WordPress MU

hey folks,

i've searched the forums of various CMS's and have severe information overload. i'm looking to create a podcasting site with multiple podcasters and subscribers with lists of their subscribed podcasts on their personal pages. that's the basic idea, and i dunno if WordPress MU can handle the subscriber part. Here are some other specific needs:

• can a podcaster have a url like site.com/podcaster? something done dynamically rather than making a static page redirect? (i assume this would be status quo for WP MU)
• separate rss feeds for each podcast? (this should be possible, but i figured i'd ask to be sure)
• is it possible for a user without a blog to have a profile page? if a user subscribes to a podcast, is there any way to get a link to that rss feed appear automagically on the profile page?
• in lieu of that, could the ability to activate plugins per blog also be done on the user group level?

thank you.

Yes to all of the above. But podcasting... are you sure?

Yes, that is part of the plan. I'm curious as to what your concerns are - server space/bandwidth or ... ?

I'm reasonably familiar with WordPress - are there any specific resources to answer the questions in the unordered list?

Thanks very much for the response.

Awww... it's more about the accessibility / attractions of podcasts. I reckon they're a great medium for quality productions (a la radio etc.) but not so great for you and I and particularly unsuited to community... but I could go on for days :)

* can a podcaster have a url like site.com/podcaster? something done dynamically rather than making a static page redirect? (i assume this would be status quo for WP MU)

Blogs can have subdomains or folders and you can run static pages or regular posts on them.

* separate rss feeds for each podcast? (this should be possible, but i figured i'd ask to be sure)

Natch... each blog comes with it's own rss feed so that's your channel.

* is it possible for a user without a blog to have a profile page? if a user subscribes to a podcast, is there any way to get a link to that rss feed appear automagically on the profile page?

I haven't done much with profiles but the latest nightlies seem to be hot on them... a static front page would be a good / easy profile angle.

* in lieu of that, could the ability to activate plugins per blog also be done on the user group level?

Yep, MU plugin manager and Site Admin privileges allow you to mess around with plugins on a per blog level no end. Again I'm no expert on this aspect but there's plenty in these here foromis.

Thanks - this is great info. I'm really happy to hear this is possible since I'm relatively new to WordPress (about 2-3 weeks, first site/theme is at http://www.tinygrass.com), and it's so ridiculously easy & elegant. I'll do some more digging today - WP MU sounds like a great option.

You can also use the sitewide feed as a community podcast, at least that's what I'm doing at http://musicians.hiddenshoal.com (still under construction). I clean it up via feedburner then use that rss url to register with iTunes to get the itms link.

That catches any mp3, mov, mp4 etc published across the entire Mu into a community podcast ... <cough> via my Anarchy Media Player muplugin</cough>.

Each blogger can of course also pass any of their own feeds through feedburner and register with iTunes as well. I've been meaning to make a sidebar widget so they can put the itms podcast image link up, haven't gotten around to that yet so if you beat me to it I'll gladly download yours :)

They have RSS feeds for their blog as a whole or they can just register a category feed if they want a more focused podcast.

this is all quite cool. now how would a user without a blog subscribe to specific podcast and have it appear automagically on their profile page.

ha - before that, how does one create profile pages without blogs? author.php?

Hmmmm ... dunno. Maybe grab a list of mu users, filter the ones without blogs, display them on the main site blog. Then ... have a subscriber plugin for user blogs for peeps to subscribe to podcasts ... but only when logged in? Then ... each podcast sub is flagged in their user data and that also gets displayed on the main site list... as either an itms link or blog link, or both.

My head hurts! But hey, build that lot and I'll gladly download that too :)

sounds logical. i lack the coding skills to build that tho. this whole process makes my head hurt, looking at stuff like drupal and joomla and whatnot.

Hi Farms, you reckon:

"it's more about the accessibility / attractions of podcasts. I reckon they're a great medium for quality productions (a la radio etc.) but not so great for you and I and particularly unsuited to community..."

I teach electronic arts at uni and I know of several institutions here in Aus that are interested in podcasts for lectures and whatnot, especially for off campus or remote/international students. You might find your academic audience much more receptive to them than you think, especially if say a Mu like edublogs can simplify the process.

Just my 2c worth :)

Funny that, I ran set up the first ever 'official' academic podcast here in Australia (I think) :)

http://incsub.org/fireside

So yeh, for lectures they're pretty useful - especially when it's a v. technical subject (like competition law) but I'm still a little bit hesitant!

You wouldn't be in Melbourne would you?

I be in Perth, but yeh there's lot's of interest and the technical hurdles are not very big. The biggest problem I have is not so much getting peeps to upload mp3's and make a simple link for anarchy to play, but it's in showing them how to actually record stuff beforehand.

Delivery seems easy, it's the production which is hard... although that's pretty simple nowadays too really. Record via QT, encode with iTunes.

I've found academics seem to warm very quickly to Audacity - surprisingly so.

Heh, yeh I've got Audacity with LAME codec set up on a school server for easy download, but generally their eyes just boggle if I mention it. Most of the academics I deal with are okay with email and MS Word and can handle uploading stuff via the WP uploader and writing text, but not much more beyond that. Too much distracting admin overload to deal with without having to become new tech as well.

We're internet tards us Aussies, thanks to our ridiculous corporate monopoly on digital infrastructure holding broadband adoption back half a decade or more behind the yanks and euros. You have a much more international audience though via edublogs which makes it a very interesting academic exercise. I've been watching it grow since early last year and you've got an awesome resource there, cool work James.

@Farms: are you suggesting that the front page be completely static? (quote: a static front page would be a good / easy profile angle.) or to use a static page for the profile pages. I still have to delve deeper to see if it's possible to personalize such a page.

or would it be possible to have personalized content appear in the sidebar after logging in?

@zeug: your media player is pretty cool. do you see it as a competitor to podpress? or something that offers much greater ease of use and can be a complement as well as a replacement? i'm also going to check out edublogs when i have a moment - that seems really interesting.

it seems that wpmu will work for my needs, the one remaining question is how does a subscriber get a list of podcasts on his/her personal page. here's a thought - is it possible for each personal page to have their own media player? and then have the ability to find podcasts on the site and subscribe to them with either itunes, another podcatcher or with the media player on their personal page?

much thanks for the responses and the discussion so far - both have been extremely helpful.

your media player is pretty cool. do you see it as a competitor to podpress?

I really don't care about competition, I'm making what's useful for me on my Mu's, and I'll cannibalize any code out there with the author's permission, and anyone can do likewise with anarchy, that's the glory of opensource :)

I'm also not using my own custom tags for any of the embeds except Director dcr files. The plugin just hooks href links and kmil tags, and if everyone uses kmil to embed swf players then we would all be cross compatible. It also means I can dump anarchy and just activate kmil and the standalone anarchy.js for backwards compatibility at any time if I want to move over to Podpress, once it works on Mu. WP-Extreme video and Vipers are both working on new versions too.

But yes, A/V simplicity is my overriding project goal.

good attitude. edublogs seems pretty cool too.