Anyone using Wordpress MU?

[odysseus]

I just installed MU on a domain I had laying around that I figured would be good for hosting multiple blogs. The install went fine, and I'm wondering if anyone has any particular plugins they have found to be particularly useful for a MU install.

I'm finding MU to be a little more different than I had expected from regular WP in that some of the flexibility I like is not inherently there. I'll have to get used to running everything from a central admin, and having theme changes affect blogs site-wide. If you are running MU, what kind of things have you found streamline your work flow?

Thanks for any advice.

[sunfunbill]

I'm sure you already know about this page, but if not here it is.

http://wpmudev.org/plugins.php

I bet your the only one here using MU.

[odysseus]

Thanks for the link, but yeah, I just got done cruising that page. Unfortunately, the documentation on WPMU is pretty crummy, and most of the comments for most of those plugins aren't very promising. There are a few I'm going to play with tomorrow, however. It looks like I'll have to spend a day trying to break stuff to see what works and what doesn't. I think once I get the hang of it, I'll be able to really build some nice, niche focused blogs fairly quickly.

[Cozy Monica]

The program sounded pretty enticing until I heard that changing a template makes changes across the board. Who wants blogs that all look the same?

[balls_deep]

Originally posted by Cozy Monica
The program sounded pretty enticing until I heard that changing a template makes changes across the board. Who wants blogs that all look the same?

someone trying to build a social network of some sort

[Cozy Monica]

Ahhhh hahaha, I was still in my porno frame of mind.

I can see setting up a social network of sorts with a blog system, for sure.

But I had heard people mention using it to run a large system of splogs etc. instead of using free blog providers, or using a different install of wordpress for each one.

However, it doesn't sound like it would work so well if the templates all match.

[crockett]

Are you just using MU because you want to build a bunch of blogs or are you trying to build a blogger community?

If you are trying to build a community then yea MU is your best bet.

If it's because you just want a bunch of blogs, just shell out the $140 and buy Blogs Organizer.

It's well worth the money and you will save way more than that in time. I've built 10 basic blogs in the last 2 hours using BO. Once I finish them off with custom templates and add my initial trades I won't have to touch them again other than to add or delete trades.

You can set up 100's of blogs using RSS feeds (see my siggy) and spend your time building other sites or relaxing. You can't get any easier than that.

[odysseus]

Thanks for the input guys. My intent isn't to build a community site or anything. Just wanted to be able to put together good, Well SEO'd feeder blogs rather quickly. Since I'm mostly making feeder blogs on this site, the theme similarity thing isn't much of an issue. I can hack a WP theme fairly quickly and am really comfortable with it's template tag system, so I'm thinking the thing to do might be to find about 50 themes I really like, make duplicates of them, and spend a weekend "niche focusing" the duplicates.

I had considered Blogs Organizer at one point, but have thus far decided against it. See, the thing I'm doing is making well SEO'd feeder blogs. I know wordpress, and a wee little bit of PHP, so the learning curve is expected to be low. I don't use RSS feeds to update any of my blogs, and while I understand the value of having a mass amount of blogs, and automating the process as much as possible, I have never been able to wrap my head around the splog thing. Perhaps it's because of my early failures with TGP. That's not to say that all of my blogs are Pulitzer prize winners, just that I prefer to keep the updates being done somewhat manually with original text written by a human.

The main thing I'm having a little difficulty with is the damn plugin thing. No real way for me to know what works and what doesn't due to the crappy documentation. I thiink I've found a good stats plugin, and as I play around, I'll be sure to note which plugins work and which act funny in case anyone has similar problems in the future.

[theviking]

Originally posted by odysseus
I thiink I've found a good stats plugin, and as I play around, I'll be sure to note which plugins work and which act funny in case anyone has similar problems in the future.

I've been running a couple of innstalls with MU now for a few months.
This is the plugins i am using, and they all works fine:
-Akismet
-All in One SEO Pack
-Chicklet Creator
-Samsarin PHP Widget
-WP-Autoblog

Don't activate the plugins in the main admin, but activate them for every single blog you make. The same goes for the themes.

Good luck

[theviking]

Originally posted by crockett
I've built 10 basic blogs in the last 2 hours using BO. Once I finish them off with custom templates and add my initial trades I won't have to touch them again other than to add or delete trades.

Well, the same goes for MU.
You can install blogs every 2 minutes, but to customize them takes a bit more time.

I know BO is a great tool, but there are only a few templates available, and they all cost money (so do the software)...IMO you have a lot more flexibility with MU then with BO, but if youre main reason is to chunk out blogs fastest as possible..sure, BO is the best.

(The linkbuilding and submissions still takes most of the time...)

[odysseus]

Thanks for the input, Viking. I tested All in one since that's one of my favorite plugins and yes it works fine. Firestats seems to be working well also as a good stats plugin. I'll take a look at that PHP plugin you mentioned. I was thinking of looking for a plugin like exec-php or something.

[crockett]

Originally posted by odysseus
Thanks for the input guys. My intent isn't to build a community site or anything. Just wanted to be able to put together good, Well SEO'd feeder blogs rather quickly. Since I'm mostly making feeder blogs on this site, the theme similarity thing isn't much of an issue. I can hack a WP theme fairly quickly and am really comfortable with it's template tag system, so I'm thinking the thing to do might be to find about 50 themes I really like, make duplicates of them, and spend a weekend "niche focusing" the duplicates.

I had considered Blogs Organizer at one point, but have thus far decided against it. See, the thing I'm doing is making well SEO'd feeder blogs. I know wordpress, and a wee little bit of PHP, so the learning curve is expected to be low. I don't use RSS feeds to update any of my blogs, and while I understand the value of having a mass amount of blogs, and automating the process as much as possible, I have never been able to wrap my head around the splog thing. Perhaps it's because of my early failures with TGP. That's not to say that all of my blogs are Pulitzer prize winners, just that I prefer to keep the updates being done somewhat manually with original text written by a human.

The main thing I'm having a little difficulty with is the damn plug in thing. No real way for me to know what works and what doesn't due to the crappy documentation. I think I've found a good stats plug-in, and as I play around, I'll be sure to note which plug ins work and which act funny in case anyone has similar problems in the future.

I think he offered a trial version of BO but I may be mistaken.

Anyway BO is fine right out of the box for SEOed sites. It needs no mods for proper page titles ect..ect.. It's all done with the templates which are extremely easy to make.

In fact I build a lot of blogs to promote specific sites, when I build these types of blogs, I just use a typical FHG to make my template with.

In regards to the RSS feeds, that's the best advantage of BO.. You can build RSS generated blogs and never touch them other than to add new trades, or you can write your own posts.

It has a built in link trading system that allow A>B>C trades and a lot of other features. I'm telling you from experience that you can't beat BO in ease of use for posting to multiple blogs.

I know you said you decided against BO but man if you used it I think you would be glad you did. I tried the MU route and it's just not that good IMO.

[Cozy Monica]

Blog Organizer definitely sounds like an awesome program... it's something I'm putting on my list of things to check out.

[crockett]

Originally posted by theviking
Well, the same goes for MU.
You can install blogs every 2 minutes, but to customize them takes a bit more time.

I know BO is a great tool, but there are only a few templates available, and they all cost money (so do the software)...IMO you have a lot more flexibility with MU then with BO, but if youre main reason is to chunk out blogs fastest as possible..sure, BO is the best.

(The linkbuilding and submissions still takes most of the time...)

The templates are extreemly easy to make.. It's almost the same as setting up a TGP template. You can use basic HTML or full CSS.. I build a lot of templates just using FHG's.

This is a blog I built from a FHG.. haven't finished the site yet.. still need to do a little adjusting with the CSS file and install the trade script for the toplist.

link

[odysseus]

I have to say, I hadn't thought of building wp themes from FHG's. I really like the way that the site leads in the sponsor. That is something I could see working, and is quite different from the dime a dozen splogs out there.

[trulymadly]

I use both BO and WP. Both has its strong points. The best thing I like about BO is you can make a blog easily in any directory of any website you are running already and that is how I mainly use it for. No need to set up another database etc etc, just upload like 11 files to the directory and away you go. Template wise, its just as easy to make your own with your existing site. Almost like a simply copy and paste operation and fill in a few variable. I think the price is a steal and yes I used the free trail version before I bought it.

It is true that for a proper blog, it might not be as powerful as a WP blog with an arsenal of plugins but believe it or not, the text editor in BO is much better. Try typing in scripts or embedding flash in standard WP text editor and you will see what I mean.

Oh, the author of the script support is excellent and he helped me a lot a lot and very quickly too

[crockett]

Originally posted by odysseus
I have to say, I hadn't thought of building wp themes from FHG's. I really like the way that the site leads in the sponsor. That is something I could see working, and is quite different from the dime a dozen splogs out there.

lol yea but not now that I posted it..

[odysseus]

Originally posted by crockett
lol yea but not now that I posted it..

Well it is a good idea, just a bummer I didn't think of it first, lol. Don't worry, I'm not the type to rip off another's hard work.