WordPress MU

Hi All,

I am going to be doing an install of WPMU where we automatically create many blogs based on a topic. For any one topic there will be an admin (us), a site sponsor (like an author user level 5), and then many users (authors/contributors) can join as a user to that blog. We want each blog created up front and then we will add the various users after the fact. We would be the only ones with ability to remove users, etc.

So, I have a database of topics which I will select from and loop through creating a blog for each one. I was thinking about using the wpmu_create_blog($domain, $path, $blog_title, $user_id, $meta) function to create each one, but I am unsure as to how to deal with the admin email adresses as we are the admin for each of the topics, yet it looks like we need a unique email for each new blog. Preferably we'd like to use one master email address for the admin email address for all blogs.

What would be the best way to create many blogs (many thousands) in a batch format, but have those blogs admin'd by us still? I talked to Matt at the WebVisions conference about this, and he thought it was possible but that I should post it here to see what everyone says.

If anything is unclear, let me know and I will try to clarify.

Thanks in advance!

You can now have more than one blog per user (email address). Whoever is master admin can get into the backend of each blogs anyway.
Dunno about the automatic blog creation though.

"Autogeneration of thousands of blogs" - sounds like major spam site coming our way huh??

mickemus: Oh no, no! I hate splogs/spam/etc as much as the next guy. Think a blog for many cities in the US. No spammy spam here :)

andrea_r: Great! That's good to know. Thanks for all your help in the forums. It's great to have a cool community built around a cool product.

Does anybody know about the best practice for automatic/batch blog creation? I would assume following the code order in wp-signup.php would work, minus the validation routines as we would be in a controlled environemnt (we would be creating all blogs). Any thoughts on this out there?

Plenty actually but I've got to agree that this has the signs of sblogs all over it. You may not think it is but that's how it's coming across.

drmike: Sorry if that is how it is coming across, but I can assure you this is not sblog. I'll explain a little bit of what we're doing so that what I am asking hopefully makes a little more sense and helps people see we honestly are not trying to do anything sbloggy. We are going to be creating a site/blog for many cities and neighborhoods in the US. Each blog will have the ability for people in the local area to join the conversation going on there. There are multiple ways people will be able to 'join the conversation'. They can discuss current events, talk about great places to go see in the area or fun things to do, view pics/videos of their local area, etc. We will be tying in various technologies into each site, just one of which is the blog. We will then allow anyone in the area to add to the site with the belief that many voices from an area will give a good overall feel about an area then a single voice. We hope this is a great community resource when all is said and done, and I think it will actually be a pretty cool service. We will be managing everything via plugins, some of which may most likely be released into the general community so we can give back a little bit too. I am sorry if the technique sounds spammy, I totally understand how that might be, but I hope you guys can believe me when I say that this really is not anything spammy, etc. I hope that makes a little more sense. I'd love to hear some of your ideas drmike. If you'd rather take this offline I am fine with that, but I don't mind it being open here either.

I think ljkyser is being an honest guy and he has a great idea that I would like to clone for another country on a different continent (with permission of course)! I think this topic should stay here...

One could of course go ahead and code something but there would be some parameters like city name, state, zip code etc that is unique for each blog... furthermore I think its important to identify how a user is managed... it could be "hell" to keep spammers/phoneys out!! SpamKarma2 could be a great way to keep comment and trackback spam out but people still can work that around by signing up.. even automating that can be done by a malicious fella!!

I'd say the best aproach (IMHO) is to generate the site.. set up a sample blog... pull the data into an excel sheet (sorry... should be OpenOffice Spreadsheet here ;) and autofill together with some nice formulas to ensure you get the zips/towns/citys/states into the respective entries... naming everything nice and neatly then coding a SQL query to import the data, table by table... not guaranteed to work but if the site aint live yet it aint gonna break right!!! What ya'll think??

mickemus: Thanks for believing me on this one. I totally understand the gut reaction to all things spammy, as I have the same reaction. I apologize to all that my original post was pretty vague (topics) and may have caused some of the reaction I got. Sorry all.

Your comment about keeping the spammers/phoneys out really resonates with me. We must make sure to keep as much of that out as possible in order to keep it an uthentic community. One thought is to alter the signup process slightly so that when a user requests an account that we approve all accounts manually at first. This could really become a bear depending on the rate at which signups occur, but I am sure as with most things web we will release and iterate often. As for comments/trackbacks we would most likely use the akismet plugin and maybe other plugins such as SpamKarma2.

The data I will be using will be coming from a normalized zip code database that includes 'common names' also. That is where we will base our site creation from. It is the point at which I will need to create the blog, and my thought was to store any local specific data as meta data for the blog. That is why I had the question about the best way to create the blog at that point. Any thoughts on that part of it?

Can I bring this one back to life please?

A plugin / hack that gave admin the ability to batch add blogs (and associated users) would most definitely rock - has anyone had any joy with this?

I'd like that too...

Wasn't planning on it.

I would think it would be fairly simple if the user is already created. You just have to pass the information to the function wpmu_create_blog.

found this app which creates WPMU blogs from a CSV file., just dropping it here in case anyone needs it.

From the Website:

Wordpress WPMU Blog Site Creation Automation

I don't have to much time to give detailed information about this but wanted to go ahead and share what I have. If you are interested in manipulating the WordPress WPMU platform into creating thousands of blogs in one fatal swoop this will do the trick. I have written a web based application that will read a csv file which contains a list of the blog sites you want to create. It can be in the 100s of 1000s if you like. If you not familiar with WPMU don't bother with this app. Simply dump the file content into your www root directory that you have WPMU installed in and visit the web page. DO NOT ASK ME FOR HELP if you can't get it to work. Sorry, I just don't have the time but I did want to share.

Considering that I am giving my code away for free please consider some of the advertisements to the right and at least take a look at what they have to offer. That does involve clicking on their ads and visiting their sites. For whatever purposes you would need this mass blog creating capability is your own business and I hope it helps you in your endeavors.

DemonC

Anyone got a copy of this (the link leads to nothing) I'd certainly like one (you don't know how many schools want to auto populate their wpmu sites!)...

james (at) incsub /dot/ org

i tried to email the guy, but no joy. i shoulda saved it when i had the chance, but i couldnt see a need to for it at the time.

No comments either... arse!

Hmmm i just downloaded it... maybe the site was down for a while and its now back up.

sneef,could you put it back up anywhere ? the link doesnt work for me also :/

If someone can send me a copy i will gladly put it up for people to download.

Ditto, pretty please :)

I snagged the file easily over the weekend. Here it is;
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Wordpress-WPMU-Blog-Site-Creation-Automation

You rock snagger!

andrea_r, found a snag.

your file at wpmudev.org decompresses as a 404 page.

The requested document was not found on this server.
Web Server at tier1.totus.us
   - Unfortunately, Microsoft has added a clever new
   - "feature" to Internet Explorer. If the text of
   - an error's message is "too small", specifically
   - less than 512 bytes, Internet Explorer returns
   - its own error message. You can turn that off,
   - but it's pretty tricky to find switch called
   - "smart error messages". That means, of course,
   - that short error messages are censored by default.
   - IIS always returns error messages that are long
   - enough to make Internet Explorer happy. The
   - workaround is pretty simple: pad the error
   - message with a big comment like this to push it
   - over the five hundred and twelve bytes minimum.
   - Of course, that's exactly what you're reading
   - right now.

Well.... shoot.

I retried it, snagged it again and tested the files.
http://www.atypicalshops.com/csv2blog.tar.gz

It's there. Doesn't unzip into its own folder, so watch where you put it and surf on over to that directory. I didn;t test it any further than seeing the csv file upload screen.

i'll combine with this autoblog and start my evil spam empire!!!

Sad thing is, some jackass will...

I'm sorry man.

WOW! This is my hack. I had no idea it was getting this much attention and just happened to stubble on the post today. I did take it down intentionally. My fear was that people would use it to spam.

AndreR, I see you've posted it wpmudev.org. Seeing the demand for it, go ahead and leave it up I guess. I would appreciate a reference however.

Troy Perkins - TOTUS eCommerce & Search Marketing
http://www.totus.us/

The originating post I placed on my personal blog http://satxseo.blogspot.com/

Speaking of spam... "nice" first link. <roll eyes>