WordPress MU Overview

Experimented with WordPress MU this weekend and found it to be just as powerful as they describe in managing multiple web sites. The following is an overview of the differences between WordPress MU and WordPress and assumes that you are familiar with using the standard WordPress software.

Main Menus

The following screenshot points out the differences between the two menus. With WordPress MU you will see that there is a new Site Admin menu item. This is where most site management takes place. Also for some odd reason the Links menu is renamed to Blogroll and there is no longer an Import menu item.

Site Admin Menu

The following is a tour of the sub-menu items which are sort of self-explanatory. Sort of. As I become more experienced with WordPress MU I will most likely add some setup documentation to my WordPress page for anyone that is interested as the the WordPress MU documentation is almost none existent. Here is the sub-menu slideshow:

Options Menu

The rest of the menus are pretty much the same as the standard WordPress setup although they have added the ability to delete the entire blog within the options menu:

Notes

WordPress MU does have some complications. For example, not all themes and plugins work right out of the box using WordPress MU versus the basic WordPress setup. Be prepared to spend some time fixing your theme and plugin code in order to get the desired behavior you are used to when using the standard WordPress.

When using WordPress MU one should think about creating the initial site as your central site. For example, your company intranet. This allows everyone to have a central place for news and information including the addition or deletion of web sites.

WordPress MU does allow a user, via a hyperlink, to simply create a new web site. This is much the same bahavior as creating a new post or new comment.

You can create sites by domain name (i.e. domain1.foo.com, domain2.foo.com, etc.) or by sub-directory (i.e. www.foo.com/foo1, www.foo.com/foo2, etc.). In my case, I was using the latter. At installation time you are given both choices but once making the choice, there is no option for changing your choice. Choose wisely.

It is definitely nice being able to manage all web sites with the same themes, plugins, and users.

Tags: WordPress MU

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