Is WPMU the Right Solution?

  • I’m a novice web designer. I have a few sites I’ve done for myself and family. I love wordpress and mainly use it as a CMS and not really a blogging software. I just think its so easy to use and learn, and of course the forums are fantastic.

    So, I’m off to my next adventure and am wondering if WPMU is right for this. I’ve done a lot of reading over the past few days but wanted some input from other users. Here is my story.

    I noticed an opportunity in a niche I’m familiar with. Lets say its ice cream store websites. I noticed that there’s no one who caters specifically to ice cream owners. So, I thought I would have 10 standard themes developed that the ice cream owners can choose from.

    The ice cream owners can have a sub domain on my site or I can host their own .com site for them.

    These sites would all have the same basic information and pages. Only the specifics for each page would change. I would simply have them give me their specifics on their store and I would build their site for them, with pictures, contact forms, etc.

    Possibly, as an added feature, I could somehow hack the code to let them log in and see only their stats and not be able to modify anything else.

    Another feature I would like is to be able to have users search for an ice cream store on my main page. This would be a locational based search that would search all blogs in my network that were either subdomains or their own domains.

    So, since I really only know how to work in WordPress, would MU be a good solution for this? Is it overkill?

    Thanks for your help!

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

  • It might be overkill, but then again it might be cheaper than having a custom system built. If you are going to be the person that inputs all their data then its no big deal. But, if you are going to actually give them each access to their WordPress dashboard then you have to be responsible for training them how to edit their sites and answering any and all support questions, possibility going behind them to fix their mistakes that kinda thing.

    So I would say if your intention is for them to have the ability to edit their own sites, then yes its over kill for a user that doesn’t blog. But if you are doing all the editing then maybe its the best solution.

    Yeah, you could do it with the network/multisite feature in 3.0.

    Which is what was mu and is now built in. ??

    Possibly, as an added feature, I could somehow hack the code to let them log in and see only their stats and not be able to modify anything else.

    https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/menus/

    These sites would all have the same basic information and pages.

    https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/wpmu-new-blog-defaults/

    Thread Starter gcarson

    (@gcarson)

    Joe,

    thanks for the response. This will be a turnkey solution for the owners. I will do everything. I image having a template where I can enter the information and upload the site in less than 1 hour. They will not need to log in at all. Once the information is up, it might only change slightly over time.

    One question I forgot to ask. Lets say I have say 10 different themes they can choose from. I have 10 owners on each theme. If i want to update the theme, I’m guessing I would have to update each site individually? I haven’t looked if there’s a plugin for that. One quick thought is that I could hack the database to have each site that has a certain theme pulling the options from my template.

    Thread Starter gcarson

    (@gcarson)

    Andrea,

    Sorry, I was typing my response when you chimed in. Thanks for the response.

    I will check out those two plugins.

    This does seem like the right option. Especially given that, if I did a site from scratch in dreamweaver, it would look horrible.

    I think the last thing I need to figure out is how to make it so I can have say 10 different themes (actually the same theme just with different color combinations and maybe slightly different layouts). I’m sure its easy to have different themes but I’m more thinking about the update process if it actually becomes a hit. If i have 100+ on each theme, it would be a pain to go in and manually update all of them.

    If i want to update the theme, I’m guessing I would have to update each site individually?

    No. All themes share the same copy of the one theme. If you alter any theme files, every site using that theme is affected.

    Thread Starter gcarson

    (@gcarson)

    Hmmm.. That might be an issue then ?? I sometimes use Atahualpa. I’ve read you can have individual options on there. So my thought was, have 5-10 standards already built. then, I can just update each individual’s page based on the Atahualpa options. I think I read that’s possible? I really just need to install and give it a shot ??

    Thread Starter gcarson

    (@gcarson)

    And to add, depending on how Atahualpa stores the options for each blog, I can just try to hack it to look at the template for the theme’s options instead of wherever its trying to look. That would allow me to only have to update the template, which would then update all the other pages.

    @gcarson, MU shares sets theme options on a per user basis. So if one user has different settings for the same theme it shouldn’t matter. In other words all of the users use the same theme files, but their options are stored separately in the database.

    Thread Starter gcarson

    (@gcarson)

    Perfect, I’ll just need to hack the files so that when i install a new blog with theme A, that blog will look for theme A’s options. Seems simple enough… in theory ??

    @gcarson No you don’t need to hack anything…thats the point of MU it does that for you.

    Thread Starter gcarson

    (@gcarson)

    Well, here’s why i think I need to hack. Lets say I have 1,000 sites using 10 different themes (I’ll probably be using Atahualpa so I can set options per site), 100 sites per theme. I could set up each site on each theme , but then if I ever wanted to tweak the theme, I’d have to go in and change all 100 sites using that theme. But if all 100 sites using the same theme got their options from one database, I’d only have to make 1 change. Does that make sense?

    You;re making it way too complicated. ??

    If 100 sites are using the same copy of the theme, then any changes that are specific to that blog have to be handled via the theme’s options page in the backend of that blog. It will affect *only* that blog.

    this is built in. this is good.

    If you wanted to make a *coded* change to the theme itself, and have it affect all the blogs using that them, then you do it in the theme files.

    Also look at https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/safecss/ for custom css options specific to each blog.

    And there’s tons of hooks everywhere, so if you wanted to do something like add stuff to the footer of every single blog, you still don’t have to touch the theme files.
    https://wpmututorials.com/plugins/how-to-hook-into-the-footer/

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
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