WordPress MU

Is there a way to have plugins with WPMU that are used in the main front-end of the site, but not visible to the blog users at large?

For example: installing a forum plugin, but hiding it so that the users with blogs (blog.domain.com) cannot activate the plugin?

Well, if they don't put in their own menu in admin side, just install it to the mu-plugins subdirectory and don't tell anyone about it. :)

Maybe this is a dumb question...but if I was to install a plug in to mu-plugins, how would I activate it?

Basically i'm wanting to add a forum system, but don't want the users to be able to include their own. How would I activate such a plugin in mu-plugins.

Sorry for the newbie questions...

Pluging dropped into the mu-plugins subdirectory are activiated automatically.

Not sure which forum system you are using. Most of us just used bbpress. (the software that runs this forum) The user tables are pretty much the same so it's just a matter of install bbpress' MySQL tables into the same database, putting bbpress into a subdirectory and tell bbpress to use MU's user table instead of it's own.

You have complete control over the plugins. There's no method of allowing your users to install a plugin of their own since they wouldn't be getting ftp access to your site.

Thanks for the input. I was looking at bbpress, but couldn't figure out how to set it to use the MU table. Also, it didn't look like something that was easy to integrate with the template.

But its something I'll look at again. Thank you for your input.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Ergate/wpmu_bbPress_integration

Only line you really have to worry about is:

// use the WP user table for your bbpress user list
define('CUSTOM_USER_TABLE', 'wp_users');

That way the bbpress install uses the same datatable as the Mu install. (As long as the tables are within the same database and using teh same MySQL user of course.)

what about MU plugin manager ? I found this plugin on wpmudev.org and it seems to do exactly what you want: enable/disable plugins globally.

but with the MU Plugin Manager, the bloggers can still see the installed plugins.

the question asked by grinningskull was interestingly a question i thought over the other day, and it is good it was put up as i was trying to do thats ame.

i havent tried out drmike's suggestion, but then, won't it conflict as most of the suggested plugin installations are in the plugins directory.

what is the difference between MU plugin directory and the general plugin directory?

Was this the reason (so that bloggers can't see the installed plugins) why this MU plugin directory was created?

Is there any difference in the coding style? What standard or changes one has to make in order to make a plugin to be called a MU plugin?

@Lal

yes but grinningskull also said he wants to hide the plugins from the users so that they cannot activate them - the point is MU Plugin Manager says it can deactivate plugins globally so that users cannot activate them, even if they see them - right?

Well i did not try out the global diablee feature. But then, even if the user enable one of the seen plugin, and the Administrator globally disable it again -- even then any other user will still be able to enable it again.

Which then brings me to the question of the MU Plugin Manager -- does this global disablity means that users will not be able to enable the plugins anymore unless the priviledge is granted? Or is it just a temporary disable.

I think the current feature of MU Plugin Manager is mainly usefull for doing site upgrades... that way you can force all plugins to switch off prior to running the upgrade script. I'm guessing this is still recommended as it is a 'requirement' for doing an upgrade on WP standalone!! I would also like to see a feature whereby admin can flag a plugins visibility to the end user blogs!

I second mickemus sugestion, thats what I first thought the plugin was doing :-(