Part 2 – New Blog Settings

Ok, so you’ve already installed WPMU and you’re able to log in (and you’ve already changed the admin password to something memorable, right? (Users > Admin, bottom of the page)).

The first thing you need to do is put New Blog Defaults in your wp-contenet/mu-plugins/ folder.  This little beauty will do several things: change the default first post category from “Uncategorized” to “Articles”, remove the wordpress.com and wordpress.org links from the Blogroll and replace them with a link to your site’s main page, and change the default permalink structure to /categroy/post-title/ among others.   The most important part here is that it places the link to your main page in the blogroll.  This will improve usability for all parties, but especially first time visitors to your site.

It’s time to put CETS Simple Dashboard in to play. Download, and place in your mu-plugins folder.

Next, you need to navigate to Site Admin -> Options.  Here, you need to change “Allow New Registrations” to Enabled (assuming you followed my instructions in part 1) and also change the text in the default first post, enable third-party plugins, and deactivate those annoying dashboard feeds thanks to Simple Dashboard.

At this point  I would also recommend Plugin Commander.  This handy little sucker goes in your /wp-plugins/ folder (with plugin-commander.php going directly in the folder, and it’s subfolder in there too).  This tool will allow you to bulk activate, bulk deactivate, and manually assign plugins to any and all blogs.  Handy if you want to enable wp-cache or something like that as a feature on all blogs.

Next time, we’re going to look at widgets, admin plugins, and some other handy plugins for your users you may want to give up.

Part 3 – Widgets, Plugins, and More Plugins (Coming Soon)

Today I’ll be writing about how to ensure a safe fresh install of WPMU.  This assumes that you know how to configure a wordpress installation and that you’re comfortable with the creation of new databases through whatever hosting service you use.  I’m going to be focusing less on technical how-to’s,  and more on pointing you to the resources and configurations that work best to secure your site.

Ideally, we’re starting fresh after a clean install of WordPress Mu (currently ver 2.6.5) and ready to upload plugins and change settings.

Part 1 – Secure Registrations

Let’s face it, if you’re reading this, you’re probably not about to break virtual ground on the next edublogs.com or talkislam.com or other major blog site.  You’re probably wanting to start one for a family, group of students, small corporate site, special interest group, or local school.  For this reason we need to understand that our user base is a known quantity. It is a group of people – a finite number of users – if you will.  This means that it will probably be within your or your fellow admin helpers ability to authorize individual blogs.

Currently, on LCHSTeachers.com, because we have someone “on the inside” and we only want those people who are known to them to be able to access it, we simply have registration disabled and comments turned off.  Anyone who wants a new blog on the sites has to request one.  If this is a feasible concept for your install, then I recommend it.  It will save you tons of spam fighting and comment heartache.

The second best solution is to use wp-reCAPTCHA and Moderate New Blogs together.  This creates an environment where you cut down as much spam registration as possible with a CAPTCHA application, and simultaneously reinforce it with a “click-to-activate” option for all new blogs created from the admin area.  You’re going to (I hope) get an email every time a new blog is created anyway, now you can choose who is and is not activated by going to Site Admin -> Blogs.

Beyond that, the minimum I would use is the wp-reCAPTCHA plugin by itself.

Part 2 Will Be: New Blog Settings

Looking at the stats I see that we’re already getting good organic search results and I believe it will only get better with time.

The site is running WordPress Mu 1.5.x and it rocks hard.  The flexibility of this thing is downright amazing.

Visual Editor is broken. So sad. Trying to get help from WordPress forums.

The other I had not.

Yesterday I received a very polite email from a gentleman asking me to remove his content from one of my blogs… and I found to my shock and horror that I had about 150 spam blogs and over 300 spam users on that domain. It was using more than 400% more of my bandwidth and disk storage than any other site on my server. I just had not been paying attention.

Moral of the story: No Mu is good Mu?

EDIT: I just want to point out that I am not going to stop using WordPress Mu.  Bofe is right (as usual), I just needed to have  it set up correctly.  I was just sharing a very surprising experience.

The following plugins are active from the start:

• akismet
• wp-cache
• wp-backup

This blog is currently running the Barthelme theme because I have other things to do than make css for a blog. I’ll get to it later.  I swear.

The site has been revived this time as a way to keep up with the actions that I take in regards to the several active projects I have going on right now.

• United Methodist Church of Russellville Website
• amandacoursey.com – Homework Blog
• MyLoganCounty.com – Community Portal for my hometown
• V5WebMarketing.com – my currently inactive business
• RussellvilleDental.net – the family business, converting to a CMS for easy updates
• the COLOR PROJECTS – currently classified projects underway

You’re welcome to follow along. My intent here is to discuss not only the stages of development of each of these projects, but also to catalog my findings on everything from WordPress Plugins to Joomla! Mambots.