Wordpress MU
This year I got to work a lot with Wordpress MU as we installed it on a district server and used it as our blogging platform for or teachers. I learned quite a bit about how NOT to do things, and some neat tricks along the way!
It is important to note that Wordpress MU is a derivative of the Wordpress software. Therefore, the coding, installation, themes, plugins, etc…are all very similar and many themes and plugins that work for Wordpress will work in Wordpress MU. Just FYI – my blog is a Wordpress blog installed on midphase.com – my host.
Installation – Themes – Plugins – Users – Training – Examples
Installation
Let’s just get to the good stuff – the 14 page e-book on installing WPMU.
BUT…before you just dive right in…get some coffee, grab your networking guys…and let’s talk!
It’s really important to learn all you can before you decide to install Wordpress MU. There are some decisions to be made at installation that can really rock your world on the back end if you don’t choose wisely.
One of your first decisions to consider is hosting. Are you going to house WPMU on your server or pay for space somewhere? Be sure you look at monthly fees not just for hosting, but for bandwith, uploads/downloads, etc. There’s a lot you can do with WPMU, but make sure you won’t wind up paying to do it.
Here are instructions for installing WPMU on several different host sites.
Want experienced, paid tech support whenever you need it? Check these guys out!
In my district, we loaded WPMU on one of our servers. While this saved us from paying any fees, it did mean that we had to provide ALL of the technical support for the platform. That basically consists of me and my network director (for major changes). This is not unwieldy at the moment because the large majority of our population doesn’t use blogs (We use First Class as our email client and our teachers use their built in web pages for digital communication). If your district blogs heavily, handling training and support could become quite cumbersome.
Once you’ve decided WHERE you’re going to house your installation, you have one more decision to make…and this one can be a doozie. Are you using subdomains or subfolders? The difference can most easily be seen in the resulting blog URLs – for example:
Subdomain URL – kestes.bisdblogs.com
Subfolder URL – bisdblogs.com/kestes
But the URL isn’t the only difference. There are a lot of backend issues that can spring up with subdomains when operating WMPU. I would like to tell you what they are, but we went with a subfolder installation and didn’t experience those issues. However, not wanting to leave you resourceless…here
- Start at pg. 3 here – Installing WPMU PDF
- SEOmoz.org info on subdomains vs. subfolders with microsites
- WPMU Support Forum posts regarding subdomains vs. subfolders
You will need to learn all about the Wildcard DNS options if you’re working with subdomains.
The rest is really not that difficult with the help of the people who run your servers. Being open source software, there are a lot of people who work on this code and documentation is in good supply. The WPMU forums are also a great place to ask for help. You can find them HERE.
Some tips:
- You can set your WPMU to only allow registration from certain email domains (only people with a burlesonisd.net email can create blogs on our system). Students are allowed to get usernames (A teacher emails me and I remove the restriction for that class period or the day if it’s multiple class periods). If the kids have Gaggle, they can get a blog username as I’ve added that email domain to the white list. THEN…the kids can surf to their teacher’s blog and use the Add Author widget box to add themselves as contributors to the teacher’s blog. This can all be done on the back end as well if necessary.
- Be sure to download the New Blog Defaults plugin so that you can set the parameters for all new blogs created on your site. I STRONGLY recommend this for the comment moderation option alone – but it does so much more!
Themes
Once you’ve got your installation up and running…you’re going to want to customize your blog (and so are your users!) There are certainly a TON of themes available on the internet for free download. But not all themes are the same…so you’ll want to be careful about what you upload. Here are some tips when it comes to themes:
- Don’t go too crazy and upload 200 themes. The Theme Stats plugin will let you track which themes are being used and which aren’t. Get rid of unused themes and replace them with new ones. Don’t waste space on themes no one uses.
- Themes can be assigned to specific blogs. This will allow you to have a special theme for the main blog pages that no one else can use. You can also assign custom themes to specific user blogs to preserve their individual use of that specific theme.
- Not all themes are widget-ready. A theme that is not widget ready will have hard-coded sidebar functions (recent posts, archives, categories). A widget-ready theme will allow your user to drag widgets to the sidebars to customize which functions they want to display and the order in which they are displayed.
- Some themes come with hard-coded elements that cannot be altered without editing the css or index.php code. Often this is an “About Me” section. While administrators have the right to give end-users theme editing privileges, I wouldn’t recommend it. I usually go in (if I find a theme like that) and edit the code before uploading the theme so that it either draws information from the user’s profile or settings, or I delete the code completely. This requires some knowledge of coding html and php.
- There are several themes that allow end users to upload their own header images. These are really popular with my teachers.
- I have a standing policy that any free theme a teacher finds, I will upload provided that it is school appropriate and doesn’t require a lot of back end coding. They love being able to send me themes or links – and I’ve built up a great collect of resources.
I use Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 as my ftp client and file editor. I also use Photoshop CS3 as my graphic editor, but editing and uploading themes can pretty much be done with any text editor/graphic editor.
Help for Theme use, editing, and creation:
- Using Themes
- Designing and Developing Your Own Themes
- Theme Compatibility by Wordpress Versions
- CSS Design and Layout
- How To Create A WordPress Theme
- Make your Own Wordpress Theme by Fauzi Mohd Darus
- Ryan Boren’s Anatomy of a Theme
- Moshu’s Visual Anatomy of a WP v1.5 Theme
- Chris J. Davis’ Secrets of WP Theming
- Dissection of a WordPress Theme
- Design your First WordPress Theme
- How to convert your XHTML/CSS Based Design to a Wordpress Theme
- How to create a WordPress Template or Theme tutorial
- WordPress is Not PHP – Template Files
- WordPress is PHP
A few Theme sites to get you started:
- http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
- http://wordpresstemplates.name/
- http://www.amazingwordpressthemes.com/
- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/
- http://wordpressthemesbase.com/
- http://dzineblog.com/2008/12/45-excellent-free-wordpress-templates.html
- http://topwpthemes.com/
- http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/01/28/13-premium-like-wordpress-themes-that-are-free-and-stunning.html
Plugins
The best part of WPMU (for me) is the built in ability to accept a plethora of plugins that add incredible functionality to your blogs/admin area/etc. And it is in the Plugin area that WPMU differs greatly from Wordpress. The WPMU installation has two plugin folders; a regular plugin folder and an MU plugin folder. While the majority of Wordpress plugins DO work in MU…you will run into a few that don’t. You can see which ones are NOT compatible HERE.
Plugin folder – put plugins here that you want to use for the admin blog only OR put plugins here that you want to activate and control yourself using Plugin Commander or a similar control plugin.
MU Plugin folder – put plugins here that you want to automatically activate for every blog. Some MU plugins require that they be put into this folder, so be sure to always read the installation info in the plugin zip file.
Before I get into a list of some useful plugins for a WPMU installation, here’s what others have said about the plugin status in WPMU:
- Thoughts by Techxplorer – Using Plugins in Wordpress MU
- WPMU Tutorials – The MU-Plugins Folder
- Thinking in Wordpress – Wordpress MU Plugins Installation, sitewide plugin vs. per blog plugin
Where to get Plugins:
- Wordpress Plugins from Wordpress.org
- Wordpress Plugin Database
- The 2008 WPMU Plugin Contest
- WP Dude tells you How to Find Wordpress Plugins
WPMU Plugins – Must haves:
- WPMU Tutorials’ list of the Top 10 WPMU Site Admin Plugins
- Anarcy Media Player – insert audio and video easily into posts and pages! Be sure to read the help documentation!
- Next Gen Gallery – add galleries and albums, and slideshows! You can embed galleries or pics right from the WPMU Post edit screen. Be sure to teach your teachers how to use PIXResizer to keep upload sizes down and prevent overloading your available storage space!
- WPMU Plugin Manager – activate and deactivate plugins globally (this feature is included in the newest version of WPMU). Also allows you to set whether or not end-users can turn a plugin on or off in their plugin menu.
- Askimet – Note: I emailed the plugin creator directly and got permission to use ONE Askimet API Key for our whole site. You’ll have to ask, but they are kind and will work with you. Then I had to follow the directions to hardcode the key into the plugin php file so that every blog created was protected from spam.
- Subscribe 2 – allows users to sign up and receive email notification of a blog update. Comes with a sidebar widget.
- WP Authors - Allows bloggers with a username and password to add themselves to your blog. This is what we use for student contributors to our teacher blogs.
- WP Author Login MC – allows users to put a login box in their side bar (replaces the Meta Widget)
- Wordpress MU Blog Categories – Set up categories to assign people’s blogs to (by campus, by grade level, etc.) BE CAREFUL – Once you run the plugin you cannot change the categories (unless you go into the MySQL database and change it). I wish this plugin did subcategories (so we could do grade levels at each school) but it doesn’t right now. Am hoping som wizard of the Wordpress World will do that for free!
- Podpress – if you podcast or would like to start this is a must have. Lets you set up your stream, customize all your info and graphics for iTunes, and will walk you through getting your feed on iTunes. GREAT!
- WP Status Notifier – A necessary plugin if you have student bloggers. Every time they submit a post for review and approval – the blog owner gets an email!
- Email Users – Lets the Site Admin send emails to all blog owners. Allows you to choose who to send to or send to all.
- New Blog Defaults plugin – Does what it says – lets you set the default settings for all new blogs on your site – worth it for being able to turn comment moderation on AUTOMATICALLY when a new blog is created. Too many teachers forget to do that on their own and then there’s no moderation of the comments (or comment spam!)
- WPMU LDAP Plugin – Use your LDAP with WPMU! I haven’t tried this yet but I am dying to know if it works. If I have time this summer to implement I’ll post about it.
- Z-Space Upload Quotas – Z-Space Uload Quotas allow a site administrator to set the upload quota of a per-user basis, as well as providing quota usage details to blog admins on their Dashboard (or anywhere else you want it).
Also of interest:
- BuddyPress – turn your WPMU installation into a social network!
- BB Press – add a discussion forum to your blog!
- Wordpress Wiki – add wiki capabilities to your blog!
Users
It’s very important that you understand user roles before you start assigning them to your end users. It only takes one mistake to give a vindictive, inquisitive, or bumbling user the power to take down your site.
Learn about User Roles HERE.
In my district, we do not give students any role above Contributor. You will really want to discuss how much publishing/editing access you want to give to your end-users! Does your Acceptable Use Policy cover blogging? If not…why not? If you’re considering blogging….consider revamping your AUP to include the addition of new technology like blogging. Better to be prepared.
Training
Don’t reinvent the wheel…let these guys help you train your staff with resources, tutorials, how-to’s and hacks!
The Wordpress Codex Remember the user blogs are the same as a Wordpress blog so go crazy with all of these easy how-to’s and screen shot laden tutorials!
Wordpress Tutorials – from one of the friendly faces in the WPMU forums, Andrea, this site offers lots of help for those wanting to learn to use WPMU from Site Administrator to User.
Wordpress TV – Woot! Mulitmedia Wordpress Goodness!
135+ Ultimate Round Up of Wordpress Tutorials – from Instantshift.com
Leave me some comment love if you’ve got a great resource I need to add, have a question, or if you have a topic you’d like me to add to this page!
Examples
Teacher Blog with Student Contributors – Once Upon A Time
BISD and WOISD (School Disticts)
Le Monde (French Newspaper)
Find more at the WPMU Showcase
Entries(RSS)