[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Yes, it definitely is.

FWIW, i just activated it on a site I’m working on and it went fine. Barring some stuff on the main page that could be my fault…

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Awesome, thanks. I’ll try both and see which one I like.

Although – for some themes one may be better than the other anyway. Hmmm.

Lots of meat to chew on here. Will let you know when I come up for air.

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

I’d definitely backup the database first.

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Dare I say it’s fabulous? WOW.

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Even still, it gives an easy to understand overview of the new themes.

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

You are my favorite person right now. I was looking for a theme on the new framework, and HERE IT IS!

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Um, actually, if you use a multi-site plugin you should be able to do what you want. (I admit, I skimmed, but that’s what I got out of it…) Some edits might be required so they don’t share users.

“will it be possible for every member to have their blog integrated into the main site? I don’t like how when they register a blog it kicks them to what looks like Kubrick or w/e the default MU theme is.”

Again, been done a lot, answered plenty. sue the more_blog_defaults plugin or simply replace the ugly default theme with one of your choosing (in a folder called default). don’t enable any other theme and they won’t be able to choose any different, plus get the one you want on setup.

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

I know in the past, Unfiltered MU has been working just dandy. Only recently have people found any bugs, but no one’s been able to narrow it down and let the dev of the plugin know about it so he can fix it.

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

If you’re just looking to post video code, there’s plenty of video embed plugins for regular WordPress that work just fine in MU.

this is one I use often:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-video-plugin/

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

It’s more a question can those plugins handle BuddyPress. Some of them will show the same BuddyPress on each Site, some you’ll be able to have a different Buddypress on each Site.

You will have to TRY IT.

[@andrea_r Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

Yeah, this’ll do it on any other blog theme. Like member blogs, for example.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

“Allow new registrations

– Disabled

– Enabled. Blogs and user accounts can be created.

– Only user account can be created.

– Only logged in users can create new blogs.”

See the one that says “Only user account can be created.”? Check it. Save.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

I looked, it’s not just blank but a white screen. that means a php error.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

Are you using DeannaS’s blog defaults plugin? It has an options page. The default new theme section box is at the bottom.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

“Member blogs come up, but each new member would have to configure their own widgets.

I’d like members to be able to join and have everything set up for them. “

this comes up under basic WPMU blog defaults, and is covered extensively over in that forum. there’s even 2 plugins available to set blog defaults.

with widgets it’s a little different – if you don’t want them to change anything, don’t use widgets. hardcode it in the theme sidebar.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

\”it would be similar to the service offerd by wordpress.com\”

But WordPressMU does this by default when a user gets their own blog.

Getting each one to have their own *separate* BP is the issue.

Why not just stick with the one install, have each troop make their own ground and their own blog? This way they have theor own sace, but can still interact with the entire site at large.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

tangent: the house behind us is straw bale.

(By “behind” I mean a good 300 yards away down the field on the edge of the lake)

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

http://buddydress.com

There’s two.

And there’s a skeleton member theme here to start your own theme from.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

” so we’re left with two choices: 1) Switch to WPMU/BP or 2) Install WPMU/BP in a subdirectory.

My first question is this: Am I right about our two choices above?”

Yes.

Switching the whole thing over to WPMU is actually not so bad. The biggest worry there is plugins. Depending on what ones they are, and which ones are a dealbreaker, you will need to test them somewhere ahead of time before even deciding which option to pick.

posts, comments, users, the theme itself and ad placement – ALL those can be *exactly* the same in WPMU.

“The only drawback we have with installing WPMU/BP in a subdirectory is that we’d lose the ability to pull in BP features onto the homepage of our current site such as recent blog activity, avatars, etc. Is that correct or is there some way for the two to communicate even if on separate installs?”

Actually, you can do that. We did it here on http://wanderlustandlipstick.com, a client site. Note it’s not a BP site, but the main site is a single WP install and the WPMU part is under /blogs/. With some lightweight custom code, we pulled in avatars & recent posts to the front of the main blog.

Overall, your choices are pretty much 50/50. The big kicker here is how you want your URLs to be formed in the end.

If you want or don’t care about an extra folder name in the URL where WPMU will live, then it may be “easier” to have it as an add-on, and share databases to share users.

Personally, I’d lean towards moving the whole site to WPMU. Do the move in a dev environment, then in a low-traffic time planned ahead with full notice, make the switch to the new WPMU site (at the same URL basically).

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

Yeah, it may need some further tweaking to grab the right URL.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

Actually, I just did this on a test bed. Took maybe ten minutes.

make a copy of the home theme and move it somewhere.

rename the folder to something obvious, like bp-blog-theme.

Edit style.css and change the theme name to be Blogs instead of Home.

Delete home.php.

move the new theme back into wp-content/themes/. Activate it under Site Admin -> Themes. Go to a member blog (you have a test blog, right?), under Appearance and activate the new BLOG theme.

Give it a whirl and let me know how you make out. There’s other regular WPMU plugins to enable the theme by default on a new blog. My fave: http://wpmudev.org/project/wpmu-blog-defaults. That way the blog creation part is seamless and looks well-integrated.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 1 month ago]

Why not take a copy of the bp home theme and do the edits to make it a blog theme? Has anyone tried yet?

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Thanks for mentioning my e-book Kelly. It was written for the complete novice, and yes, even has a section on asking support to enable wildcard hosts. Some people just do not know what to ask for, or how, or even if they should.

A lot fo people like to have a reference guide broken down into tiny steps with loads of screenshots to make sure it’s done right – even if it takes them more than five minutes.

One of the *biggest* obstacles in getting BP working is making sure WPMU is installed correctly and working. This document helps with that.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 7 months ago]

@hudatoriq – and it shoudl worry you. On a shared host, you will *always* hit inodes or sql limits before you use up a tenth of bandwidth or space.

yes, I *did* get kicked off shared hosting. This was before buddypress, and I only had a couple hundred users.

If you plan on being any size, get a VPS. We not not recommend shared hosting for WPMU. Add Buddypress to it and you’re adding a lot more processing. Shared hosting will not be able to handle it.

[@andrea_r Participant 17 years, 7 months ago]

Thanks, honey.