WordPress MU

Hi folks,

I'm developing my first MU-based site and setting up various plugins. Ideally, I would like to keep the plugins tab deactivated for my users and install all plugins in the mu-plugins folder, so the user just sees the plugin options.

Most are working, but I can't seem to get NextGen Gallery working from the mu-plugins folder. Has anyone done this, and if so, would you be so kind as to lay down the steps (hacks) needed to get it going?

I have explored the developer's site, but haven't found an answer (the forums there are temporarily closed).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

On the other hand, I can get it working on Admin and user blogs if I put it in the plugins folder. As I said, I'm new to MU, but I have heard word that maybe plugin commander or the premium blogs plugin might be a better option. As I understand it, I can then drop plugins into the standard plugin folder and then choose what plugins are available to users across all blogs, or choose what plugins are available to users on a blog-by-blog basis.

Any thoughts?

There's a couple of threads on this already. Did you search and review them?

You may also want to state what issue you're running into as "doesn't work" doesn't give us anything to go on.

Yes, I searched the forums here and reviewed what I found, and they did not offer a solution.

Sorry, what I meant by NextGen not working when placed in the mu-plugins folder was that I could not see any NextGen Gallery options in either the MU Admin or user blogs. It's my understanding that when a plugin is placed in the mu-plugins folder, it should be automatically activated and it's options should then appear in both the Admin and user blog dashboards.

However, my question my be irrelevant at this point because I think a better option for my particular situation is to allow the user to turn the plugin on and off.

@awarner20 I thought I read on the Next-Gen site that they had a release for NextGen that worked with WPMU and it was a download on their Google Code page. I never downloaded it myself, but the normal WP install definetely will not work without the alterations to make it call the other plugin files out of a directory from the main .php file being in the /mu-plugins/ folder. I would recommend seeing if you could find the "WPMU" download with the changes (if it really even exists).

It will be because of the calls in the plugin files to different folders though and would imagine that plugin would have several changes needed and possibily some additions to your .htaccess for it to work for all users.

Trent

For anyone that can benefit, I have solved my confusion. Here's what I did...
(download links at bottom of post)

I downloaded the NextGen Gallery plugin that is said to be compatible with WPMU.

I have plugins unchecked in Site Admin-->Options. This prevents the Plugins tab from showing in both the Admin dashboard and the user blogs dashboard.

I installed NextGen into the standard plugins folder. (admin and user blogs still cannot see the plugin because of the Plugins tab being hidden, and it is not auto activated because it's not in the mu-plugins folder), so how did I get it activated and still have it hidden from users? Read on...

I installed both the Plugin Commander and the Plugin Manager plugins found here http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/plugins.php

...and put both of those plugins in the mu-plugins folder.

I then went to Site Admin-->Plugin Commander and saw the NextGen Gallery Version 0.93 listed, but I didn't do anything here yet.

I then went to Site Admin-->Plugins (this is the Plugin Manager options area), and clicked on the "Check active plugins" link. For both blogs, (Admin and my user blog), I could see no active plugins. Dammit, how do I activate that plugin without showing the Plugins tab and without it being in the mu-plugins folder (which didn't work anyway)?

Here's how it worked for me...

I had to go back to Site Admin-->Plugin Commander. As I said the NextGen Gallery plugin is listed here, and it has some clickable options to the right of it. Those options are "Author", "Auto-activate", "User control", "Mass activate", and "Mass deactivate".

Under "User Control" there is a link that says "Disabled, click to enable". I clicked that. Then I went back to Site Admin-->Plugins and could see that my two blogs (Admin and user blog) now both had the NextGen Gallery Plugin enabled. Almost done...

After doing this I also noticed a new menu item under Site Admin called "NextGen Gallery", Site Admin-->NextGen Gallery. This is the global options area for NextGen Gallery. Another addition was the standard NextGen Gallery options area under my Admin and User Dashboard area called "Gallery".

So, at this point I have successfully installed NextGen gallery on both the Admin and User blogs while still hiding the Plugins tab from both the Admin and User blogs.

But I wanted the ability to turn NextGen Gallery on for some users and off for others. That's what the Site Admin-->Plugins (Plugin Manager) allows me to do. I went here, clicked on "Check active plugins" in the upper right. Then I saw my Admin blog and User blog listed. I then clicked the id of the User blog and was able to deactivate the NextGen Gallery plugin for my User blog, while still having it activated for the Admin blog. Finally!

When I am finished setting up the site, and I have actual users, I can then go into individual blogs and activate or deactivate any plugins I want them to have options for, or not.

This is what worked for me. I realize I was stumbling around, and maybe this wasn't the most efficient way to get this going, but without step-by-step documentation for things like this, hopefully this will help others.

Please feel free to share any thoughts you have on this, or if you get it working in the same manner.

NextGen Version I downloaded:
http://alexrabe.boelinger.com/wordpress-plugins/nextgen-gallery/
(notice this download says version says V0.92, but my installation says it's V0.93). Also, the author has a page announcing the compatibility with WMPU which does not have a separate download, I believe it's just built in. Also, i did not find the plugin on the Google Code link.

Plugin Commander:
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Plugin-Commander

Plugin Manager:
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Plugin-Manager

Good luck!

Hi!
what about WPMU 1.5 and nextgen gallery V1.00 ?

I tried to install this photo plugin in the new candidate release of wpmu, but it doesn't work!

The plugin go on asking me to "Upgrade NextGEN Gallery".
Then, I click the link "Start upgrade now..." [/wp-admin/admin.php?page=nggallery-setup&upgrade=now]

Then the message "Upgrade sucessfull" appears to me with the link "Continue..." [/wp-admin/admin.php?page=nggallery-setup]

But when I click this link, the setup page asks me another time to upgrade!

Someone already solved this problem?

thank a lot!

while on the topic of nextgen-galley and MU does anyone know how to get rid of the crazy file directory that keeps displaying for images? I am reffering to the location of pictures that nextgen-gallery shows. Instead of showing images like regular uploads i.e ( yoursite.com/files/yourpic.jpg ) they show up with the included blogs.dir/ and number of your blog. I would like for images to be referenced the usual MU uploads way since it looks a lot better and seems a bit safer than displaying the actual location of files in reference to other possible directories for other blogs on the same installation.

@ligio - any luck figuring out how to get around the issue with the nextgen plugin requiring a manual activate? I installed the plugin manager and commander and set all the appropriate options, but it does the same thing. I only see the setup tag in the users profile. the only way past this is to activate MU plugins and manually activate in the users profile.

I'm guessing it because their are some unique database entries for each user..

Any way around the manual activation?

Brian

I would really like to see an answer to this as well. I just want every blog in my wpmu site to have the next gen gallery. Don't care about turning it on and off, etc. Just want one. Help! I tried to find a hack for it and couldn't. Can anyone direct me to the right place?

I posted an entry a week or so back in the nextgen gallery forum. The plugin developer (Alex) said he would look into it after the next major nextgen release. Keep your fingers crossed.

The only work around i can see at this point would be to figure out how to auto create the required nextgen tables for the user. Right now it won't work, unless it is manually activated by the user.

Has anyone found a workaround for the Nexthen manual activation requirement?

- Brian

My solution:
http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=9953

Cheers.