WordPress MU

I am building a news magazine blog for a large spiritual community. We want there to be one main blog which is kind of a portal for news for the whole global community. There will be about 100 blogs for city centers with their own news. I want the main blog to pull posts from the other blogs all into the central one. This is similar to the 'recent post' functionality seen in a few plugins (ie. http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/AHP-Sitewide-Recent-Posts-for-WPMU or http://www.callum-macdonald.com/code/sh-global-posts/)

I also want to moderate the posts that show up on the main blog. And I also want to view on the main blog all global posts for each category. I know this can be don with tags ( via http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/10/01/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags-pages-031/) but can it be done with categories.

One last thing, is that I'd like to show the blog content of the sub blogs within the main blog as if it were still in the main blog theme, not going out to the sub blog.

any advice on which direction to go in and which to avoid would be very helpful. thanks.

Donncha's Tags Pages plugin will duplicate every post on the main blog(or "tags" blog). The tags blog can sift all posts by category, etc etc. The usual WP widgets do the usual things while on the tags blog. Permalinks to all posts on the tags blog eventually lead back to the member blog, however, but they are first visible in the tags blog as you'd expect.

Donncha's plugin is the way to go.

Using it to moderate posts or to hold all posts for review may be a trick. The plugin currently saves all drafts/published posts from every blog in the site when a member blog clicks 'save post'. And it cleans up deleted/draft posts after, too etc etc.

I can imagine only a nightmare in human moderating 100+ blogs "by hand". Deleting occasional junk posts may be easier that approving the best from the lot, but I understand the trepidation of allowing any post on a Spiritual Community page.

Instead, I'd recommend using multiple loops in the template of the tags blog to pull out posts to feature(see "The End Result" and leave the Tags Pages plugin as is. Query the post_id or cat_id to feature in the tags blog and your work is done.

Allthough Donncha's plugin will be collecting posts after post with every member save, you can still limit access to the feed and feature whatever posts you like on the page using existing wordpress Loops. But all this may be a headache if all you need is editorial control. So...

Another "no plugins" option may be to build your own blog as a featured author blog, keep yourself as Admin but add users as contributers/authors and only those invited to write on the community page may do so. Then all contributer posts will await review by an editor. End users need only copy'n paste to have posts appear in both theirs and your featured author blog.

dsader, thanks so much for the very informative posts. luckily there won't be too much traffic on the 100 blogs, one or two posts a week on each. so moderation won't be tough.

I plan to have a category on every blog called 'featured'. blog users will check this if they want to highlight a story, and only these featured posts will then go to the main tags blog for moderation.

I could alter Donncha's plugin so that the posts are copied over as saved but not published. Then a moderator could then just publish the ones they like.

but can you please explain a little more how I could use the multiple loops to achieve something similar. I'm not sure I followed your instructions.

also, Donnacha's plugin seems quite similar to the real global terms plugin by callum macdonald. do you have any comments on which might be better?

Donncha's plugin is the only one I'll use for the next year or two, for sure.

The loop in your template can be customized to pull only from the featured category, even though all posts have been copied to the tags blog. Further, the loop can pick only the post_id you choose in the top, say, while the remaining category spills out the bottom as usual. You'll be editing templates and updating parameters in your template when you want to feature specific posts is all.

If you can modify Donncha's plugin to hold posts in moderation without mucking up anything else, that'd be the way to go for sure.

thanks so much, your advice has been incredibly helpful. I think i'll create some featured categories as you suggest and that might be the fastest and simplest way to do it.

dwenaus, just wondering if you had any luck modifying Donncha's plugin for moderation? I ran into the need for just such a feature. Thank you in advance.

csv 2 post is going to do that eventually. Basically it will export data from one blog and you have the plugin installed on another blog which finds the data at a giving url and retrieves it then process it.

Basically make new blogs while on your holidays I like to call it!

Prob be closer to the end of the year however before its running just thought would give heads up might be handy if its a long term thing your doing.

Is there a URL for csv2 or the developer, so I can bookmark and keep an eye on it? That plugin sounds very useful. Thanks.