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)

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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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Chris Anderson’s new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price explores the forces behind the burgeoning free internet-based economy.  Free operating systems and browsers, free email, free professional networking, free phone calls — how did we get here and where is it taking us?
He argues that the digital realm naturally pushes content towards a free, or virtually free price.  One key factor in this migration is the concept of scarcity.  For instance there is only so much shelf space in a bookstore, there is only so much physical room in U.S postal trucks, and if I give you a CD then I don’t have it to listen to.  Once these things go digital we get the worlds biggest book store, email freely moving around the world, and digital copies created quickly, at little-to-no-cost and identical to the original.  After I make the first digital book or musical recording, the production of the second one is almost free.  Amortize the cost over each one produced and the more distributed the lower the per-unit cost until that cost gets so small as to be almost free.

The rapid advances in digital processing power, network speed and capacity, and digital storage are really fueling this revolution.  What were once scarce resources are now so abundant that they can be wasted, and given away for free.  In the days of 3 major television networks every hour of prime time scheduling was precious.   Contrast that to YouTube with a relatively few good things to watch in a sea of garbage — but the storage and delivery is so cheap that it doesn’t matter.  We no longer need to manage from a point of scarcity, with its top-down control, avoiding costly failures.  In the new age of abundance we can afford bottom-up strategies, with lots of very cheap failures (i.e. the average YouTube video.)  Recognizing this global shift is crucial to successfully managing in this new economy.

Tech Is Too Cheap to Meter: It’s Time to Manage for Abundance, Not Scarcity

The problem is that abundant resources, like computing power, are too often treated as scarce. Consider another example: Wired’s IT department used to send out occasional emails telling employees it was time to “delete unneeded files from the shared folders”—their way of saying they had run out of storage room on the servers. Because we’re good corporate citizens, we all dutifully scanned through our files, deleting those we could live without. Perhaps you’ve done the same.

5

• Sharepoint patterns
• Flickr blow-up
• Open data yields big benefits
• Post from blackberry
• Send someone a big file

In checking out a Tweet, I caught a nice feature on Posterous.com.  You can leave a comment identifying yourself via your Facebook or Twitter account.  I don’t actually know if this is through OpenID (more likely it uses their basic APIs) but it is nicely executed, and eases the path-to-participation.

Weird multilens camera. – Mark’s odds ‘n ends

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I am still slowly working through the videos I shot during the WordCamp NYC 2009 event.  This was the very first presentation I attended that day entitled “Building Community with BuddyPress” by Lisa Sabin Wilson.  It is a great presentation and she nicely runs through all the major features of this powerful set of WordPress plug-ins.

Warning on the video — right at the end of part 1 there was a rather loud audio feedback problem which I haven’t edited out.  Sorry.  Part 2 picks up after the audio was fixed, and the sound quality there was much improved.

In the audio-only version I edited out the audio feedback squeal and cleaned up/normalized the audio in the first half.  She does make some references to her presentaton slides in the video that are helpful, but I think you can get the gist of everything with the audio only:

Audio only: Building Community with BuddyPress

Video Part 1:

Video Part 2:

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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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So after all the hype I finally got a Google Wave account and well…. well…what was all the hype really about?  And I guess I’m not alone in being underwhelmed.  Now yes, it is really beta (not just a perpetual beta that really isn’t) and they are trying to do something completely different.  Plus, as with any social networking/collaboration tool it isn’t much fun when there aren’t many people using it.  I do fault them for producing something that doesn’t run in Internet Explorer, and didn’t even seem to run too well in Firefox.  Browser dependent behavior is a cop-out at best.   Maybe it, or the protocol will become useful for something really good over time, or the user community will embrace it in numbers to reach some tipping point.  But until then I’m much more interested in the possibilities of other tools — like BuddyPress.

Top 10 Failures of 2009

Google Wave Sucked:  This is one case where the hype was as noisy as the app – and both were deafening. We have to hand it to Google’s publicity team; we don’t know one geek who wasn’t positively salivating for a Wave invite.

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Web page design best-practices used to dictate designer for a monitor of 640 x 480 pixels, then 800 x 600 pixels, and at a recent meeting I heard one of our schools lead web designers say they’re new minimum is the 11xx screen width.  Which with browser windows, toolbars, etc. give an effective width of something like 960 pixels.  But want to be sure?  Take a quick tour around the Google browser sizer .

And as far as width across the screen 960 will match the screen size of 90% of the audience — not too bad.  But look how quickly the dimensions down the page drop off.  More than 500 pixels down and you risk putting content ‘below the fold’.  Common wisdom says the users won’t scroll, and content lower on the page will be missed.  In fact the Google browser sizer page makes this point in its default view.  But for appropriate content is seems users are willing and quite able to scroll.   Just make sure there is some indication that something is down there — i.e.  cut off text.  Or check out why The Fold Doesn’t Matter.

This doesn’t address the needs of mobile browsers.  On our server they are still a small percentage of the visitors, but expect that number to grow quickly over the next year.

http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the “90%” contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

Blasting the Myth of Below the Fold

Stop worrying about the fold. Don’t throw your best practices out the window, but stop cramming stuff above a certain pixel point. You’re not helping anyone. Open up your designs and give your users some visual breathing room. If your content is compelling enough your users will read it to the end.

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