WordPress MU 1.3.2 has been released and is a critical update including a “security update that brings together the fixes in WordPress 2.3.2 and a number of critical WordPress MU specific security problems”.

This release should be seen as an urgent upgrade.

Donncha states in his blog post that the “details of the fixes will be posted to the WordPress MU forum next week to give administrators time to upgrade”.

Before upgrading, check this post in the MU Forum if you are using any plugins in your current installation that uses options.php to save it’s options. You must now whitelist those options using the new add_option_update_handler() API.

Download WordPress MU HERE

(read this forum post for the best instructions on how to upgrade your WordPress MU installation.)

The 1.3 version of WordPress MU is finally released – much to the pleasure of MU users everywhere. On his blog, Donncha O Caoimh announced that this new version of WordPress MU includes:

• Better admin controls for the signup page. It can be disabled in various ways.
• Upload space functions have been fixed.
• The signup form is now hidden from search engines which will help avoid certain types of spamming.
• Profile page now allows you to select your primary blog.
• Database tables are now UTF-8 from the start.
• If you’re using virtual hosts, the main blog doesn’t live at /blog/ any more.
• The WordPress importer now assigns posts to other users on a blog.

I downloaded and installed version 1.3-RC for WordPress MU this week. Download it here, if you want – - or wait for the final release to be coming soon!

Changes:

The main blog of the site doesn’t have to live at /blog/ if you’re using virtual hosts. #409

WordPress importer can now assign posts to other users. #435

The importer shouldn’t error on the foreach() loop when there’s only one author now #405

Privacy mode of new blog is stored properly. #423

Various cleanup patches by ktlee and momo360modena.
momo360modena gave the wpmu-* admin pages a nice facelift!

XMLRPC posting and the signup page are now disabled by default. They can be activated in the wpmu-options.php page. It is possible to change the xmlrpc setting for a particular blog by editing it via the wpmu-blogs.php page.

Individual blog’s upload quota can be edited on the edit blog page too.

Using the WPMU SiteWide Feed plugin by IT Damager, it is possible for you to provide a site-wide feed in your WordPress MU community. This plugin generates three RSS 2.0 feeds comprising of posts, comments, and pages across all blogs on your WPMU powered site.

Using this plugin in WordPress MU not only allows you to provide a site-wide feed, but also gives you some nice configurations in the administration panel, as well. If you, your readers and your users would like to see what is being posted and discussed within your community – this plugin will provide you with a full feed that will do just that.

You can find the documentation for the WPMU SiteWide Feed Plugin here – and the developer has verified that it works with subdirectory AND VHOST (subdomain) installations of WordPress MU.

Do you run a WordPress MU site? Are you thinking of running a WordPress MU site? Do you know anyone who runs a WordPress MU site?

This post is about WordPress MU – could ya tell?

If you answered yes to any, or all, of the above questions – then run.. don’t walk – to download Farms Really Big Theme Pack

Just like the title of the theme pack suggests… it’s REALLY BIG!

In Farms own words…”Here’s my latest pack.. and it’s a whopper. It contains all the themes from the last pack, updated with Nevin’s fixes and a stack more besides. All in all there are 67 themes, all Widget compatible, all tested and in use of popular WPMU sites…”

Get ‘em while they’re hot (and they ARE hot!)

There are several Widget Plugins that community members have developed for WordPress MU – here’s a rundown on some of the nicer ones:

BlogRush Widget for WordPress MU
Developer: Elad Salomons
The plugin gets extracted into the mu-plugins directory on your web server. Each time the widget is shown, the blogger earns one credit point and for each credit point earned, one of the bloggers posts is shown on some other blog. One can also earn points by referring bloggers to the program (like a pyramid scam but no money is exchanged). Don’t know what BlogRush is? Watch this instructional video to learn all about it.

WidgetBox Widget for WordPress MU
Developer:Incsub and Ring of Blogs
allows your users to use up to 9 Widgetbox widgets in their sidebars… just drop it into mu-plugins and watch as your blogs start to become populated with Tetris, PacMan, radio stations and glittertext, and more!

As anyone who as tried to run WordPress MU on a web server knows, you need to have a hosting partner who has the capability of handling the server requirements to run WordPress MU. I’m referring not only to the Apache, MYSQL and PHP requirements:

* PHP 4.2 or greater
* MySQL 4.0 or greater
* The mod_rewrite Apache module

I’m also referring to the VHost and DNS configurations that need to be made in the httpd.conf file at the server level. You will need this configuration if you intend to use the subdomain feature with WordPress MU. You can use either the subdomain or subdirectory feature in WordPress MU. This refers to the URL of each of the user blogs within your WordPress MU network:

• Subdirectory Method: http://yourdomain.com/user
• Subdomain Method: http://user.yourdomain.com

The Subdomain Method is the most popular, and most recommended (most MU plugins are created for use with the subdomain method).