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-xprofile/bp-xprofile-signup.php on line 5

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/oscudod6/public_html/wp-content/mu-plugins/makeauthor.php:4) in /home/oscudod6/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 865

::whimper::

Scratch that...
it helps if you put in the <? php stuff..........

If I make a real php file out of that code and put it in mu-plugins, it loads the site as a blank page.

I think this is goignt o be my solution, because when I manually make the user an author of his own blog, then the menus do, indeed, disappear. Now, if I can only make that code work for all new users....?

Do not use Role Manager on WPMU, it is a blog by blog plugin and therefore a PITA for your purpose. The built in WP Roles will do what you are after.

The snippet of code above is for "mu-plugins" and will only affect new users when they signup. Drop the code into mu-plugins and then create a new user with a new blog.

In the meantime, log in as SIteAdmin, go to Seven blog, then edit Seven user under Users->Authors and Users and change role to Author. Then log in as Seven and note the change in the menu.

BuddyPress menus say "BuddyPress" and are only visible if logged in as SiteAdmin. Ozh is not active in your screenshot,(and neither is "Menu" it appears) have you activated Ozh on blog Seven?

To review the "plugins" or "mu-plugins" installs you are attempting:

• "BuddyPress" installs in "plugins" and needs be activated sitewide. And is then configured while logged in as SiteAdmin using the new BuddyPress menus.
• "Ozh's Drop Down Menus" installs in "plugins" and must be administered by a blog admin on every blog - there is no "sitewide" as far as I know. You'll be visiting each blog to control the look of the Ozh output as far as I know - may want to drop Ozh for that reason till you get everything else sorted out.
• "Menus" installs in "mu-plugins" and is controlled at SiteAdmin->Options
• "snippet" above goes "mu-plugins" and only affects new signups.

Ok ok ok.... it's all figured out now.

For everyone's edification:
I didn't know that I needed to activate plugins for everyone using plugin commander. I thought that things like "Toggle Menus" worked across the board--but this just hid the options from non-admin users.

Once I activated The Menus in Plugin Commander, it hid the menus from the users correctly. And the user gets to stay as an administrator of his or her own blog.

The code, by the way, didn't work. Even when I made it into a real piece of php, it still caused the site to load as a blank page. Maybe it's conflicting? I do also use the snippet to automatically subscribe new users to the main blog. But that's ok, I don't need it.

Should I activate all plugins for all users? The wordpress menu says that activating all plugins for all users is a bad idea.... but maybe it isn't? Here's what I am using:

AmR iCal Events List
Appointy - Appointment Scheduler.
bbPress Integration
cets_blog_defaults
Embed Iframe
Enhanced BuddyPress Widgets
Instant4wordpress
Limit Blogs per User
Multipost MU
NextGEN FlashViewer
NextGEN Gallery
One Click Plugin Updater
Ozh' Better Plugin Page
PHP Exec
PHPFreeChat
Post-Plugin Library
Quick SMS
TinyMCE Advanced
Visual Recent Posts
WP-Newsticker

"Menus" goes in mu-plugins(as do a couple of others it looks like). Plugin Commander shouldn't even see it. Check install notes "mu-plugins" go in"mu-plugins".

Oh.. well.. I put it in the regular plugins folder, and Commander saw it and controlled it happily.

But it seems that if I put it in the mu folder, then the site (again) loads a blank page. Perhaps this is something I have done to cause this? It would not be the first time I have caused the site to have a "quirk" like this. Maybe just stick withe the quick and dirty way I had it...?

You have 2 php functions named "ds_new_user_meta"? That would be the problem. Rename the function and the callback to something else.

Thanks a million for the help, everyone. I really appreciate it. :)