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wpmu education

Hey all,

I’ve been using wpmu for almost a year. I’m wanting to get a better working knowledge of all the nitty-gritty details. I know some basic php stuff, but I don’t know where to go to educate myself further.

The development here has been significant in helping me resolve issues and get a better understanding, but I’m really wanting to dive deeper. Any suggestions?

Of couse, the more practice and experimentation I do, the more I discover, but wondering if there are good resources, books, classes etc. for learning more. Thanks again and again!

-james

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:22:21
  • Mason
    • DEV MAN’s Sidekick

    Both php and wpmu actually, but all for the purpose of getting a deeper understanding of wpmu.

    You mention looking at other wpmu installs. Do you mean going to live sites and checking them out or talking to other site admins? I’d love to see someone’s site with more experience and see how they’re running it.

    -james

  • Aaron
    • Ex Staff

    Best thing is to read the source of different WPMU plugins and figure out how they do what they do.

    Then try writing some yourself. There is very little WPMU specific documentation out there, so I almost always have to trace through the WPMU source to figure out the best way to hook into things.

    In plugin development most tasks are the same as WP, but you do need to understand a few things:

    • Using the $blog_id

    • Using site options vs blog options

    • is_site_admin()

    • Get familiar with the wpmu-functions.php file, as there are lots of useful functions in there to use.

    • Admin-side security. Most WP plugins don’t have to worry about securing input on the admin side. But in WPMU the admin side needs to be considered insecure as any blog admin can access it. So you have to be very careful to filter any input to prevent XSS, SQL injection, and PHP execution. Any of those could take down the entire site. You also must consider this when adding themes and plugins that are made for WP. You have to adapt them to make sure the admin side is secured. Many WPMU developers do not consider these things, and need to shape up.

    That’s all I can think of.

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    Re: Admin-side security: Which makes me wonder about plugins like the kb-robots.txt plugin and how no filtering appears to take place on it.

    I always thought that if you save any sort of blog option, it;s supposed to be run through at least kses. Guess not.

    As to other sites, I would spend my time looking them over to see what they have to offer, what they’ve done and what seems to work and what doesn’t work for them. Not sure if they’ll give away trade secrets if you ask but it wouldn’t hurt. It’s actually one of the things we suggest to clients of ours who want to do a hosting site, not only WordPress or other platforms like Elgg.

  • Mason
    • DEV MAN’s Sidekick

    Guys I really appreciate the information.

    Dr. Mike, any sites you’d suggest looking into or ones your particularly proud of? I know this may not be the right place to post that info, but I’m definitely interested in seeing what others have accomplished.

    Thanks again!

    -james

  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops

    Isn’t there already a thread for that over on the mu forums? Unfortunately it seems pretty much everyone who has managed to install WPMU has posted about their site :disappointed:

    Gotta admit I’d like to see a list of exceptional WPMU sites.

    Thanks,

    Andrew

  • Mason
    • DEV MAN’s Sidekick

    Fantastic idea good doctor! Too bad it looks like we’re all a bit too intimidated at this point!

    I know of one that’s pretty decent and I thought about writing it up, but I think you guys have probably heard of it… it’s called edublogs.org… or something like that.

    Also, I didn’t want to get accused of brown-nosing… oh the horrors! :wink:

    Anyway, hopefully someone posts soon!