As some of you might know, I’ll be speaking at WordCamp Columbus this Saturday. The title of the presentation is "Advanced WordPress Installs", but I figured I’d put out a slightly more detailed overview of what I’ll be speaking about.
To begin with, this session starts where the 5 minute install stops. There are plenty of tutorials out there that will help you set up your own WordPress blog, so I’m not going to bother repeating them. Instead I’m going to start covering topics that you’ll run into when you want to have your WordPress install do more than what it was originally designed to do.
Since the topics covered are very technical in nature, I will also take the time to demystify some of them. In other words, if you’re already a developer in your own right you might not get much out of this presentation, as I will be covering some basic PHP syntax, server redirects as well as an overview of modifying DNS records.
On the other hand, if you are a blogger who’d like to have a good introduction, or are curious about how WordPress might fit into your corporate environment, this will be an excellent overview.
Section 1: One Install, Many Blogs
11:00AM-11:20AM
If you’re an avid blogger and/or maintain more than one WordPress blog, consolidating all of your blogs onto one single WordPress install can help with everything from plugin management to upgrades. Most plugins, however, naturally assume that they exist on a solitary install, so if you want to use something like Google XML Sitemaps there are some additional steps you need to take. As such, this first part will cover the following topics:
- Writing a Dynamic Configuration File (PHP)
- Request Redirects with mod_rewrite
- Configuring plugins for multi-site use
Section 2: WordPressμ
11:20AM-11:40AM
In many corporate environments it’s often optimal to manage multiple blogs through one single administrative interface, which is where WordPressμ (Multi-User) comes into play. Installs such as these are often tricky, because they require a bit more technical expertise to get them set up properly. As such, I will be covering the following:
- A brief feature overview of WordPressμ
- Installing WordPressμ.
- Redirecting for subfolders (http://www.yourdomain.com/blogname).
- Redirecting for subdomains (http://blogname.yourdomain.com/ ).
- Updating CNAME DNS records for subdomains.
If we have time at the end of the session I will open the floor for any additional questions you might have about installation challenges you might have faced. I can’t promise a comprehensive answer to all of them, but between myself and the rest of the room we should be able to get you pointed in the right direction.
We’re playing around with Buddypress at work, which is my first foray into the WordPress MU setup (too lazy to figure out the greek character). Enjoy your gig, I trust it’ll go great! (just remember… slow it down.. most people’s brains don’t operate at your speed!)
Are these the notes on your talk from #wccbus? I was looking for some details & you had mentioned you’d have them up on your site. Thanks much!
Hey there! No, this isn’t them. I was terribly lazy yesterday and didn’t finish up my notes post, what with it being my birthday and all. I’ll drop you a line as soon as I get that post up, ok?
Interesting post Michael – I’m definitely interested in hearing more about what you’ve found with multiple blogs/one install, as I’m working on a project right now that requires a variation on that. I look forward to it!