WordPress MU

I need a way to display all of the most recent posts from sub-blogs on the main blog of my wordpressmu installation. I've been searching through the forums and google for a way to do this-- a plug in or something. I found two, "ah-recent-posts-mu" and "Recent Posts", both seem painfully slim on documentation and I'm just not enough of a coder to be able to figure it out. Is there some simpler way to pull this off that I'm missing some how?

I'd like my installation's main blog to basically be self maintained by the updating of the sub blogs. Any ideas?

More to read at http://wiki.evernex.com/index.php?title=Wordpress_MU_sitewide_recent_posts_plugin

Don't forget the "Sample call" for what to paste into your home.php
ah_recent_posts_mu(5, 30, true, '<li>', '</li>');

This is great but what if I dont want certain blogs to show up? Is there a way to filter them?

Find this part from the plugin listed above:

$blogs = $wpdb->get_col("SELECT blog_id FROM $wpdb->blogs WHERE
public = '1' AND archived = '0' AND mature = '0' AND spam = '0' AND deleted = '0' AND
last_updated >= DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL $how_long DAY)
ORDER BY last_updated DESC");

and ad this: "AND blog_id != '%'" where "%" represents the blog id that you want to exclude

Kick me for not knowing, but what is a "sample call" and how do I insert one?

Also, does the code from that page get pasted over the old code in the plugin or appended to the end? It looks like it should be overwritten.

I wound up using a solution from zimen in post http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=948

<?php
//What blogs where last updated, lets grab a bunch at first.
$blogs = $wpdb->get_col("SELECT blog_id FROM $wpdb->blogs WHERE public = 1 AND last_updated!='0000-00-00 00:00:00' ORDER BY last_updated DESC LIMIT 25");
$tables = array();
foreach ($blogs as $blog) {
// we need _posts and _options tables for this to work
$blogOptionsTable = "wp_".$blog."_options";
$blogPostsTable = "wp_".$blog."_posts";
$blogCatTable = "wp_".$blog."_post2cat";
//add to array for later use
$table = array ($blog, $blogPostsTable, $blogOptionsTable, $blogCatTable );
$tables[] = $table; //push into tables
}
//now lets pull out 5 recent posts from each blog
$postresults = array();
foreach ($tables as $t) {
$postitems = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID,post_title,guid,post_content,comment_count,post_date_gmt FROM $t[1] WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'post' AND guid != '' ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 0,1");
//push into array, had $postresults[] = $postitems;, but didn't work?
foreach ($postitems as $postitem) {
$col = array($postitem->ID,$postitem->post_title,$postitem->guid,$postitem->post_content,$postitem->comment_count,$postitem->post_date_gmt,$t[0]);
$postresults[] = $col;
}
}
function cmp($a,$b) {
$at = strtotime($a[5]);
$bt = strtotime($b[5]);
if($at == $bt)
return(0);
if($at < $bt)
return(1);
else
return(-1);
}
usort($postresults, 'cmp');
foreach ($postresults as $postresult) {
$siteurl = $wpdb->get_col("SELECT option_value FROM wp_". $postresult[6] ."_options WHERE option_name='siteurl'");
$blogname = $wpdb->get_col("SELECT option_value FROM wp_". $postresult[6] ."_options WHERE option_name='blogname'");
?>
<div class="entry">
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td><div class="entrytitle">
<h2><a href="<?php echo $postresult[2]; ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php echo $postresult[1]; ?>"><?php echo $postresult[1]; ?></a></h2>
</div>
<div id="entrybody">
<?php
$string = $postresult[3];
$pos = strpos($string, "<!--more-->");
if($pos === false) {
echo $string;
}else{
echo substr($string, 0, $pos)."&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=".$postresult[2] .">(More...)</a>";
}
?>
</div></td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class="entrymeta">
<div class="postinfo">
<a href="<?php echo $siteurl[0]; ?>"><?php echo $blogname[0]; ?></a> | <a href="<?php echo $postresult[2]; ?>"><?php echo $postresult[4]; ?> comments &raquo; </a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<?php } ?>

And, if you want to use the other solution that you were asking about, what the poster meant by "Sample call" is that you have to include the request in home.php To test it, just copy/paste the following code wherever you want it to appear in your home.php page.

ah_recent_posts_mu(5, 30, true, '<li>', '</li>');

Be sure to also upload the plugin script to wp-content/plugins

Posting long code here doesn't help.
If you need to post code - use a pastebin service like http://wordpress.pastebin.ca

Does the plugin on the second post in this thread, show the title only or will the content display as well?

Thanks for all the suggestions folks. My biggest problem here is implimentation. Obviously people have figured out how to make it work, but I only know code well enough to tinker with what's already there.

I would try this code in addition to the plugin:
ah_recent_posts_mu(5, 30, true, '