WordPress MU

I'm messing around with Wordpress MU. For the first/main/primary blog site, when I goto alter the permalink I want it to look something like this:

http://www.mysite.com/news/2009/12/my-post/

But MU seems to require the word 'blog' instead of news. I assume this is to help differentiate between multiple blog sites in the installation.

Is there anyway to customize this and change the 'blog' text?

http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/9448/27823471.jpg

did you do a subdirectory install? Meaning, did you install WPMU in example.com/blog? If so, you won't be able to change that, you would need to install it in the root directory, or if you want all of them to say news, and that not be a category, you would need to install it in the subdirectory of example.com/news.

Just changing the directory name probably wouldn't work, you'd need to be make sure that all references in the options table are changed as well.

I have the same problem. I installed in the root directory on my xampp install.
> C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress-mu

It doesn't force you to use /blog/ when using the preset options (shown in jakobud's screenshot). But when laying out a custom structure it does. Is this not the same for everyone?

There really is this impediment. But I did it just by changing the file options-permalink.php, removing the variables the word blog:

Line 86:   $permalink_structure = '/blog' . $permalink_structure;
Line 96:   $category_base = '/blog' . $category_base;
Line 106:  $tag_base = '/blog' . $tag_base;

Still not noticed problems with my site, but it seems quiet.
I hope it helped and sorry my English.

Phartes - good call.

Removed all "/blog" references. Worked for me. I also removed it from "options / permalink_structure" in MySQL.

I'd like to know if there is a safety reason for this or if it's just to help keep things organized. I can see where it would be used a lot, but I really think it should be an option instead of a requirement.

It was to prevent collisions between permalinks on the main blog being the same as blog names in the subfolder format.

So if you had a page called "contact" and a blog called Contact, where is MU supposed to go?

Oh, duh...It would be nice though, to have the option to change it to something other than "blog".

Does this mean when you create a blog under the 'root' it looks like this:
http://127.0.0.1/mublogs/janie
http://127.0.0.1/mublogs/freddy
http://127.0.0.1/mublogs/tommy

which map to
D:\var\....\htdocs\mublogs\janie
D:\var\....\htdocs\mublogs\freddy
D:\var\....\htdocs\mublogs\tommy

where janie, freddy and tommy each get a full copy of the wpmu archive - configuration, templates, themes and administrator's panel ....

No. That's not how it works.