WordPress MU

Greetings All,

This question has been asked before but I found no solutions after lots of searching. (WPMU v2.6)

I have a now and a future desire to be able to add a new user to our small non-profit rare disease community by giving them a standard starting point for their blogs. We have one domain with all users on a subdomain of their choosing.

For Now, I'd like to take and existing blog that has an initial post, initial comment, initial about page, suite of enabled plugins, theme, widgets, widget configuration, links, and subscribers (I use Subscribe2) ... and make a copy of this blog with a new sub-domain, create a new user, and assign that user to the blog with editor privileges.

I do this manually now (procedure is at the bottom on this post). It takes 5+ minutes per blog to do even with an XML import. I only expect to have a couple of hundred blogs - it's really not the work that bothers me - it's the precision of doing all of the steps correctly/completely and the time delay for me to get it done - hours/days instead of seconds.

I'd like to have this all happen automatically.

My future wish is to integrate this into a PHP/mySQL registration database I have on the web where the user can, as part of the registration, ask for a blog. The blog would then be automatically created using the subdomain, name, and email provided as part of the registration.

It seems to me that all of a blog's data is stored in the SQL tables (except for the custom header photo). Is this task best taken on as a SQL table/record duplication and editing effort instead of trying to do it through the WPMU web interface and plugins?

Thanks in advance,

Dean

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Here is the process I want to automate:

1. Create username@mydomain.us (placeholder user)
2. Create blog
• * username.mydomain.org
• * username’s Personal Page
• * username@mydomain.org
3. Edit blog
   1. add username as type editor
   2. add myadminname as type administrator
   3. Manage -> Import -> WordPress -> XML file
   • map to myadminuser
   • import attachments – select download & import box
4. New browser window & log into new blog
   1. username.mydomain.org
   2. Design -> Theme
      1. Select themename as theme
      2. Themename Options -> select About as Nav display
      3. Add custom image header
      4. PlugIn’s enable
         • Countdown
         • Antispam
         • SMTP mailer
         • Subscribe2
         • Subscribe2 widget
      5. Design -> Widgets
         • update message in Subscribe2
         • update archive config (show count & drop down)
         • recent comments
         • links
         • tags
         • meta
   3. Manage -> Posts .. Make sure all is well
   4. Manage -> Links
      • Delete two WordPress links
      • Add my Foundation link
      • Add categories
        • foundation Links
        • Favorites
        • Friends & Family
      • Foundation link should be “foundation links” only and “_blank”
   5. Manage -> Subscribers
      • add mld-blogs@mydomain.org
   6. User -> username
      • enter first name and last name of editor
      • change Nickname to first name of editor
      • enter editor’s actual email
      • enter website as username.mydomain.org
      • enter new password
      • Click UPDATE USER
      • Change DisplayName to first name
      • Click UPDATE USER
5. Manually prepare & send announcement email to editor (use my external mail application).

Some of these can be done automatically right off the bat:

3.1 - I think we talked about how to make a new user have a different role when they are added.

4.2.1 - if you're changing everyone to a particular theme, rename the theme folder to default. Then on creation, they'll get that theme. (if you do this on a live system, everyone using that theme will have to re-select their theme)

4.2.4 - look inot using the plugin Commader plugin. You can set what blog you want enabled by default

4.2.5 - if you want them to have specific things in their sidebar right off... why not adjust the template? i'm pretty sure there's a thread around here about having some widgets set up on blog creation as well.

4.3 - not needed

4.4 & 4.5 - should be able to set this up as well so it's like that on creation.

The other thing I noticed was part 3, step 2:
"add myadminname as type administrator"

You do not need to do this. you're the Site Admin. you can get in anywhere and do anything, including post. unless you're doing it to make sure email notifications,like for comments in moderation, go somewhere?

you may also be able to combine step 1 and 3.1. Why create a user with placeholder email and then add them to a blog? Just use the placeholder email when setting up their blog and then bump them down (which as I said above, you might be able to change via plugin anyway)

Otherwise everything either needs to be done manually (like importing) or you'll need someone to code up something special (step 5). At least I hope I've given you an idea of what can be automated.

andrea_r,

I just wanted to thank you for such a thorough and accurate reply to these questions.

Best regards
Yanik

You're very welcome. :)