Our larger WordPress MU install, Homeschool Journal has been running on multiple databases for about 3 years. Technically, it’s possible to have thousands of blogs in a single database install. Usually where people running MU start to have issues with the number of blogs is with getting complete backups of the database.

Upgrades with multiple databases have always been more work and many people running multiple databases typically did not upgrade until the .1 release of whatever version of MU. When I upgraded Homeschool Journal to MU 2.7.1, it was two weeks before I had found and repaired all of the database issues (via several plugins). I decided I wasn’t going to go through that again.

With the number of blogs at WordPress.com, Automattic must be using a database plugin that supports WordPress MU better. So, over a couple of weekends, I tweaked HyperDB to use the same MD5 hash based sharding structure that we were using.

I released SharDB (Download) last week as a beta release intended for larger WordPress MU installs using an existing 1-3 character MD5 hash (by blog id) based multi-database sharding structure. (Other structures will be added in early 2010.) The alpha testing of SharDB was carried out this fall with the help of a few people who I knew were using the same multi-database that we were. SharDB has been powering live sites since early October.

SharDB has been tested with over 50 plugins including BuddyPress 1.1 through 1.1.3, domain mapping (both Donncha’s and my version) and my multi-site plugin. I have not found any issues with any of the tested plugins. It should support any plugin that accesses data via the $wpdb object. It has been used to upgrade live sites from 2.7.1 through to 2.8.6 and I’ve upgraded a test site to the WordPress MU 2.9 release candidate tagged 2009/12/21. (Note: I used the plugin in this post to create the commentmeta tables before updating MU from 2.8.6 to 2.9RC.)

One of the features that I really like about SharDB is that I don’t need to edit the database config when adding plugins (a feature inherited from HyperDB). Also, I haven’t had issues with plugins failing to create tables. As an added bonus, I added a handy column to the site admin blog screen so that you can see which database a blog’s tables are in.

• January 24, 2010 — SharDB update (2)
• September 24, 2009 — Changing the domain (14)
• January 21, 2010 — Testers, start your engines (4)
• January 14, 2010 — 2.9.1 released, last before merge (6)
• January 6, 2010 — Merge News (1)

© ahome for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 19 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: database, multiple, shard, wordpressmu, wpmu

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Hope you guys all had a wonderful holiday. We took some much needed time off. Onward to the good stuff!

Now that WordPress 2.9 is out the door, the dev team (Donncha, plus the regular WordPress team) can start working on 3.0, where the merge of wpmu will be rolled in. In case you missed it, Jane has called for suggestions of anything else you would like to see, and set up a forum thread for anyone to participate in.

There are also the weekly dev chats, except the next one has a bit of holiday break. If you want to have a say, or just read along in the chat, tune in to the IRC channel on January 7th. It’s at irc.freenode.net in the #wordpress-dev channel, Thursdays @ 21:00 UTC. Likely, Jeffro at WPTavern will recap it as well – he’s pretty good at that. Since the release cycle is now being aimed at 3 times a year, it looks likely a release in March for 3.0 (tip here). And if you really want to see what’s happening code-wise, of course pay attention to both tracs. (WordPress & MU) At some not-yet-determined point, they will merge the MU one right into core.

If you have any questions or concerns about the merge itself, it would be best to follow the WordPress dev blog, the developer chats, and the twitter accounts of janeforshort and me, since we’re both interested in passing on the news to all.

The goodies kept coming out over the holidays, too. First, the wordpress.com custom css plugin, and then the Wickett Twitter Widget.

And? Andy checked in single WordPress support into the Buddypress trac. Still needs testing, so have at it.

• January 21, 2010 — Testers, start your engines (4)
• January 14, 2010 — 2.9.1 released, last before merge (5)
• January 6, 2010 — Merge News (1)
• January 5, 2010 — The merge begins (21)
• November 22, 2009 — Buddymatic Theme Framework (14)

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Post tags: buddypress, dev chat, merge, wordpress, wordpressmu, wpmu

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Image credit: Ryancr’s “Sharing”

This semester has been a whirlwind, and while it has been great in many respects regarding the work we are doing at DTLT—more faculty and students than ever experimenting with UMW Blogs, some larger recognition, as well as a more expansive network of peers from a variety of institutions around the world—I feel one crucial element has fallen by the wayside—featuring the work out faculty and students are doing at UMW. In many ways the output has become so great that it hard to keep up with, but that’s no excuse. 

In my mind, the crux behind fostering a community is letting others know you’re reading their work, and more than that giving them some much deserved recognition for the work they’re doing through a simple system of featuring. I’ve dropped the ball in this regard, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the community suffers some as a result.

People joke about how much I blog, but in reality, blogging needs to be a central component of the work we are all doing, and it needs to focus on the work happening at our institutions, as well as elsewhere. I’m gonna commit to doing more of this over the next year, as well as getting back into the hacks and sharing them back—which has also suffered as of late, but I don’t mind that nearly as much because there are so many great folks out there doing that far better than I ever could, just look at the work from cats like Boone Gorges, Andrea and Ron, and Joss Winn—to name just a few.

And then there’s the inimitable Luke Waltzer whose recent four part post series that recaps the work he and Mikhail Gershovich have been doing with Blogs@Baruch (you can find all their development posts under the wpmued tag on cac.ophony.org here) and I have to say it is very impressive. Not only has Luke blogged the thinking behind the redesign of Blogs@Baruch, but he also wasn’t afraid to blog about some of the difficulties they’ve had with administering and maintaining the system, and for me that is key.

What is most important about the work we’re doing at our own institutions, is narrating the process so that others can benefit from our problems and successes. It’s time to move away from the myopic logic that we only talk about the successes and promise of this stuff without narrating the difficulties and problems. Fact is, if we are only concerned about how we look to the administration or our fearless “leaders” the less we truly realize the transformative power of the simple act of sharing all elements of our struggles by honestly narrating the work we do amongst peers within and beyond institutional boundaries. We’re not running ad campaigns that are pushing products, we are connecting with other people that want and need guidance and ideas for avoiding issues and generating new ideas. Therein is the power of sharing your work, which necessarily includes all the issues and failures accumulated along the way. Hats off to the crew at Blogs@Baruch, their willingness to lift the branding veil and openly share both the triumphs and the tribulations is refreshing and essential, and a true sign of caring.

Here’s a wee little gift from the folks at Automattic: the custom css plugin they use over at wordpress.com. I know some people have been wanting this for ages, even though there are plenty of similar plugins out there already.

• December 9, 2009 — Twitter Digest (4)
• December 3, 2009 — MU 2.9 beta (6)
• November 26, 2009 — Facebook Dashboard Widget Update (0)
• November 20, 2009 — CSS Editor plugins (1)
• June 23, 2009 — WP-Devel plugin (1)

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Post tags: css, plugin, wordpress.com, wpmu

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WordPress has been out in the 2.9 version for a few days now, and Donncha has just checked in the 2.9 code into the MU trunk. You can find it here: WordPressMU trunk

Scroll down to the bottom of that page and there is a zip link. Do not put this on a production site yet, but please do try and test it somewhere. Maybe a development site, or a test site on a spare domain, or locally on your computer.

The more people who test it now, the less bugs we have to deal with after releases.

There are some useful changes coming through, and some are especially useful for MU sites. Like the video embed. You’ll be able to ditch the plugins to embed video for popular sites. Please read the official release post on the WordPress blog for an overview and highlights.

• January 7, 2010 — Should you use WPMU? (7)
• June 23, 2009 — WP-Devel plugin (1)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2009. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2.9, code, development, testing, trac

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I threw a little something together today to add WYSIWYG editing to BuddyPress, using TinyMCE. I want to be careful about the tags I allow, so I’m whitelisting, which is a bit tedious. As a result, there are only a few buttons available: a, em, strong, ul, ol, li. It’s a start, though.

Seems to work everywhere in BP: forums, wire, messages, profile pages.

A note about TinyMCE: WP ships with TinyMCE, and I thought it made sense to use that version instead of attaching one to this plugin. I think that the path to TinyMCE (line 18 of the plugin) should work on all installations, but you may have to tinker if you don’t see it popping up in the head of your BP pages. Moreover, the language files for WP’s version of TinyMCE are misnamed, which means that they don’t work right out of the box (at least for me they don’t). You may need to change the name of wp-includes/js/tinymce/langs/wp-langs-en.php to en.php in order to get the hover and help text in the TinyMCE box to work.

Download the plugin here. Don’t use in a production environment unless you are very certain that you are satisfied with the security of this plugin!

I threw a little something together today to add WYSIWYG editing to BuddyPress, using TinyMCE. I want to be careful about the tags I allow, so I’m whitelisting, which is a bit tedious. As a result, there are only a few buttons available: a, em, strong, ul, ol, li. It’s a start, though.

Seems to work everywhere in BP: forums, wire, messages, profile pages.

A note about TinyMCE: WP ships with TinyMCE, and I thought it made sense to use that version instead of attaching one to this plugin. I think that the path to TinyMCE (line 20 of the plugin) should work on all installations, but you may have to tinker if you don’t see it popping up in the head of your BP pages. Moreover, the language files for WP’s version of TinyMCE are misnamed, which means that they don’t work right out of the box (at least for me they don’t). You may need to change the name of wp-includes/js/tinymce/langs/wp-langs-en.php to en.php in order to get the hover and help text in the TinyMCE box to work.

Download the plugin here. Don’t use in a production environment unless you are very certain that you are satisfied with the security of this plugin!

Related posts:

1. New BuddyPress / bbPress plugin: Group Forum Subscription
2. Help me alpha test BuddyPress Forum Attachments
3. Forum Attachments for BuddyPress

We finished JISCPress. If you’re interested, I’ve written a long overview of the work we’ve done with WPMU as a document discussion platform, based on WriteToReply. You’ll see that the project has, among other things, produced three plugins: digress.it, and two Linked Data plugins that run as background services across the platform, create relationships between documents and document sections and post RDF to the Talis Data Store. Fancy!

Related posts

• JISCPress: Developing a community platform for the JISC funding process
• Getting your Triples into Talis Connected Commons
• Total ReCal (or Calendar Combiner C^2). A proposed JISC Rapid Innovation project
• Scholarly publishing with WordPress
• The FolkSemantic Widget for OER discovery

In my view, the most powerful feature of BuddyPress – the feature that powers the core goal of the CUNY Academic Commons, that of collaboration – is groups. By default, BuddyPress only lets you invite other members of the community to your group if you and the member are already friends within BuddyPress. In some communities, this feature probably prevents a lot of spam. But in other communities, like the one here at the Commons, the friendship requirement adds a sometimes inconvenient extra step to the process of getting a productive group up and running.

Invite Anyone in action

This new plugin, Invite Anyone, does just what its name claims: it alters the group invitation process to allow group creators and administrators to invite anyone from their BuddyPress installation, not just their friends.

Like so often happens, though, solving this one problem made another one pop up: Scrolling through a list of your friends to find potential invitees is one thing, but scrolling through a list of every member of the site is another thing entirely. Most communities, including the CUNY Academic Commons, will simply have too many members. To make things easier, I’ve taken the autosuggest feature from the Compose Message screen in BuddyPress and retooled it to work on the Send Invites screen as well. Start typing the name of the user you’d like to invite, and with each letter you type, BuddyPress will make better and better suggestions as to who you mean. Just hit enter or click to add the suggested user to the invited list.

Download the plugin here. As the plugin is built using the BP Group Extension API, you’ll need at least BP 1.1.

After I’ve done a bit more testing with our custom theme here on the Commons, I’ll activate the plugin on this site, so that members of the Commons community can take advantage of the new feature.

A technical note: I tested the plugin in a variety of different environments (different browsers, different themes, different servers) and stumbled upon a few issues, in particular with the autosuggest AJAX in Chrome for Mac. If you find similar issues, or have any other feedback, please leave a comment.

Some members of the still-young CUNY Academic Commons, eager to start groups in support of various projects, have been getting hung up on the process of putting a group together: first, each person has to sign up for the Commons; second, each person has to become friends with the group admin; third, each person has to request membership or wait to be invited (in the case of private groups). I just released a plugin called Invite Anyone that cuts out the second step: with the plugin activated, group admins can invite anyone from the installation, not just friends.

Read more about it, and download the plugin, at the CUNY Academic Commons Dev blog.

EDIT: Please leave further comments or questions regarding this plugin at its permanent home: Invite Anyone

Related posts:

1. New BuddyPress plugin: BP Group Management
2. Big new version of Invite Anyone for BuddyPress
3. New BuddyPress plugin: Enhanced BuddyPress Widgets