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.)

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• 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.
• A taxonomy sync script is included in mu-plugins but commented out. It hasn’t been tested much but if your site has many hundreds of blogs it might be worth spending some time on a test server. Replicate normal traffic patterns and see if the server can cope with the upgrade process. If not, then look at the sync script, uncomment it and iterate over all your blogs with a script.

Extensive documentation is being included in the WordPress MU Codex – I’m thrilled to see documentation being included in the Codex on MU!

Donncha also stated that this thread in the WordPress MU forums is worth keeping your eye on, in regards to this new version and any problems that users are reporting.

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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.

Developers! get_blog_option() will never return the string “falsevalue” again. It will return the bool value false instead.
Version numbers look more like WP.org’s ones to aid plugin compatibility.

Misc bug fixes.

You can read more in the thread in the WordPress MU Support Forum

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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.

I recently implemented this plugin on a client project I completed. In their custom WordPress MU theme, I added this code bit to aggregate the site wide feed into their front page:

<?php // Get RSS Feed(s)
include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
$rss = fetch_rss('http://writes-about.com/wpmu-feed/');
$maxitems = 6;
$items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, $maxitems);

?>

<?php if (empty($items)) echo '<ul><li>No items</li></ul>';
else
foreach ( $items as $item ) : ?>
<ul><li><a href='<?php echo $item['link']; ?>' 
title='<?php echo $item['title']; ?>'>
<?php echo $item['title']; ?></a> by <a href='<?php echo $item['link']; ?>'><?php echo $item['dc']['creator']; ?></a></li>
<li class="excerpt"><?php echo $item['description']; ?></li>
<li class="story">&raquo; <a href="<?php echo $item['link']; ?>">Complete Story</a></li></ul>

<?php endforeach; ?>

Pretty nifty!

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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!)

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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!

Add A Blog Recent Posts Widget for WordPress MU
Developer: skcsknathan001
Adds a sidebar widget to let you display Recent Posts from a single blog within your WordPress MU network of user blogs. Directly access the database [by its ID] instead of RSS.

List All Widget for WordPress MU
Developer: skcsknathan001
Adds sidebar widgets to let you display new/ updated/ active blogs from WordPressMU.

Got more? Do share!

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2007 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

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* 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).

If you do not have access to your Apache configuration files, you will need to ask your web hosting provider to configure the file for you. A good host will make the change for you at no extra cost to you. Here’s what you need to tell them in order for them to get the configuration right:

Make sure a line like the following appears in your httpd.conf
LoadModule rewrite_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_rewrite.so

In the directive of your virtual host, look for this line
"AllowOverride None"
and change it to
"AllowOverride FileInfo Options"

In the section of the config file for your host there will be a line defining the hostname. You need to add the following if you want virtual hosts to work properly:
ServerAlias *.domain.tld

(where domain.tld is your domain name)

you must add a wildcard record to your DNS records. This usually means adding a “*” hostname record pointing at your webserver in your DNS configuration tool.

We’ve identified a few hosting companies who run WPMU successfully.

• Blogs About Hosting
• SYN Hosting
• Hosting Matters
• Media Temple
• Server Beach
• Layered Tech
• A Small Orange
• Host Gator
• Surpass Hosting

If you have a company who you KNOW is verfied as compatible with WordPress MU – leave a comment and let us know!

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2007 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

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Browse the archive of posts filed under WordPress MU.