Using The Same Header.php across all sites

You mean other than set them all with the same theme?

Well, they’ll be able to add their own content anyway.

How much customization will they be doing? Moving widgets in the sidebar? Picking 2 or 3 columns? Changing background colors?

Well, no, I want them to have full control apart from the header and nav bar. Everything from the nav menu up right now should be repeated with all future sites (there’s not going to be a ton of sites so I can add this in manually if need be)…each site will then look completely different beneath the header (they can even have their own header) but the header along the top needs to unite the network.

Any ideas?

So you basically want a really big admin bar, not a header.

I want the same navigation menu and logo at the top of every site…it doesn’t even have to look exactly like that, if you have an alternative suggestion I’m open for it.

It’s more of a question of what do you want to be the same, and what do you want them to be able to change…

On the one hand, you can code your header.php such that these things are locked down. On the other, you can use an admin bar so they can use whatever theme they want.

I want them to have pretty much full control over their site but have the same Navigation Menu on top. Similiar to, say, NBC.com’s website when you go to the individual show pages. Is there a way so that I can use the admin bar as a nav menu?

Yes but ??

As of 3.1 there will be a NEW admin bar built in – https://wpengineer.com/2057/wordpress-3-1-admin-bar

This is still in active dev, which means it’s changing a lot, but the general idea is to make it plug-able so you can customize the heck out of it.

I’ve actually taken the admin bar plugin and reworked the heck out of it so it *looks* like a regular theme header with navigation hardcoded in.

like this: https://gatorcountry.com/pagetwo/

To answer your question – yes, it’s doable.
is there a plugin to do so out of the box? No.

And also, in a multisite setup you really should not let users have access to editing the actual php of the theme files.

unless the system is closed, the users are trusted and know what they are doing, and that you are standing by to fix things when they accidentally bring the whole site down.

here be dragons, and all that.

Hi Andrea,

That looks pretty much exactly like what I want to be able to do. I’m surprised there isn’t a plug-in for this already or that it’s that unordinary of a request. It looks like it took you a helluva lot of time to customize the admin bar to look like your header…and frankly, I’m not even sure where to begin! But thank you for the help, I’ll keep working at it!

Also, I’m not allowing users access to the theme files.

It *is* that un-ordinary of a request. ??

Take the admin bar plguin. read it. knock out the stuff that makes the HTML part of the admin bar. paste in whatever cool header thingy code you want.

That was it in a nutshell.

Really, it’s hard to put this in a plugin available for everyone else’s use because everyone will want a completely different header, possibly from one of a few thousand different theme, or completely custom. so this is definitely a custom job.

but not technically difficult. mostly cut ‘n paste.