WordPress MU

Okay so I set up a MU install after spending a few weeks working with the regular WordPress, I decided it would be a better solution then the one I was making myself.

Here's what my question is, for this university-based community site I am working on I wanted to do a virtual newspaper. I actually had this all setup before I decided to switch to MU and use it as a framework of sorts. My original site allowed anyone registered to post a "news" article to the site in any category and all could read it.

Now with the MU base, I believe I have two options to achieve the same effect.

Option 1, create global categories of news types and allow anyone to post a story in their own blog and then fetch them all and display them in a newspaper like manner regardless of overall privacy settings for their blogs.

Option 2, let people sign up for their own blogs and such and then add them as authors to the main blog so they can post news stories for inclusion in the virtual paper.

Now I like option 1 more as it doesn't require the additional step on my part of adding them to the main blog, but I'm worried about the query structure to fetch posts from everyones blog entries that match the right category.

Of course option 2 seems the simpler/quicker solution to be up and running again with a virtual newspaper in no time.

I know there are some posts on this site dealing with fetching posts from all blogs, but I want some opinions as well as actual code ideas/snippets.

Questions:
So in everyone's opinion which of those options makes the most sense?

Are their other options that I have not considered?

If option 1 is the best, what recommendations would you have to implement it (code snippets or references to other threads please.)

Also if option 1, how would comments be handled?

Thanks in advance. :)

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Possible option 3: Create a plugin with a menu in the admin section for blog owners to post news entries that show up in a db table separate from MU and then maybe pull the content out without help from the API?

I'm actually looking for a similar solution.

What I want to able to do is have several things on my home.php page.
First, I want to pull the most recent entry for the main blog as site news. This shouldn't be too hard because it's basically already built in.
Second, I want to have a featured post type of thing, where I can tag any post in any blog to become part of this category and the home page features the latest post in this category.
Third, I want to be able to designate "special blogs". These are blogs from trusted contributers who's latest posts will also be on the front page.

I'm pretty new to Wordpress MU (though not Wordpress), so maybe some of this can already be done. If not, I'll probably start on a plugin though if I can't find any documentation on the difference of writing plugins for wordpress vs. wordpress mu, I'll probably just download one of the existing ones and get my feet dirty.

Update to my original post.

I just decided to attempt to get all new users assigned to the primary blog so they could author posts for the virtual newspaper. (No, I don't mind the content, only students from my university can register using their official campus email addresses. That will allow me to keep track of any trouble makers and report them if need be. :))

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SamG, for your second request, I'd suggest a custom plug-in to keep a list of your featured posts. See if anyone else has ideas though, I tend to do things quickly that work before giving much thought to if it's the best way to do it. lol

Your 3rd request you could just hand code in the links on the sidebar, create a Page with the list, or again do some sort of plug-in to maintain the list.

Creating the plug-ins is pretty much the same, especially if you are just creating custom ones for the main blog and don't have to worry about everyone being able to use them. I've just been doing plug-ins for a couple weeks and I'm pretty proud of what I have made so far. The best one so far is a used textbook listings plug-in for the site I'm working on. I created some custom tables in the database, placed the menu additions file in the mu-plugins folder (so everyone will see the add/maintain menu when they log in) and the main plug-in in the plugins folder.

Hey Josh and Sam

I am in the process of putting together something very similar to what you guys are describing.

I am curious, where do you guys go to school?

I'm at NYU.

I'm not much of a technical person so I have been struggling trying to figure Mu out. I'd love to see what you guys have come up with.

feel free to email me at codyvbrown@gmail.com

or chat at aim: ydoc425

holla.

-cody

I'm also looking for how to setup multiple content on my home page. That is a mixture of latest post, welcome text, google map, pciture, more text etc.

But I'm limited to all the content stuck together i.e. eveything excluding the latest post, because it all gets entered in the backend text box of my homepage.

I want Welcome Text, then Latest blog, then google map, then .........

Did any of you have any luck?