What is WordPress MU and What is WPMU DEV?

WordPress has become a well known name as one of the best (the best in my opinion) Content Management System available. It allows any site from a simple bog or basic five page site, up to the most complicated site you could imagine to be easily edited by anyone without any knowledge of HTML.

WordPress MU means WordPress Multi-User. It is essentially the software that runs WordPress.com and was developed to allow an entire network of sites. User can visit a WordPress MU site and get there own site by just signing up. No installation, no hosting to worry about, etc.

It has been a branch of WordPress for the last few years – not as well known, not as well documented and not as well supported. One of the only places providing real support has been WPMU DEV. They provide a number of free plugins, as well as a premium membership with some really essential tools for any MU site.

How I Have Improved MU with Premium Plugins

While not officially announced yet, if you read my post about SEO Image Galleries or follow me on Twitter, you may have heard of a major side project I have been developing for some time now – PhotographyBlogSites.com – which was built using WordPress MU as a means to make it easier for photographers to simply sign up and get a new site.

As one of the only sources of reliable MU plugins, I have made use of many of the close to 100 plugins avaialble on the WPMU DEV site. I want to point out a few of my favorites, without which PhotographyBlogSites would not be possible.

New Blog Template

This plugin makes it possible to make an exact copy of any blog and give it to new users. This way, instead of an empty default WordPress site, the new users has the chosen theme, settings, even pages, posts, categories, etc. All in place. It saves you the time of deleting the placeholder content, adding the standard pages, fixing the settings, etc.

Download New Blog Templates Here

Domain Mapping

This one is absoultely crucial. It allows users to use their own domain name. Without it, they would have something like marty.photographyblogsites.com – similar to the free sites you get at WordPress.com or Blogger. But if you are running a serious business site, you want your domain.

Download Domain Mapping Here

Anti-Splog

If you think spam comments are bad, try running a site where spammers can create entire sites and usernames through a contact form. One of the toughest aspects of running WordPress MU is dealing with the spam blogs or splogs. This plugin does a great job of preventing those fake sites. In turn, it saves database space and bandwidth for the legitimate users.

Download Anti-Splog Here

More

These are just three of the developer end plugins I have made use of. I will be doing a post on the PhotographyBlogSites blog about a few that make the user experience better.

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As a disclaimer, this is a post I put together as an entry for a contest (http://wpmu.org/100-plugins-wpmu-dev-giveaway-time) where they are giving away a free annual membership ($419). While that would be great, I am currently a paid member and have been meaning to write a post about them anyway. If you are developing a WordPress MU site, definitely check them out.

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Post tags: photographyblogsites, wordpress mu

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Buy Now – $25

WPJumpStart is a collection of tools and instructions that will drastically speed up your WordPress theme development or blog design.

WPJumpStart is:

• A system of tools that will improve theme design & optimize any WordPress installation.
• Meant For anyone interested in speeding up the theme development workflow.
• Built especially for designers and developers with experience building themes for WordPress.
• A helping hand for those with intermediate knowledge of WordPress themes.

WPJumpStart is not:

• Meant for those new to HTML or completely new to WordPress.
• A complete guide or manual to the inner workings of WordPress.

What Exactly is it?

WPJumpStart is a compliation of resources and step-by-step instructions that will improve your workflow and allow you to create cleaner designs, build themes faster and optimize WordPress itself. Bring your WordPress projects to a more professional level, decrease the time you spend on projects, and improve the SEO and functionality of your sites.

• BlogStarter - An emptied out theme framework, ready to be quickly styled into a custom theme.
  • BlogStarter is two themes – a Two-Column simple blog layout, and a wide One-Column layout complete with a working dropdown menu across the top.
  • See a LIVE DEMO of the BlogStarter Themes.
    
  • Still not sure? DOWNLOAD BlogStarter for free and give it a shot.
• ContentStarter – An .xml file ready to import with sample content, providing all of the needed headings, lists, blockquotes and images to make sure you don’t forget to style any elements.
  • See a LIVE DEMO of ContentStarter in my theme demo site.
    
• GridStarter – A Photoshop Template with grid overlays and browser safety overlays that will speed up and clean up your design time.
• Step-by-step instructions for optimizing your WordPress installation with the proper settings and plugins.

Buy Now – $25

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Post tags: Downloads, products, web design resources, web design tips, WordPress, WPJumpStart

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Best Plugins for Spam:

• Askimet – One of the default plugins. It has been all I have needed for spam so far. Activate this right away.

Best  Plugins for SEO:

• All in one SEO Pack – Lets you control metadata on everypage and post.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Automically generates a sitemap and submits it to Google, MSN, and Ask.com.
• KB Robots.txt – Easily control your robots.txt file and help search engines know which pages to crawl and which ones to avoid.
• Google Analyticator – Adds the code for Google Analytics and allows you to shut it off so that visits by admins are not counted. You wouldn’t want to inflate your stats with the 100 times a day you visit your site, right?

Best Social Networking Plugins

• PingPressFM – Use ping.fm to broadcast your content to Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, LinkedIn, Myspace and more.
• Share This – Add buttons to every post to enable easy sharing by visitors
• BackType Connect -BackType.com tracks comments and allows you to follow other people’s comments. This plugin will bring in a lot of conversation, including other people linking to your post, and Tweets that mention and link to your post. This is a great way to add some conversatin to otherwise slow posts.

To make your life easier

• Post to Page converter – Convert posts to pages or pages to posts with the click of a button.
• WP Post Thumbnails – Easily upload, crop and save up to three thumbnails of varying sizes for each post.
• Photo Dropper - Adds a button to the WYSIWYG editor, right next to the regular image uploader. It searches Flickr for Creative Commons images that can be used for free and automatically adds the neede attribution and credit.
• User Photo – Upload and assign photos for each user from within the admin panel. Great for multi author blogs!

Great Plugins for Developers

• Reveal IDS for Admin – Especially for theme creators, this will display all the ID’s for categories, posts, pages, tags… right in the admin page.
• The Excerpt Reloaded – Control how many words are in an excerpt, what html tags are allowed, and what the text for a ‘read more’ link would say.
• User Level Themes - Allows you to activate differrent themes so that when logged in as an admin, you can see the new underconstruction theme, while other visitors will see the current one.

This Article was written as part of the WpJumpStart System

Find Out More

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Post tags: plugins, web design resources, web design tips, WordPress, WPJumpStart

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