WordPress MU

Hi all,

I have been using wordpress for a short time now. I was using b2evolution but decided to use wordpress now that the wpmu has been incorporated. Another reason I made the switch is wordpress is more commonly used and there appears to be more support. When I was running b2evolution any questions would generally get answered very quickly and even developers would help someone out, but with wordpress even though it is more common the support here is terrible. I can't belive that a more commonly used and supported software has this bad of support. Very disappointed. I may switch back to b2evolution, at least things get resolved without the BS.

Alright, first of all I can't figure out if you're attacking the wordpress community or the WPMU community. However, since you posted in the WPMU forums i'm going to let that be the deciding factor.

As for the "developers" not answering questions here, you got a fact wrong. We only have *ONE* developer and his name is Donncha. Donncha happens to be a very busy person seeing as how he practically wrote the software(wpmu) that wordpress.com runs off of. When you have a blog hosting provider that has over 450,000 blogs and still have time to offer support on a daily basis, feel free to come right back here and complain all you want. Until then, get off his back.

Now, you also insulted the rest of us here by stating "the support here is terrible". Do you understand the concept of a "volunteer"? If not, you may want to do a bit of research. Since most of the regulars who help out around here are in fact volunteers, that means they are *NOT* paid and that they typically have a day job and a life outside of the forums. So while you're at it, you can get off their backs as well.

You also mentioned that you "may switch back to b2evolution". All I have to say to that is be my guest. If fact, here's a link in case you've forgotten the address. The last thing we need around here is a whiny user insulting the volunteers.

Have a nice day.

Andrew you take things too personal... Gees... All I am saying is no matter what the situation is HERE... Support is not as good as I had received at b2evolution and that is the bottom line. I would prefer you just delete this topic then take it Personal.. Everyone has an opinion and it doesn't mean that the blame is on any one person. I was just stating that I was disappointed was all. Was hoping folks would jump on topics sooner and have answers to help others in a more timely manner. Just delete this topic PLease!

Take Care

The answers are here and if you had taken two seconds and searched for them before posting, you would have found the answers. The two posts that you made just show that you didn't and expected folks to handfeed you the answers. Just because you were unable to do so doesn't mean support isn't nonexistant. Just means you need to be babysat like a kindergardener.

Bloodly hell...

edit: Wasn't Donncha the original designer of b2 anyway?

Donncha ran b2++ on http://blogs.linux.ie/ before he started coding a multi-user version of wordpress. That's about all I know on the subject.

Support can be frustrating and thankless but is WPMU about the code or blogging?

Changing the topic title is really un-cool!!

I think it is extremely cool :-)

I've been laughing my a** off for half an hour ;-)
and besides that, what is the point in complaining about missing support??? Have a look at my posts, I have half a dozen posts awaiting answers, still I am still hanging around waiting for somebody to answer my questions... maybe I'll bump the important ones, asking again ;-)

Yeah that's pretty much the attitude to have around here Ovidiu.

What I will say is for the free support that we are getting, I have managed to setup my WPMU site (something plugin developers have trouble doing from time to time!), install a host of plugins, troubleshoot a mountain of issues, and hack superior functionality into my site.

All in all, it's a pretty amazing experience. One I shall have to chronicle someday. One I would not have ventured on without this amazing community. :)

Man, that headline change is nasty. Pretty ironic though. You go here and expect business class support for a free opensource product. If you want that kind of support, I would suggest hiring the Automattic guys. Really can't imagine the B2 support is that much better.

But besides that I think the support is fantastic here, better than I would expect :-) I think this is all about expectations.

Wow, the mom steps out of the room for a couple days and y'all go nuts. Raymond, you're grounded. ;)

Second, MU is not opensource, it's released under the GPL. Not the same thing these days.

andrea: Why haven't we changed http://mu.wordpress.org/about/ then?

"Development on MU is spearheaded by Automattic, since they use MU to power WordPress.com a great deal of the companies resources are poured into improving the code, and it all goes back into the open source world via MU."

Dunno. Probably still some debate about it. Note how they used lower case letters though. :)

"open source" means yeah they'll share the code.
Open Source implies something diferent entirely.

And yeah, I could be wrong on that, but a lot of what I've read brings me to these conclusions. :)

I think changing the post title is funny, but if it happened to me I'd probably take my ball and go home (which is also what raymond3402 was told to do, and he was even given the b2e link to get there).

But I have to say that I think the support forums are excellent, the WP community is generally pretty reasonable and occasionally entertaining, and for most people, the lack of support is really just their not understanding the concept of "search first, post second". When I first started working with WP, I was guilty of posting first, and I was gently reminded that just about every question I could think of has already been answered.

If you read through the titles of a few pages of posts, you will start seeing a pattern of repeated topics, so you'll find answers every few clicks if you take the time.

$0.02
~Thomas

Exactly T.

Search first, ask second.
The main WP forums are horribly littered with useless posts. I'll be the first to admit that when I see a topic, if it's something that is repeatedly asked I'll just skip it. Oh wait... Their problem is different because their path to the file is slightly different to get to the root MU directory. <rolleyes>

If someone posts something here, and it goes unanswered, that's usually the biggest sign that they should first read Donncha's sticky post, and then search.

Seeings that MU is a much more involved animal, and requires a much higher level of understanding than its big brother, I'm surprised there hasn't been more responses like this. The pattern seems to be that people are thinking MU is as simple to run, and worry free as WP. It's not. It's great, don't get me wrong, but it's geared towards people who already have a clue about what they are doing. It's server software, not site software, and it seems a lot of people have the unfortunate problem of not being able to recognize that. This results in them getting a bad taste in their mouth, and either giving up and blaming the software, or blaming the volunteers or developer here.

People read multi-user, and think it's for a couple of blogs. Then get into something well over their heads. Heaven forbid their site takes off and and gets shutdown by their host. Ouch.

Users with their own dedicated box hopefully know enough about the basics (apache, mysql) and enough about php to feel comfortable with it. Although sometimes that isn't quite the case either (thanks, CPanel).

Not to make MU sound like it's strictly for elitists and professionals. It's for everyone. However, users diving in should at least know what they are getting into. If they can't figure out exactly what MU does from the current documentation, then it might very well need to be spelled out that it requires a higher level of knowledge and understanding of Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

"The pattern seems to be that people are thinking MU is as simple to run, and worry free as WP."
I wonder why that is... from the about page:
Now with MU we're making it as easy to create a thousand blogs as it was to create a single blog with WordPress 3 years ago.

I'm 100% behind lunabyte on this one. I had somewhat of an idea of what I was getting into, but the more I work things out and develop things for launch, the more I reaslise the work involved.

I don't think I'll ever be ( or anyone will ever) be able to just set it up and forget about it.

MU is a dedication beyond your normal scope of things. In an nutshell, put yourself into the shoes of the folks at Wordpress.com and ask yourself if you can do the same job they do, maybe not at that level, but look where they are now :-)

Would you like to manage that many users and the servers to acomplish that goal or something simaliar? Do you have the resources? The time?

I know I have non-of-the-above, so don't feel bad! But at the same time, I'm a services oriented individual and it would be fun for me to see if I can pull off a little something of my own.

My goal is generate some revenue so that I can get that nice shiny new dedicated server so that I can serve the masses. I don't know if I can do it, but I am sure going to try! Creating a self sustaining website will be a challenge. If I can't do it for the masses, I'll have a heck of a domain name for myself (well guarded secret until launch!)

So to get back to the point, (sorry I have a huge tendency to get sidetracked!) I was unaware of what I was getting into when I started. All I knew is that I had a really cool name for a multi user domain name, so off I went without a second thought.

It was simple out of the box solution for me, but that will not be so for everyone who attempts to set up MU without the proper understanding of whats involved.

My needs will grow. I Will need more bandwidth, more server space, more memory, more proccessor power and eventuall I may have to have the scalability options to split up my database across a spread of multiple servers. Do I expect to get this popular? No. Would I like to have a success stor that generates me a profit. Thats the goal.

Theses are the consideration I am going through and is something I think everyone needs to go through, whether your a hobbyist or entreprenuer.

A more consise lable needs to be printed on the box, as has been mentioned. I personnaly would make it a priorty to shatter the confusion.

Happu Mu'ing!

Yep, XIII I agree the front-page docs on this site are kinda misleading, and the forum volunteers are the ones left to deal with it.

And keeping volunteers is apparently a difficult task because there are only three people who have been posting lately that I recognize.

Seems to be the result of Andrea's summary, Andrew. It's becoming a mini version of the main wp forums, and having to wade through minimally challenging questions that require a lower level of understanding to figure out (which a proper search could by the OP could reveal an answer) to get to the real issues.

But the true question of all of this, is what to do about it? Certainly you don't want to tell someone they just don't have the level of understanding required and be rude, but at the same time they need to know that they need to have a good grasp on apache, mysql, and php.

Even though the 1.0 milestone has been reached, MU still has a lot room to go in order to even be close to allowing a minimal knowledge user maintain an MU environment of any decent size.

Oh, I have my theories as to the whys and hows, but it's all for naught if the dev team doesn't really care.