WordPress MU

MU is not necessarily a better choice than multiple installs of standard WP.

If you are looking for a way to control multiple blogs that will be setup almost identically, and/or you want people to be able to create their own blogs on your site, then yes MU is probably a good choice.

If you are managing multiple blogs that have different requirements for setup and functionality, then keeping seperate WP installs may be the better choice.

Here are some of problems I encountered while spending a week playing with WPMU 1.3rc3:

(1) When you do the initial install, you create a main blog in the install directory, and all other blogs added are added as a sub-directory (if you use the subdirectory method) under this directory. This was a minor problem for me, because I could not install WPMU in the root of the domain, so I put it in mydomain.com/info/, which means all the other blogs are a sub-blog of the main one (ex: mydomain.com/info/news, mydomain.com/info/events, etc). This may or may not be an issue for some people.

(2) User registration for all the sub-blogs doesn't work the way I need it to work. When you go to a sub-blog and want to register as a user for that particular blog, it actually forces you to register on the main blog, and then the user has to be manually added to the sub-blog.
This needs to be setup so a user can register directly on a sub-blog, without any manual intervention and without the need to register on the main blog.

(3) If you want to disable user registration on the main blog, then it is disabled for ALL sub-blogs. You can enable user registration on the main blog, and then enable/disable as you like on sub-blogs. This is obviously tied to issue 2 above, but not an acceptable option for everybody.
You should be able to disable user registration on the main blog, but still allow it on a sub-blog.

These things you mention:

First of all WPMU stands for wordpress multi user, not multi site.

Not being able to install in root, that is probably your hosts fault, i have mine installed in root.

one of the major features with wpmu is that the admin has global access to all users on the system, hence the frontpage signup. Simply signup on the main page, then the admin of the sub-blog you want to be a part of can add you as the appropriate user-level there.

and what do you mean with "you should be able to do this and that", wpmu isnt developed for everyones needs it is realy as simple as that.

If you only need to manage a few sites, then yeah, MU probably isn't the best choice.

You probably would benefit more from my multiple domain hack, although you would need to tweak a few core files for WP so that uploads don't stand on each others toes and such.

Caching (object or wp-cache) probably needs some path help too, but that will get you in the right direction.

For a quick reference, it lets you use a single set of files and multiple db's or tables to render multiple WP sites.

There is no interaction between sites, and everything is separated.

Prior to this year, I set-up hundreds of individual WP installs for my students to use. It worked fine and I had a system where it really didn't take that long set them up...I could set-up 100 in about 30 minutes. But a couple of major drawbacks were upgrading (lots of work) and multiple installs of the source code...especially themes and plugins. I had about 50 themes and I had to install them in each blog (there may be a way to let individual WP installs share a single theme directory, but I'm not aware of how to do it).

Since moving to Mu, things have gotten a lot easier. Now I can manage hundreds of blogs in a fraction of the time and instead of me creating each of them, I can let my students create them.

There are pros and cons to each (Mu and WP), but Mu is definitely a nice piece of software for a multi-blog environment.

MU is blgo farm software. If you're using it for something other than that, then yeah.. you'll have issues or tweaking or behaviour you don't expect.

I know part of that is on the main pages it doesn't really say so, but it should. It's a bit misleading as to what it does outof the box.

ekusteve - I came across a plugin in the last week which allows you to specify just that. :) I just have to find it again...

ekusteve - I came across a plugin in the last week which allows you to specify just that. :) I just have to find it again...

andrea_r...If you find it and would post here that would be great. I still have several individual installs and this would be a nice improvement.

Steve

Bloggproffs wrote "First of all WPMU stands for wordpress multi user, not multi site."

Exactly my point, and why I wanted to clarify some things that is does and does not do. Because I will have 5 seperate blogs, with very different setups, and I do not want anybody to create their own blogs on my site, MU is not for me!! I'm not saying it's bad software or a bad program, just that it didn't do what I thought it might do the way I thought it should do it.

Bloggproffs wrote "and what do you mean with "you should be able to do this and that", wpmu isnt developed for everyones needs it is realy as simple as that."

I should have instead said "It would be nice if it did this or did that..."! This is the Requests and Feedback forum, so I'm just giving feedback and making requests, based on my needs and what I found. I'm sure as MU continues to be developed as Multi User blog farm software it will improve beyond it's already 'great' status, but my suggestion is to consider making it into a Multi Site type of software as well, which would require some tweaks based on my suggestions above.

andrea_r wrote "I know part of that is on the main pages it doesn't really say so, but it should. It's a bit misleading as to what it does outof the box."

Yep, I agree... perhaps something of this thread can be added to the main MU page description?

I think, given this development closely follows wp.com, that it will mainly stick to being blog farm software. That's mostly a guess/opinion.

There are some thing that have come up in the past (and I can't think of specifics, but I know there are) that would go in this direction and the closest it gets into production is a filter so someone can make a plugin.

of which there are more every day.

So in that respect, it really is quite versatile. Once you get into it, then you realize that you can make it do pretty much whatever you want.

jsherk - so what was the point of your comment? we now all know the ain't for you. so what's next?

1.I could not install WPMU in the root of the domain thats not really a Mu issue.
2.mydomain.com/info/news, mydomain.com/info/events. i made a similar mistake thinking i could use Mu as a webzine. It's possible, I've seen some really cool ones. But i really don't have enough to say to warrant using Mu for it. for that stuff, stick with Joomla or a tricked out standard WP install.
3. there re prolly ways around our third point.

you should look into Luna's hack. i did and it works great.

Awww... thanks De. :D

NBA 'bout to get fired up! woot!

speaking of VPS, can it be use in laptop or do i need to have separate desktop PC to run a VPS or VDS? anyone pls!

@ekusteve: Depending on your hosting server, you might be able to symlink the theme directories together. You'd have to stop individual sites editing their themes, but if they're all identical, it should work.

You could even symlink individual themes rather than the whole directory, if you want users to be able to add their own themes. A little bash script could make light work of it.

Cheers - Callum.

Callum, can you please stop spamming the forums with your link? You may note that no one else is doing it and you already have the link tied to your username there.

@scarty - Seriously? They are just better hosting accounts. On a web server.

A VPS is a portion of a webhosting server. It's not something you run locally.

Is VPS different from dedicated server? I have a friend and he said that he run his own server locally. Thanks andrea and theapparatus and pardon my ignorance :/

Yes, it is. VPS is Virtual Dedicated Server. That means it looks like you're in control of a server, but it's only a portion of one.

Google is your friend, man. :)

If you have a big enough pipe to your house & the cash, then yeah, you can run your home computer as a web server.

Simply signup on the main page, then the admin of the sub-blog you want to be a part of can add you as the appropriate user-level there.

Forgive my ignorance here but how will the admin of the sub-blog know what email addresses to add (ie who wants to join their blog/site?)

I had a system where it really didn't take that long set them up...I could set-up 100 in about 30 minutes

Could anyone tell me what Steve's system could be or will i have to ask on the Wordpress forum? Ive been using WPMU for a while now and Wordpress itself slightly longer. I've ran into a problem with wpmu though due to this registration system and am now looking at making multiple installations of Wordpress to suit my project's needs. I was trying to make a few community blogs/sites and need to encourage people to post right there and now. I could try a CMS but ive got things built around a few Wordpress plugins and it would lose it's essence if i changed to something more geared towards making a community website. If anyone has any suggestions though it would be much appreciated. All i really need from wpmu is a way for anyone (registered or not) to be able to create a new post and for for me not have to watch over the moderation (i could get a few mods in mind in time no doubt and then look at user roles etc) of the submissions.

Thanks

The only thing i don't like about mu is the fact that about 5 tables are created for each blog. if a site does have many blog users, which is the main intent of the site, wouldn't this cause a lot of resources to be used? would it not be more efficient to put all posts in one table, all comments in one table, etc-and just have a blog id that links them?

@t3ch33: Apparently it works for Wordpress.com without an issue. See http://mu.wordpress.org/faq/. "WordPress MU creates tables for each blog, which is the system we found worked best for plugin compatibility and scaling after lots of testing and trial and error ....... We're practical folks, so we'll use whatever works best, and for the 400k and counting on WordPress.com, MU has been a champ."

Thanks for this interesting and extremely relevant discussion. I read the "hack" by the user lunabyte, but that's way too tinkering for anyone looking to do this in a serious production environment, and has no guarantee of being maintainable code.

The original point of this thread is hugely relevant. MU should make it very clear that it works decently for many blogs on the SAME domain, which may or may not have to share template elements etc. In reality, this can be achieved nicely anyway even with simple WP installs by symlinking templates files to a nicer location (e.g., /wp/MYTEMPLATE.PHP instead of wp/wp-content/themes/MYTHEME/MYTEMPLATE.PHP), and then PHP-including /wp/MYTEMPLATE.PHP in another blog! I've also managed to have a similar look and feel to all my WP blogs by using the Custom Admin Branding plugin, and instead of its own CSS, using a CSS from my main domain.

But MU is not the best one to do multi-site stuff. I have the very typical WHM/Cpanel setup, with one root server, and many servers on it, with their own Opendir protections and whatnot. The usual works. I want to install MU on root.com, and then use them as Apache aliases or whatever on server1.com, server2.com, etc. The specific servers could have their own themes etc to choose from, but the "menu" of these themes and plugins would ONLY be installed ONCE -- in the root.com MU installation.

In a commerical setting, I have seen how the Expression Engine Multisite Manager works, so coming to a hackjob like MU with its inline PHP tossed around like foliage is not particularly charming (and users' myriad "hacks" don't do much either).

I have no intent of denigrating this effort. It's FREE, which is why I'm here and willing to play the game, but it would save a lot of people a lot of headaches if MU's main page and developers can be a touch more candid about its strengths and limitations. The idea is to learn from what users are going through and making the software better as a result of it.

The very basic goal (and raison d'etre) of MU is to be a multi-site and multi-user blogging platform. It's not quite there -- not in an officially supported and documented and painless manner anyway.

mjhca, thanks for the info. i was worried about that.