WordPress MU

Hi, i've searched around but can't seem to find anything near this subject so any help would be massively appreciated. I've installed WordPress MU on a hosted server. What i want is that a teacher will have supervision over their students blogs? - the teacher will be the master user and will create bloggs for their students for a particular project. This teacher will then be able to log into their own account (admin account?) and view all their students bloggs, and have total control over the students bloggs?

Now, i realise by my initial experience playing around with WordPress MU that this functionality is already sort of there in that the admin user has control over all blogs created and has access to all blog user details?

But the Question is this: Is there any way to have this functionality for multiple 'admin' users? - basically i need to preserve the teacher-students link - that teacher(A) who has created bloggs for students(A) can log on using their 'admin' account and view ONLY their students accounts and NOT all as in the case of the current setup using the 'admin' account?

I would just assign the teacher's acccount to be a site admin. Dashboard -> Site Admin -> options -> There's a field for addin in site admins. You can have more than one 'admin' account.

Thanks for the quick reply! The thing is - then ALL teachers would have access to ALL student bloggs and there wouldn't be this one to many relationship (teacherA --> studentsA, teacherB --> studentsB etc) - the idea i suppose is to have teachers taking responsibility for there students bloggs and for them to be able to easily log in and view their students updated bloggs, their students details, be able to suspend a post etc etc?

Then the teacher will be hte one with a blog, and the students could be users to that blogs, with posting abilities.
There isn;t a built-in feature for a site admin to monitor stuff that closely (although admins can get into all blgos anwya, as you know).

You know what you could do if you feel up to it is install WPMu into a domain (mydomain.tld) using the subdirectories option, do the domain mapping workaround we've discussed elsewhere here in the forums but use subdomains of the domain as the additional sites, (ie teacher1.mydomain.tld teacher2.mydomain.tld, etc) assign those teachers as site admins for those additional sites and then create the blogs off of them. (teacher1.mydomain.tld/littlesuzie teacher1.mydomain.tld/joeblow, etc)

That would be a pain but it would work. When you add in the additional sites, you have to go in and assign site admins and they only have control over the blogs assigned to those additional sites.

Thanks for the suggestion, i'm going off now to see what this subdirectories option is all about? - thanks again for your post ..

I'm actually amazed you understood all that. :)

The subdirectories option is created when you install it. You can change is after the install we believe (look for the vhost setting in wp-config.php and it may also be in the wp_sitemeta database table) but we always suggest starting over with a clean install.

Thanks again! - i didn't really understand anything you said originally!!! - but its all starting to make sense now after a morning of fishing!!!! - thanks again ....

I just have a few questions about this? -

(1) my installation is at projectblogger.ie. If i do the subdirectories installation as you advise and create individual sites at teacher1.projectblogger.ie and teacher2.projectblogger.ie etc ... does my projectblogger.ie/index.php PUBLICLY show ALL blogs created by ALL teacher students? (this is what i'd require?)- or is it the case that the domain teacher1.projectblogger.ie shows only teacher1's bloggs and domain teacher2.projectblogger.ie shows teacher2's blogs etc

(2) Is there a MASTER Admin user for all Bloggs still or is the individual teacher the MASTER Admin for each site? (i know this is most probably the case!) - its just that i probably don't understand the 'site creation' thing yet and perhaps need more fishing. I mean, how do i create a teacher1.projectblogger.ie site? - don't worry, i'll have a look around at 'domain mapping workaround' etc..

(3) Is this approach compatible with any future upgrades? (i assume because theres no CORE files being altered, it most probably is!)

Thanks again in advance ...

The thing is - then ALL teachers would have access to ALL student bloggs and there wouldn't be this one to many relationship (teacherA --> studentsA, teacherB --> studentsB etc) - the idea i suppose is to have teachers taking responsibility for there students bloggs and for them to be able to easily log in and view their students updated bloggs, their students details, be able to suspend a post etc etc?"

What about making the teacher the administrator of each of their own students' blogs? If you don't trust teachers to have Site Admin rights over all student blogs, this could be a work-around. I've used this approach with Primary 3 classes (7 to 8 year olds) where one teacher is the admin for 80+ student blogs, like http://edubuzz.org/blogs/hip3-8andrew In this case, the main driver was to enable teacher to monitor all comments via notification emails.
In general, we favour trusting teachers with Site Admin rights for this kind of thing; it has never been abused.