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Wordpress MU experiment

Jul 18th, 2008 | By knup | Category: My Feature, Wordpress, knupNET Sites

So managing a network or several network of sites that contain multiple Wordpress blogs is very tedious.  Let’s take my USportsNetwork for example.  This site currently has 20 or so sites in it and I’m in the process of increasing this to 100 or so.  That’s 20 individual Wordpress installs.  Which means every time there is a Wordpress upgrade, I have to upgrade them all. Yikes!  I have to upload plugins to each site, manage FTP accounts for each and so on.  Enter Wordpress MU…

Wordpress MU (Multiple User) is basically an extension of Wordpress.  It’s like 90% Wordpress code with a layer on top for managing multiple sites.  I figured I would give this a shot for one of my networks and see how it goes.  If all goes well – I will convert some of my other networks over to Wordpress MU.

I’ve converted about 15 sites over currently and hopefully over the next week will have the entire USN running on one Wordpress MU install.  So far…

Advantages:

  • VERY easy to spin up a new blog/site.  Just a matter of clicks.
  • Plugins all managed in one central areas and you can activate them on a site by site basis.  Very nice.
  • These blogs all share a common Users table.  Very cool!  One account that can login and manage them all.  Once I get real good at this it will be great.  Users will need one account to comment on any of my sites!  Nice!
  • Few accounts created on the server – though I do create a “parked” domain for the new sites.
  • One database!  Easier to manage.

Bad things:

  • Possible SEO issues?  I’m not sure about this but I’m wondering how Google and others will handle my sites.  Will they see them the same as they did?
  • Wordpress MU has some issues with adding a new site with a NEW domain.  It’s built perfectly for subdomains.  But with some tweaks and a plugin it does the trick.  I think :)
  • Speed?  Will my sites run slower?  Database bogged down since it’s one database?  Not sure!

That’s about it for now.  Any of you ever ran Wordpress MU? I’ll continue to report my findings as I plunge forward.

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32 comments
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  1. Dave Starr July 18th, 2008 5:38 pm :

    I think using WordPress multi-user (mu) is an excellent choice, Knup. As far as being able to hold up under larger networks, if I am not mistaken, isn’t Mu what powers WordPress.com with all those thousands and thousands of blogs? Anyway, the thought of using Mu comes to me just about every week or so now, with WordPress updates and new and cool plugins rolling out frequently. The idea of taking care of all (my few) blogs from one central point is ceretainly appelaing.

  2. btard July 28th, 2008 5:03 pm :

    it is what holds up wordpress.com and a lot of other HUGE ass networks however they have many points of redundancy and load balancing built into their network infrastructure that will stop the sluggish behavior of a database and eliminate points of failure.

  3. funnygirl August 7th, 2008 12:11 pm :

    Yay! Interesting.

  4. Internet Marketing Help August 22nd, 2008 8:41 pm :

    This was literally exactly what I was looking for. Each Wordpress update is a headache, plugins, etc…. I could go on and on with the wasted hours I have dealt with uploading, and updating, and keeping all the blogs up to date. Thank you so much.

  5. Stephanie September 16th, 2008 1:25 pm :

    Oh awesome, this is something I could definently use on my blog. Are you sure it is as easy as you say? Because I really hope it is considering I am not the most experience blog creator. I still consider myself a bit of a newbie when it really comes down to it. I have added some widgets lately so I hope this won’t conflict with them. Thanks again!

  6. Flowers From Ecuador September 19th, 2008 11:36 am :

    WOW… This is vary interesting.. Thanks for posting this..

  7. zune scene October 11th, 2008 7:07 am :

    That’s a good solution when you need help with a site.

  8. Rowena October 30th, 2008 8:00 am :

    A great tool I guess. I still haven’t tried it though. I’ll give it some thought and give some time to research this very interesting tool. Anyways, thanks for the info. The advantages and disadvantages are well addressed. thanks again

  9. Bill October 30th, 2008 5:12 pm :

    I always wondered (but obviously never asked or sought out the info!) how giant networks administered their individual sites. Sounds like all of us can be “one man bands” nowadays! Well, with a great supporting cast, of course. You guys write lots of content. Well done.

  10. Private Label Rights Guy November 18th, 2008 1:00 am :

    I did try to install it once but it was a bit technical for me to use so I give up the idea of using wordpress MU.

    Nevertheless it was a great platform for managing multiple blog.

  11. SEO November 25th, 2008 12:46 am :

    its really nice to read about this

  12. Rob December 1st, 2008 9:30 pm :

    I have 10 blogs and 10 individual installs. I am agreed with you because having too many separate wordpress blogs sucks, even more than that. I was not familiar with Wordpress MU, even I haven’t heard about it before. I shall be looking at your site. Can we convert already installed wordpress in to it?

  13. Johnny December 3rd, 2008 12:23 am :

    I’m going to be using MU again soon for a client and I’m not looking forward to it, had all kinds of probs with a previous version. Hopin this is better!

  14. vue December 4th, 2008 4:53 am :

    :) nice post

  15. mesajlar December 12th, 2008 2:35 am :

    Great article, thanks for share.

  16. Howard December 12th, 2008 9:05 am :

    Hmm and interesting read! There are some good comments here – thanks for the post

    Much appreciated!

  17. Stuartc December 22nd, 2008 8:53 am :

    Thanks for shareing this wordpress plugins are not easy to manage this makes every wordpress users life easyer.

    Thanks again

  18. Shannon Brown December 31st, 2008 9:21 pm :

    Of course myself and a friend started with just a couple of blogs but it has quickly grown to where we are having some of the same issues. It will be interesting to see how this is working for you in the future.

  19. Yogesh Agarwal January 2nd, 2009 11:26 am :

    Great Blog Mate. Really Informative

  20. dans January 7th, 2009 10:35 pm :

    word press is complicated for me but Im still learning the ropes great blogs

  21. Ravi January 10th, 2009 7:44 am :

    Really Helpfull Man. Was Searching for this from long time..

  22. Drew January 17th, 2009 9:12 pm :

    Thanks for the info.I’m gonna check wordpress mu out.
    Drew

  23. DogFreak February 12th, 2009 5:29 am :

    I really appreciate your advice. Will try out Wordpress MU now. Thanks!

  24. syed March 11th, 2009 6:50 am :

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  25. Lucky March 25th, 2009 2:17 pm :

    WOW… This is vary interesting.. Thanks for posting this..

  26. Mike | Prefabricated Structures April 4th, 2009 7:10 am :

    I am only worried due the same reason and that is SEO issues. I have 15 different sites and all of them have 15 different clean wordpress installs but it is really a tough job to manage them separately. I am thinking about having wordpress MU but I am looking at all possible drawbacks and SEO is one of them.

  27. Body Flush April 13th, 2009 8:55 am :

    Oh man. Really thanks, this is very useful.
    I will try it soon

  28. Tania April 14th, 2009 5:37 am :

    Great article, thanks for share.

  29. Mark - web design April 27th, 2009 10:31 am :

    I plan to install Wordpress MU in one of my community website. Thanks for sharing.

  30. nan May 24th, 2009 11:42 am :

    I was wondering how the Experiment turned out. Did you convert, and area you happy with the results?

  31. baba May 28th, 2009 4:42 am :

    oh man you solved my problem thanks a lot. its a wonderful plugin. how i can get the information about the new wordpress plugins

  32. saras May 31st, 2009 8:20 am :

    wordpress mu is good to make comunity

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