We do have other domains, client sites, & sites under dev on the install, but I’ll leave it at those two for the mentions for now.

One question I get asked is if you can use the domain mapping and multi site plugins together on one install. Sure you can! In fact, some of our time was taken up recently by moving my personal blog which has over three thousand posts, and my mom’s blog, which also had a number of posts and attachments. Both of these were separate WordPress installs in the same server, both in subfolders.

A quick overview:

• backups. Lots and lots of backups. I backed up both databases, both wp-content folders from both sites. I also grabbed Export files from the backend using the Advanced Export plugin, because like I said above, there was a LOT of content.
• since I was already a user on the new system, I didn’t have to add myself.
• made a new Site in WPMU
• since the old site was live with traffic, and the new site needed a LOT of work that was going to be done here & there, I added a record to my computer’s hosts file to the IP of the new site. This means that after adding the Site in MU, the only person who could see it, access it, or even know about it was me. Each time I needed to go back to the old site for something, I had to un-do that hosts file edit. I tried to plan accordingly and do things in batches.
• I imported the main site domain’s posts first. We had some technical issues with uploads, so we wound up using the database backup. Good thing we’d already done this! While we were in the SQL, we cleaned out post revisions, spam comments and tables from plugins long since deleted. I like to use an interface, so I imported the entire database into a local copy of phpmyadmin. I was able to rename the database tables under the operations tab when browsing each table. Ron ran through the database changing the image upload paths, because we knew they’d change. He also imported these new tables into the new site, replacing the empty ones.
• I then checked the blog. Sure it had the default theme, but everything was now there. I moved over the themes and plugins, skipping the ones already in the new install. I did the other blog’s themes & plugins folders at the same time, since I was already logged in to the server via ssh. It was much more efficient to transfer large amounts of data this way, from one server to another.
• Once my blog was up and running, we did the same database changes to my mom’s blog. On the new site, I added her blog from the backend so we’d know what the blog ID would be. once again, I double-checked everything.
• when all seemed moved over, I went to my domain registrar and changed the DNS records to point to the new site and went to bed. in the morning, after making sure my local hosts file was adjusted to show me the live site, I checked to make sure it really was live on the new site - and it was!

My old blog was installed in a subfolder called ‘blog’ with the index file of the site calling in wp_head. This time, it’s technically the “main” blog, but to maintain links, I changed the setting under Settings -> Reading to show a different page on the front and to use the “Blogs” page to show the posts. The only extra I did was make a blank Page called blog. I still want to make a home.php page for my template to let visitors to the main domain know about other blogs under AtypicaLife.net.

Now I can add new blogs to my second site with a click of a button. The signups are closed to the public, but since some of my family members were already users, or newly added, I’ve allowed them to set up new blogs as well. Since then, we’ve started one for my oldest daughter to relate her tales from her first year at college, a group blog with recipes, and there are plans for a genealogy blog for my uncle and mom. This way, users of one blog don’t interfere with the management of another blog. I could have had a multi-author blog and strict categories, but this saves user from accidentally posting to the wrong area. They also have their own space and can change themes and play with plugins and widgets all they like.

Yes, this was quite a bit of work to get moved over, partly because of the established blogs. But? It has been SO worth it. The amount of time doing this would still be less than maintaining half a dozen separate installs of WordPress.

I’ll be going over this in detail at one of my sessions at WordCamp New York. Will I see you there?

Random Posts

• September 28, 2009 — Writing Plugins (for WP & WPMU) (2)
• July 29, 2008 — Decent VPS hosting (3)
• July 20, 2009 — Wordpress MU 2.8.2 (1)
• May 4, 2009 — Login Widget (7)
• March 1, 2009 — News for the week ending Feb 28 (2)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

We recommend using this in conjunction with Sitewide tags, then use the feed from the tags blog. Each item from the feed has a checkbox, and when selected, the post is moved over to the “Featured” column. The widget will display the featured post excerpt as well as the user’s avatar.

Screenshots:
The admin area.

The widget in action.

Currently, if you want to change some options, you will have to edit the code of the plugin. The widget is in a separate file if you wish to remove it. Also, the widget is set to display one post, but that is easily changed by editing the plugin. Find the function call and change it thusly:

<?php ra_featured_show(10); ?>

Where the number 10 is the maximum amount of posts to show. You can also use this same function if you want to hardcode it in your theme. There are also options in the code for default avatar sizes, and some CSS classes around the post and the avatar, so you can adjust them to your liking. Feel free to fold, spindle, mutilate and enjoy the heck out of it. Since we are going to WordCamp New York, we wanted to get this plugin released before then. We’ll add more options for backend configuration after we get back.

Download the plugin here.

• May 31, 2009 — ComLuv Beta (2)
• October 19, 2009 — WordCamp New York (1)
• June 23, 2009 — WP-Devel plugin (1)
• June 12, 2009 — Building a better blog host: Week 1 (4)
• June 3, 2009 — MU’ing WP (3)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: featured post, plugin, widget, wordpress, wordpressmu

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

There are two steps that need to be done to your server in order for this to work.

In Apache, there needs to be a line in the domain’s virtual hosts section as follows:

ServerName yourdomain.com
ServerAlias yourdomain.com *.yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /your/doc/root/
ServerAdmin webmaster@yourdomain.com

The Server Alias line with the *.yourdomain.com is what controls this. If you do not have access to change this, ask your webhost for support. More and more hosts are enabling this by default.

The second thing that needs to be done is adding the DNS record. Where you add it depends on your domain hosting. Basically, you need to add a line like this:

*. in A YOURIPADDRESS

These wildcards mean that any subdomain request will fall through to the WPMU install, where MU will look up the name in the database. If it finds it, it serves up the blog.

Note: if you choose the subfolder option on installation, you do not have to do either one of these steps.

• October 19, 2009 — WordCamp New York (1)
• October 17, 2009 — Make a tags page like WordPress dot com (7)
• September 24, 2009 — Changing the domain (5)
• August 19, 2009 — Getting member blog posts on the main page (12)
• August 13, 2009 — Another new release, and upcoming (6)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: apache, dns, subdomain, wildcard, wordpressmu, wpmu

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

And in a couple of those tracks, both Ron and I will be speaking. Yes, that is correct - we will be there with bells on and speaking in (at this point) three different sessions. I’ll be showcasing some WPMU-based sites that are not just free blog hosts, as well as walking through a couple of setups in a how-to. Ron will be doing one on WPMU plugins.

I know Jim Groom is going to show up (possibly with an eye patch) for the Education track and do a talk as well. It’s shaping up to be party time, that’s for sure.

Will we see you there?

• June 12, 2009 — Building a better blog host: Week 1 (4)
• June 3, 2009 — MU’ing WP (3)
• October 26, 2009 — Featured posts plugin and widget (7)
• October 26, 2009 — Enabling wildcard subdomains (7)
• October 17, 2009 — Make a tags page like WordPress dot com (7)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: wcnyc, wordcamp, wordpress, wordpressmu, wpmu

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

The biggest puzzle piece you need to know is it is mostly done through the use of a page template file. Here’s a codex link explaining what page templates are and how to make one. This means you can also do the same technique on a single WordPress blog, without the plugin mentioned below. It also works on any WordPress theme.

On a WPMU site, you will probably want to have the tag cloud appear sitewide. If you’ve already got the Sitewide tags plugin installed, most of the work has been done.

Open up your favorite code editor. If you don’t have one, just use Notepad. Put these lines at the top of the empty file:
<?php
/*
Template Name: Tags
*/
?>
The rest of the code for the page depends on your theme, so go grab the content of the page.php template file, or single.php. Paste it all under our template declaration. In this example, I’ll be using the Flexx theme I use on the main blog at HomeschoolJournal. This is also my tags blog.

Now, this next part depends on your theme. Instead of the page content, we want it to show tags results. So, we have to rip out the code that pulls the posts and replace it with the code to show tags. But, we also have to keep the styling. For many themes, this usually means there’s a div there called “main” or “content”. Rip out all the code in that div, including any calls to the sidebar. You should be left with something like this:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Tags
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div class=”content” id=”content”>

</div><!–end #content–>

<?php get_footer();  ?>

In the content div, all we have to do now is add the template tag to call the tag cloud.

<?php wp_tag_cloud('smallest=12&largest=52&orderby=count'); ?>

The wp_tag_cloud function used here has arguments included to to show the tag cloud in much larger font and order it by smallest amount of tags to largest. You can read the codex page I linked to in case you want to explore others ways to display this. Save your page template as something like tags.php or tag-cloud. (tag.php is a reserved template filename) Upload it to the theme directory of your tags blog.

We’ve made our page template, now we have to show it. Log in to the backend of your tags blog and write a new Page. Called it tags. Original, I know - yes, you can call it anything you like. You won’t need to add any content to the page, but you do need to look to the meta boxes on the right. There should be an option to choose a new page template.

If there isn’t, just switch your theme to the default and back again. It should reset thing and force WPMU to recognize the template.

Publish the new page and view your big honking sitewide tag cloud in all its glory. You may want to do some tweaking (ex: I added back a div called “post”).

If you do this, leave a comment with your link so we can all see.

• June 8, 2009 — New series starting Friday (5)
• October 26, 2009 — Enabling wildcard subdomains (7)
• October 19, 2009 — WordCamp New York (1)
• September 29, 2009 — Option Arrays (4)
• September 28, 2009 — Writing Plugins (for WP & WPMU) (2)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: how to, tag cloud, tag page, tag results, templates, wordpressmu, wpmu

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Posting to WordPress MU by Email - which, has been done, but this is more an experiment to make it way easier and automated.

Migrating a WordPress MU, WordPress or BuddyPress site from localhost to a live site - Dave does a great job with carefully explaining the step by step process.

As an added bonus, sometimes at night we get a little goofy on twitter. One thing led to another, and well, I did a little Chuck Norris on Wordpress plugin. It adds a line about Chuck Norris* in your admin area for endless amusement.

Chuck Norris Advice (46)

* Who do you think stops spam anyway? Askismet is just a cover for Chuck.

• May 21, 2009 — How to move WordpressMU (0)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chuck norris, migrate, post by email

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

These option pages can be written to save the plugin options as an array in a single record in the options table. This post is really a Part II to yesterday’s post, so I I’m going to use the Facebook Dashboard Widget options page for code samples.

In yesterday’s post I added a function that defined a whitelist array. For reference, here is the array:

$added = array( 'fdw_options' => array( 'fdw_showupdates',
'fdw_updatesfeed',
'fdw_updatesmax',
'fdw_updatesheight',
'fdw_updatesnewheight',
'fdw_updateswidth',
'fdw_shownotifications',
'fdw_notificationsfeed',
'fdw_notificationsmax',
'fdw_notificationsheight',
'fdw_notificationsnewheight',
'fdw_notificationswidth',
'fdw_showposted',
'fdw_postedfeed',
'fdw_postedmax',
'fdw_postedheight',
'fdw_postednewheight',
'fdw_postedwidth')
);

For each of the elements of the value array ( ‘fdw_showupdates’, ‘fdw_updatesfeed’, etc.) there is a corresponding field on the option form:


<select name="fdw_showupdates">
<option value="no"<?php if ( $fdw->updates_show == "no" ) { echo ' selected="selected"'; } ?>>No</option>
<option value="yes"<?php if ( $fdw->updates_show == "yes" ) { echo ' selected="selected"'; } ?>>Yes</option>
</select>


To implement as an array we need to come up with an option name. The one I chose was fb_dash_widget. To convert the field to be saved in that array I changed the name attribute to fd_dash_widget[showupdates]:


<select name="fd_dash_widget[showupdates]“>
<option value=”no”<?php if ( $fdw->updates_show == “no” ) { echo ‘ selected=”selected”‘; } ?>>No</option>
<option value=”yes”<?php if ( $fdw->updates_show == “yes” ) { echo ‘ selected=”selected”‘; } ?>>Yes</option>
</select>


If all of the controls on the option form are named fd_dash_widget[unique_element_name] they will be posted by the browser as an element in the fd_dash_widget array. Once I made that change with all of the option fields on the form I updated the whitelist filter that I added yesterday:


function fdw_whitelist($options) {
$added = array( 'fdw_options' => array( 'fb_dash_widget' ) );
$options = add_option_whitelist( $added, $options );
return $options;
}
add_filter('whitelist_options', 'fdw_whitelist');


I haven’t had a chance to test it, but I expect a similar strategy could be used with theme options pages. A final note is that Chris, the author of the Facebook Dashboard Widget, left me a comment. So, I’ve been in contact with him and will be sending my revisions to him. At some point in the coming weeks, he should be releasing a new version.

• September 28, 2009 — Writing Plugins (for WP & WPMU) (2)
• September 26, 2009 — Community Service (3)
• October 19, 2009 — WordCamp New York (1)
• October 17, 2009 — Make a tags page like WordPress dot com (7)
• August 2, 2009 — Wordpress MU Theme Stats (3)

© ahome for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: how to, Plugins, wordpress, wordpress mu, wpmu

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

After Andrea installed the plugin, our daughter tried it out and found that the options page would not save any settings. I’ve fixed that issue in a few WP plugins in the last few months. It is a fairly straight forward process:

Search through the plugin code and look for functions being added to the the admin_menu hook. In this plugin it was around line 640:

add_action('admin_menu', 'fdw_menus');

Now, I needed to find the fdw_menus function. In this case, it was right above the hook:

function fdw_menus() {
if (current_user_can('manage_options')) {
if (function_exists('add_options_page')) {
add_options_page(__('Facebook Dashboard Widget', 'fdw'), __('Facebook Dashboard Widget', 'fdw'), 8, __FILE__, 'fdw_options');
}
}
}

What I was looking for in that function was the function name that WP/WPMU calls for the admin page. In this case it’s fdw_options. That function can be found at about line 385. The first few lines are

function fdw_options() {
global $fdw;
?>
<div class="wrap">
<form method="post" action="options.php" style="margin-bottom: 60px;">
<h2><?php echo __('Facebook Dashboard Widget Options', 'fdw') ?></h2>
<?php wp_nonce_field('update-options') ?>


There are two changes that I made in this code. I commented out the call to wp_nonce_field (It’s okay to completely remove it because the settings_field that I mention next adds its own wp_nonce_field). And, I added a call to settings_fields passing the name of the option page function as a parameter:

function fdw_options() {
global $fdw;
?>
<div class="wrap">
<form method="post" action="options.php" style="margin-bottom: 60px;">
<?php settings_fields('fdw_options'); ?>
<h2><?php echo __('Facebook Dashboard Widget Options', 'fdw') ?></h2>
<?php //wp_nonce_field('update-options') ?>


There’s another change that needs to be made. For this part, I looked through the form HTML of the options page for hidden element called page_options. I found it at about line 590:

What I needed from this is the comma separated list that is the page_options’ value (fdw_showupdates, fdw_updatesfeed, …). I used that list in a new function that I added to the bottom of the plugin:

function fdw_whitelist($options) {
$added = array( 'fdw_options' => array( 'fdw_showupdates',
'fdw_updatesfeed',
'fdw_updatesmax',
'fdw_updatesheight',
'fdw_updatesnewheight',
'fdw_updateswidth',
'fdw_shownotifications',
'fdw_notificationsfeed',
'fdw_notificationsmax',
'fdw_notificationsheight',
'fdw_notificationsnewheight',
'fdw_notificationswidth',
'fdw_showposted',
'fdw_postedfeed',
'fdw_postedmax',
'fdw_postedheight',
'fdw_postednewheight',
'fdw_postedwidth', )
);
$options = add_option_whitelist( $added, $options );
return $options;
}


The $options parameter to the function is an array where the array key of each element is the name of the option page that the element applies to. The form in this plugin is fdw_options. The value of the array element is an array of option fields on the option page. So, I just converted the comma separated list into an array of values. The call to add_option_whitelist merges the $options parameter and the array I just created.

The last thing to do is hook my function into WP/WPMU. The filter for this is whitelist_options

add_filter('whitelist_options', 'fdw_whitelist');


After those changes the plugin works in both WordPress and WordPress MU (only tested with 2.8.X).

• September 29, 2009 — Option Arrays (4)
• September 26, 2009 — Community Service (3)
• June 3, 2009 — MU’ing WP (3)
• October 19, 2009 — WordCamp New York (1)
• October 17, 2009 — Make a tags page like WordPress dot com (7)

© ahome for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: how to, Plugins, wordpress, wordpress mu, wp-wmpu merge, wpmu

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

The reason I chose to revisit that particular project was that the discussion of the code base merge between WordPress and WordPress MU resurfaced again. The merge was announced about 4 months ago. About once a month a conversation sparks about the uncertain outcome of the merge. What’s unfortunate about those conversations is that most of the code merge has already been done.

The 3 significant things remaining to be done to merge the two code bases are:

1. Implement a common installation process
2. Implement a common registration process
3. Develop the ability to turn on multi-blogs via option settings

The link below is to an archive containing a slightly modified version of WordPress MU. I added 2 check boxes to the install screen:

If you do not check the “Use the existing WordPress blog as the main blog”, the installer will create a standard WordPress MU 2.8.5-dev install. The install should function the same as WordPress MU 2.8.5-dev from trac.

If you do check the “Use the existing WordPress blog as the main blog”, provide the database details for a standard WordPress 2.8.4 blog. The resulting install should function the same as a standard WordPress MU 2.8.5-dev from trac install. Note that the main blog’s upload directory will remain /wp-content/uploads.

The Terms of Use checkbox is there to remind the person installing that this is a development version. Please practice safe hex by using this on a test site. WordPress Multi Blog (37)

• September 28, 2009 — Writing Plugins (for WP & WPMU) (2)
• September 29, 2009 — Option Arrays (4)
• June 3, 2009 — MU’ing WP (3)
• October 19, 2009 — WordCamp New York (1)
• August 2, 2009 — Wordpress MU Theme Stats (3)

© ahome for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: wordpress, wordpress mu, wp-wmpu merge, wpmu

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

The domain name is actually stored in numerous places in the database, as well as one line in wp-config.php. Every single one of these will need to be changed.

Before you do anything, backup. Go to phpMyAdmin, select your database, and choose Export. Save it to your computer. We’ll be making a copy of this and working on the copy. This way, if anything goes wrong, we still have our backup.

The database information - table structure, content, everything really - is stored in a file with the extension .sql. This can be read and edited in a simple text editor. If you’re a Windows user, try NotePad++ instead of the default Notepad.

Simple do a find and replace on olddomain.com to newdomain.com. Save your copy.

Method #1:
- on the live site, verify you have that backup, then drop all the tables in the database.
- import your edited sql file with the new domain name in it. (phpMyAdmin -> Import tab.)
- edit wp-config.php with the new domain name
- change the DNS records for the domain so the new one points to the right spot on your server if you haven’t done it already.

Method #2:
- create an entirely new database. Use an existing db user & password, or create a new one - your choice, as long as they have ALL privileges on this database.
- import your edited sql file with the new domain name in it. (phpMyAdmin -> Import tab.)
- edit wp-config.php with the new domain name AND the new database name, plus the new db user & pass if you did this.
- make sure your new domain is pointing to the right spot.

Do whatever you like with the old domain.

• May 21, 2009 — How to move WordpressMU (0)
• April 27, 2009 — Pardon the dust (6)
• October 26, 2009 — Enabling wildcard subdomains (7)
• October 19, 2009 — WordCamp New York (1)
• October 17, 2009 — Make a tags page like WordPress dot com (7)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: change, database, domain, edit, move, name, wordpressmu, wpmu

Need real genuine helpful support? MU Support.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh