Not that I have any say in this at all but I’ve been wondering lately whether a decent amount of technical knowledge should be a pre-requisite for maintaining a WordPress MU site or not? Should anyone be able to install & setup WordPress MU?
I guess that should be an eventual goal of the project but I don’t think it is close to that goal, so at the moment I know it is harsh but unless you know what you are doing then WordPress MU isn’t for you just yet. For example if you don’t know what a .htacccess file is, how to create a MySQL Database or at least basic PHP then you are going to have a very steep learning curve with WPMU.
Hopefully it will be more user friendly going forward for admins but for now it is more usable for those that have a blog setup under WPMU and not for those maintaining WPMU itself.
September 23, 2005 at 10:29 pm
MU is really designed for more advanced users. Hosting thousands of blogs isn’t an activity that can or should be undertaken casually or without a level of technical expertise.
September 23, 2005 at 10:42 pm
I agree. WordPressMU is for a host, not for an average user. There is, I assume, a lot of monitoring and checking to make sure users aren’t messing things up or spammers and evil doers aren’t having their way.
I think of it like this. The WordPressMU host is like a big building landlord. They get phone calls in the middle of the night for every problem any renter has, including ones that could 1) be fixed by them, or 2) wait until morning. They have to cleanup the outside and hallways and keep them all maintained and in working order. They have to deal with the big bills and all the record keeping, while the renters just have to live there and pay their tiny bills and clean their own space.
Being a user on a WordPressMU site is seriously like being a renter. Most of the heavy and hard work is done for you.
September 23, 2005 at 10:50 pm
Wow! Comments from both Matt and Lorelle, I’m impressed.
I agree with both of you and toned down my post as to not stir up too much trouble, that was a very good analogy that you provided Lorelle and describes the situation perfectly.
I maintain a WPMU site myself and understand what is involved but there are an increasing number of people trying to use it and running into problems as it isn’t easy to install & setup. Maybe the MU site should be updated with some verbiage about the technical skills required?
September 24, 2005 at 3:17 am
Tech skills required?
“Only PHP gurus need apply”
No, seriously, I’m not a PHP guru by any means.
“It works for me” but I’m not interested in non-vhosts working, and I have full control over the host. I don’t have to worry about PHP running as a cgi-bin, or a .htaccess that isn’t writable because of some control panel.
One person could devote all their time to install issues and even then it wouldn’t be fixed, and then you wouldn’t get any of the new features of WP 1.6, or some of the other MU features which are about to go live…
October 3, 2005 at 6:22 pm
As has been said before, there is a level of completeness that needs to be maintained across WordPress-related application. After all, there is a great reputation at stake.
I agree that WPMU is not for everyone. If and when a stable version is released, however, I believe it should have as few known bugs as possible, if any. True, it should not need a GUI for every available option, but the options should at least work when they are active.
Take Postfix for instance: ever try configuring it? Uggh. The config files are three miles long. But it works. Getting a Postfix mail server up and running requires a certain level of understanding, but it doesn’t complicate the process further by throwing sysadmins the curveballs of annoying bugs.
I guess the root of what I am saying is that although installing WPMU should be accompanied by a certain level of experience with the involved technologies, don’t intentionally turn away those who would otherwise love to use the application by saying “you’re just not good enough.” After all, it is the users of open source software who develop it. Don’t settle for a good product when it can be great.
January 29, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Everythings already been touched upon, but the only thing I would mention is that if you are going to make it even more accessible to all users, you have to make sure that all users
a) know what its capable of
b) know how to handle it and
c) now how to change options away from the default.
I know it sounds like basic stuff, but there’ll be a lot of poeple who want to use it, and offer blogs “Just Because”.. I know – im one of them! (I had a spare domain gathering dust!).
The one thing I do see thats lacking just now is that the basic WPMU installation seems to go purley for VHOST support. I cant get this to work on my host, so I’ve had to work around it. Without blowing my own trumpet, I think I’ve done pretty good so far! I fixed the registration page, the admin emails – and created a script that calls the latest updated blogs, etc.. But there’ll be a post about that on WPMU soon enough..
It is fair to say that the majority of users will be able to run with VHOSTS out of the box, but for that select few, maybe a little forum? Hell – I’ll do my best to help out if you’ll let me!
Nick
http://www.thissite.co.uk
May 6, 2006 at 3:32 am
I’m very, very impressed that this sort of work is being done; Web Design is getting stagnant with people using just styled
block-level elements to produce artwork. The incorporation of SVG into sites excites me a lot.
How long do you expect it will take for this sort of technology to be widespread?
Obviously you can only speak about WebKit realistically, but if it’s going to take ten years for IE Win to gain (full) support,
we can’t design with it.
I’m amused by the “Becoming more important” line in the first paragraph. This has been a HUGE problem for years –
ever since HTML-2.0 was introduced to be more of a layout language and less of a markup language. For an example,
you just have to look at this site. sex partners Why is all the text
crammed over on the left side of the page with a big blank space on the right side?
Why is the default font tiny and unreadable? Fortunately most browsers now let you override the latter problem.
June 20, 2006 at 3:12 pm
I love this site. Good work…
July 21, 2006 at 4:14 am
Great job guys… Thank for you work…