WordPress MU

I use WP for all my personal blogs and I manage my company's blogs, they chose MoveableType because of the blog farming capabilities. I love WP and hate MT, I'm thinking of migrating my company's blogs over to the WPMU platform, but I have a few concerns...

- What limitations does WPMU have compared to the normal WP?
- When WP releases a patch, does the WPMU patch come at the same time? Or how soon after?
- Do all plug-ins designed for WP work for WPMU as well? If not, approx. what % do not?
- Anyone know how WPMU's blog farming capabilities compared to MT's blog farmng capabilities?
- Did I read it correctly on the front page that one WPMU user cannot have access to multiple blogs? What about admins?
- Any surprises I'm going to experience being a WP user moving to WPMU?

...thanks all in advance for your help!! :-)

I don't know what the support is like for Movable Type, but I'm not sure that I could recommend using WPMU for a commercial site. Development seems haphazard with nothing happening for weeks, then several releases within days. There are lots of people running WPMU in a production environment in these forums who may disagree with my opinion.

Heh, but you should see MT's development, they haven't done a damn thing in over a year. And their support is non-existant, just look at their forums.

Moveable Type is dying fast.

It actually depends. Wpmu is slowly becoming very stable. However if you want *any* feature that is not currently in the code base then you're going to have to dive into the code yourself. If you're comfortable with that then i'd say give wpmu a shot. If not, stick with what you have for now and visit us in a few months. :)

- What limitations does WPMU have compared to the normal WP?

No theme editing, and no access to the server for things like uploading new plugins. Sometimes it's billed as WP-Lite.

- When WP releases a patch, does the WPMU patch come at the same time? Or how soon after?

It depends. Sometimes it;s right away, sometimes not.

- Do all plug-ins designed for WP work for WPMU as well? If not, approx. what % do not?

Not, because of db structure for user blogs. Hard to say what percentage, but most will work, many with only a slight change. Very few I've come across bomb spectacularily.

- Anyone know how WPMU's blog farming capabilities compared to MT's blog farmng capabilities?

Better? :D I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, but I found it much easier to have multiple blogs with MU than I did with MT. *shivers*

- Did I read it correctly on the front page that one WPMU user cannot have access to multiple blogs? What about admins?

Site admins have all access to all blogs. There's the default admin on setup, but you can add another user as an admin. Each blog admin can admin only their blog, but can easily be added as a user to another's blog.

- Any surprises I'm going to experience being a WP user moving to WPMU?

How messy you'll get mucking around in code. :) install is different, please read the instructions - it's not quite the same as installing WP. The above-mentioned theme & plugin thingy. The one thing I still have trouble getting used to is as an admin, if I need to edit a theme for all, I have to do it on the server, whereas in WP I'm used to using the backend editor. (actually, now I'm more use dto going in the back-end...)
MU is just a little more hardcore as you're dealing more with server & DNS issues.

I guess we should also be asking how large your company is and how many blogs you need?

However if you want *any* feature that is not currently in the code base then you're going to have to dive into the code yourself. If you're comfortable with that then i'd say give wpmu a shot. If not, stick with what you have for now and visit us in a few months. :)

Also bear in mind that the community is unable to collaborate directly with one another. All patches are funneled through trac and processed by WP staff. They can be quite responsive, but there are few of them compared to the number in the community so they have to work very hard to keep up.

See http://codex.wordpress.org/WPMU_Development_Methodology

btw, if a feature is not present in the core, it may have been released as a Addon/Plugin... and the system for plugins is SSOOOOOO simple with WPMU compared to MT... (ok, MT have no real addons system)...

http://wp-plugins.net/ for the biggest plugins repository
http://widgets.wordpress.com/ for the best place for widgets (addons for the sidebars)

Thanks for all this feedback guys!! I'm lucky to get ANY response on MT's forums. It always amazes me how fast the WP community responds.

I guess we should also be asking how large your company is and how many blogs you need?

I'm with Nokia. Our current MT blogs are found here: http://blogs.s60.com - We have seven blogs now, will be adding more gradually.

MU is just a little more hardcore as you're dealing more with server & DNS issues.

All our blogs are http://blogs.s60.com/BLOG_NAME_GOES_HERE/ ....so I guess I wouldn't have to deal with any DNS settings.

Does anyone know if WP-Cache runs successfully with WPMU?

WP-cache works great but I think you have to add $blog_id to the cache key otherwise cache files for different blogs will stomp on each other.

"I'm lucky to get ANY response on MT's forums. "

Yep. One big reason I stopped using it. Even paid users get a slow response.

"All our blogs are http://blogs.s60.com/BLOG_NAME_GOES_HERE/ ....so I guess I wouldn't have to deal with any DNS settings."

Should be a piece of cake then. :D

Oh, one extra thing is, you may have to do some fancy feed redirects (optional) so readers of the MT feed will automagically get the new WP feed, or you can just leave it.

Can anyone clarify a couple of answers that adrea_r gave above in response to the original ticket?

"No theme editing, and no access to the server for things like uploading new plugins. Sometimes it's billed as WP-Lite."

Can this REALLY mean "No theme editing" - like, absolutely no control over the themes code? So I couldn't customize it to look like my other pages... I'm assuming that can't be true but the wording through me a bit. It sounds like more of a WordPress.com thing, WP-Lite.

I'm also still trying to figure out if I have two blogs on the same WPMU install and someone registers on Blog 1, will their account be valid on Blog 2. At least, is there a way to make that happen?

Thanks all!

Can this REALLY mean "No theme editing" - like, absolutely no control over the themes code? So I couldn't customize it to look like my other pages... I'm assuming that can't be true but the wording through me a bit. It sounds like more of a WordPress.com thing, WP-Lite.

No built-in theme editing for end users, that is. As a site admin with ftp access and all that you can modify themes the same as with normal Wordpress. And also there are plugins for end user customization, just nothing in the core.

I'm also still trying to figure out if I have two blogs on the same WPMU install and someone registers on Blog 1, will their account be valid on Blog 2. At least, is there a way to make that happen?

Yes, it will. There's one user database which is used by all the blogs. Though, unless accounts are either site admins, or added as contributors/editors/etc. to the other blogs, commenting will probably be the only visible manifestation of an account carrying over.

So just to add what flufftronix said - yeah it IS like wordpress.com. A modified version of MU is what they use. When you run your own, of course, you can do what you like with themes via FTP, and decide how much access users get to edit CSS via plugins, but the Theme Editor is disabled.

With the second bit, once a user signs in, they are logged in system-wide. They aren't automatically added as a *user* to another person's blog, but it's scary-easy to do so if they need to have a Role on more than one blog. Site-wide cookies are in place. If the blog owner choses "must be logged in to comment" any user logged in can comment.

There are some sites that have created their own CSS editor and I believe someone released one that copies over the theme files into the users upload directory. I've got the idea for one but haven't really played arounf on the subject due to time issues.

Thanks everyone for the replies!

I do want to mention one thing though. Donncha does pay attention to fixes or requests that we submit via trac. The banned email feature was something that was suggest out of these forums and was added in.

That doesn't mean that they add in everything that we request though. :)