The bulk of the merge has been done in WordPress core. At least with regards to moving over the files. Now the fun part begins: bug gardening, testing and tweaking.

Here’s what you can do to help not only the dev team and others, but also yourself:

- set up a local install of WPMU
- import some data, plugins & themes from your current setup
(in other words, create a working copy somewhere)

Now, upgrade it to the latest WordPress trunk. The zip is located at the bottom of this page. To manually upgrade, just overwrite the MU files with the files located in the zip.

When you find bugs, please file them over at the WordPress trac, and pick the term multisite in the component field dropdown, so the other devs know is it MU related. Some terminology is changing, so this refers to the multiple blog capabilities. Your login to file a ticket is the same as your forum username and password.

Did you get the part where I said to do this on a dev version and not a live site? Good.

• January 14, 2010 — 2.9.1 released, last before merge (6)
• January 6, 2010 — Merge News (1)
• January 5, 2010 — The merge begins (21)
• December 27, 2009 — Merge news and Buddypress awesomeness (7)
• December 9, 2009 — Twitter Digest (4)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: development, merge, trac, trunk, wordpress, wordpressmu, wpmu

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With news of the merge of the Wordpress & WordPressMU codebase becoming more widespread, one of the questions I get asked with increasing frequency is should someone start a new site based on MU or should they wait for the merge.

My answer? It depends.

Is it time-critical? Do you need it up and running sooner rather than later? Is it income-generating? I spoke to someone earlier this week who is building out their MU-based site now because as they so succinctly put it, “I’m not leaving 3 months income on the table.”

And that’s how long it will may take to be out in the wild. Can you afford to wait three months? Only you (or your client) can answer that.

Also, if you are planning a project based on Buddypress and were waiting for the merge so you could use it on single WordPress, I mentioned over a week ago that this improvement is already in the trunk of BP. It is tentatively slated for release at the end of January, so if that was what you were waiting for, I would start development on trunk now.

Other people I have spoken to expressed concern over being able to upgrade from WPMU to WP when 3.0 comes out. This is one of the major priorities for the devs, and I have found historically the devs were always quite good in making sure core code (and new changes) were upgradeable. They want your site to upgrade and succeed too.

EDIT: Although I said three months up above, the actual release date has yet to be determined. The length of time is an educated guesstimate, not a firm thing. It was stated for illustrative purposes for how long you may have to wait.

• January 21, 2010 — Testers, start your engines (6)
• January 14, 2010 — 2.9.1 released, last before merge (6)
• January 6, 2010 — Merge News (1)
• January 5, 2010 — The merge begins (21)
• December 27, 2009 — Merge news and Buddypress awesomeness (7)

© andrea for WPMU Tutorials, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: client work, development, merge, new sites

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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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At OpenEd09 I was part of a very necessary conversation. We were talking about different ways in which our respective universities use WordPress MU. The consensus was that in order for us to be truly successful we need to be sharing much more. Sharing our frameworks, sharing our plugins and sharing our hacks. Boone Gorges frames the conversation nicely here and talks about what is needed from developers. Enej and others responded by reviving the OLT Dev blog. However, Matthew Gold rightly said this:

But we need to build more lasting channels of communication soon, lest we miss some important connections

So here is my attempt to provide those connections:

WPMU For Education blog

The basic idea is an aggregation blog for “WPMU for education” developers. Jim Groom provided a blog from his WPMUEd domain so that a new channel, dev.wpmued could be created. I used the Add Link Widget with FeedWordPress to turn this blog into an aggregation of content from developers who are working on developing WPMU in education using the method that Jim and I came up with. I seeded it with a few of my often read WordPress MU in education blogs (myself, Jim, D’Arcy, Boone, OLT and CUNY Dev).

But we need more, much more. If you know of any other blogs that write on this subject, please add their feed to the site.  Here is the current master list of institutions that are using WordPress MU. If you have any connections to any of them help the community out by contacting them and asking them to share what they are doing. Also, before you add your feed remember to turn the number of posts up (if you have more than 10 feeds to contribute). If you use WordPress you can include a mutli-tag feed by going “your-url/tag/tag1,tag2,tag3/feed”.

This can be a powerful way to boost our combined development prowess as well as a fantastic demonstration of the power of WordPress to support a community.

the actual conversation happening (photo credit Michelle Lamberson)

Adding your feed is as simple as dropping the URL into the text box on the left sidebar. Add the password (wpmued) and you are done. I’ll be checking for new feeds periodically but you can give me a shout and I’ll activate it ASAP.

Future plans:

I plan to use Wiki Append to pull important content from the wordcamped wiki into pages (it would be done already but wiki-append is having some problems). I think the wiki can act as  a second channel of communication. I will post again as soon as all of that is set up. In the mean time, edit the wiki, give it some much needed love!

I’ve also been playing with a branding idea. A year ago I came up with the idea for the UBC BlogSquad of having badges for contributors. It has worked really well as it reminds everyone of the existence of the aggregated blog (including the blogger themselves). It also immediately identifies you as part of the community. Of course, these were all first and second year students and I am not sure if seasoned bloggers want to pollute their blog with badges. If you do, feel free to grab one below. If you don’t like the design feel free to take your own shot at it (icon design is definitely not my strong suit). If you think the idea is stupid and that something else would work better, let me know in the comments below.