Everything about WPMU and... Themes
Taken from The WordPress MU Manual and applicable to standard WordPress as much as WPMU!
Each WordPress theme is made up of a collection of templates which includes a stylesheet (style.css) and several PHP template files.
The stylesheet controls the formatting and layout of your blog theme in terms of colour, what the font looks like, where elements are position on the page and so on.
PHP (stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) is the scripting language used by WordPress to create the blog pages. When a visitor goes to your blog to read content, a request is sent to your server. This request is received by the PHP programming language which obtains the required information from your MySQL database and displays it in the visitor’s web browser.
While you don’t need know how to code PHP a basic understanding of both HTML and PHP means you can make minor edits to themes using a text editor such as EditPlus. EditPlus is a text editor, HTML editor and programmer’s editor for Windows. While you could edit in NotePad, EditPlus offers many powerful features that makes it better suited for editing PHP.
For Mac Users try using Smultron; free Text Edit software designed for Macs.
TIP:
Always save a backup of your themes on your hard drive so that you have the original files in case it is necessary to restore the original themes.
Editing the blog footer
A simple theme edit is to change the link in the blog footer from ‘Powered by WordPress MU’ to ‘Hosted by’ and the name of your domain. For example, all Edublogs themes are ‘Hosted by Edublogs’.
You use EditPlus3 as follows to edit the blog footer in all 100 themes contained in the Farms 100 big ones theme pack:
1. Download and install EditPlus3.
2. Launch EditPlus3.
3. Locate and open up the folder on your computer that contains the themes.
4. Now open up the footer.php in one of the theme folders. For example, 72 classes
5. Locate and highlight all the text that creates the link in the blog footer that says ‘Powered by WordPress MU’ then go to Search and select Find in Files.
6. Change file type to *.*, select Include Subfolders, locate your folder that contains all themes that you want to edit and then click Find
This will locate every file in the themes folder that includes the ‘Powered by WordPress MU’ (for the 100 big one theme packs it should locate 100 occurrences)
7. Now right click and select Open All to open up every footer.php file that contains ‘Powered by WordPress MU’
8. Locate and highlight all the text that says ‘Powered by WordPress MU’ then go to Search and select Replace.
9. In the Replace with field add the new text and link you want to use. For example, Hosted by <a href=”http://edutags.net/”>Edutags.net</a>
10. Now select All open files and click on Replace All.
11. This should have now replaced ‘Powered by WordPress MU’ with your new text and link.
12. Now go to File and select Save All to save all the changes to the footer.php. Next upload the edited themes to your WPMU site using FileZilla.
Next up… languages :)
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To get us started on our week of new WPMU DEV Premium stuff, we’d like to give you a goody.. and a new departure for WPMU DEV Premium, namely a bbPress theme!
An not just any bbPress theme either - to go with the very popular edublogs homepage theme - you can now also use and abuse the Edublogs forums bbpress theme!
It’s a quality theme, designed, redesigned and developed entirely with great user experience in mind, and incorporating the same avatars that users upload to Edublogs (using our custom avatars plugin).
Simply upload this to your bbPress installation (into /bb-templates/) , along with the bbpress avatars plugin included in our Avatars plugin pack (into /my-plugins/) and you’ll be away!
And It’s a cinch to edit the css so that it will comply with whatever hack of the edublogs theme you might be using.
NB: Premium Members also have complete access to our WPMU Manual guides on installing and integrating bbPress as a sitewide forum!
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We’re keen on BuddyPress over here, and we’d like to enhance your WordPress MU / BuddyPress experience by supplying you with a few themes and plugins both for free on WPMU DEV and for you premium users on WPMU DEV Premium.
But… we need your assistance, or, to be more accurate, your specifications :)
What style of BuddyPress themes would you like us to make for you?
What plugins would you like us to put together?
To let us know please just write up a post / tweet / whatever your fancy is and link to this post either as ‘buddypress plugins’ or ‘buddypress themes’ (or both, if you’re asking for both!)
If pingbacks fail just manually add your request in the comments.
We’re quite serious here - here’s a good chance to get some custom Incsub development for the price of a post!
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A quick new plugin for you at WPMU DEV Premium direct from the ‘blindingly obvious’ department :)
Simply select a new default theme for new blogs via Site Admin > Options, no more fiddling around with default folders and all that.
Enjoy!
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Big day on the releases over at WPMU DEV Premium today, three brand new themes that we hope are gonna offer you, and your users, some pretty cool stuff!
- WPMU Triden
- WPMU Dixie
- WPMU Nelo (my favorite)
They are, specifically, themes that embrace two fundamental concepts important for WPMU, first up they are massively, massively configurable. I mean, you haven’t even seen configurable until you’ve got into the backend of these babies.
I mean, check this out…
Then, they’ve also got massive, massive CMS possibilities (that’s what they are originally designed for, use as a CMS, although each one can also be switched into blog mode if that’s required).
And we’re not talking custom fields here, we’re talking the ability to edit every single image on the page by upload and crop, ever bit of text via simple boxes and every single area that you can see, should you so wish, via widgets.
I mean, seriously, these are the nuts :) Check out WPMU Nelo in action…
It’s that simple - no custom fields, no messing with categories, literally anyone can do it.
So, there you go, they’ve been about 6 months (on and off) in the making, and of course are going to be continuously improved as we go along, so if you’re not already a WPMU DEV Premium member, give joining some consideration, we’re hoping that it’s more than worth your while :)
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Introduction
I recently had a problem with some images uploaded to one of the blogs, I was able to remove the images before any harm was done.
This got me thinking about protecting myself, my blogs has a Terms of Use page and a Privacy Policy however users are not required to agree to them before posting. I decided I would implement some sort of system to amend this problem.
Issues
- I am running a mature blog with over 200 users and 23 blogs already on the system so I needed some way of getting them to agree to my terms.
- I didn’t want to slow the sign up process by adding another check box.
Solution
The Wordpress Terms of Use plugin, yes I know there are many other options out there to do this however this plugin takes a slightly different approach. Instead of making the user agree to the Terms of Use when they join the site this plugin makes them agree to the terms and conditions the first time they login. The reason for doing this is that you can be installed Wordpress Terms of Use plugin on a mature blog and existing members will be able to agree to the Terms of Use the next time they log in. In addition the new users are presented with a nice fully customizable welcome message after they agree to your Terms to help them get started using Wordpress.
Features
- Works for both New Blogs and New users.
- Customizable Open Source Terms of Use agreement.
- Customizable Open Source Privacy Policy.
- Customizable Welcome Message.
- Can be integrated into a mature blog.
- Support for both Wordpress and Wordpress MU.
- No changes need to be made to the Sign up process.
Screenshots
Installation
Wordpress MU
- Download the terms-of-use.zip
- Extract the files.
- Copy the ‘terms-of-use.php’ and ‘terms-of-use’ directory into ‘/wp-content/mu-plugins/’
- If you want to use Wordpress to edit your terms of use, privacy policy and welcome message, chmod terms-of-use.txt to 0664 (make them writable).
NOTE: for additional security there is an .htaccess file included in the terms-of-use directory that douse not allow scripts to be executed from these files. This protects against code insertion.You can now login and edit your terms of use, privacy policy and welcome message via “Site Admin > Terms of Use”. - That’s it.
Wordpress
- Download the terms-of-use.zip
- Extract the files.
- Copy the ‘terms-of-use.php’ and ‘terms-of-use’ directory into ‘/wp-content/ plugins/’
- If you want to use Wordpress to edit your terms of use, privacy policy and welcome message, chmod terms-of-use.txt to 0664 (make them writable).
NOTE: for additional security there is an .htaccess file included in the terms-of-use directory that douse not allow scripts to be executed from these files. This protects against code insertion. - You can now login and edit your terms of use, privacy policy and welcome message via “Settings > Terms of Use”.
- That’s it.
Add a Terms of Use page and a Privacy Policy page to your website.
- Create a Terms of Use page in the normal manner.
- Add the [terms-and-conditions] tag to the page.
- Create a Privacy Policy page in the normal manner.
- Add the [privacy-policy] tag to the page.
Download
Download Version 0.2 beta This is a complete stable version and is running on all my Wordpress and Wordpress MU blogs without a problem. If no one reports any bugs I will change the version to 1.0
Plugin Website
Vote
This plugin is nominated in the 2008 Wordpress MU plugin competition, if you like this plugin please vote for it.
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As if over $2000 worth of prizes, WPMU fame and general adulation wasn’t enough, all plugin authors participating in the WordPress MU plugin competition, now also get a premium theme (usually $49 per license) free from Blog Design Studio.
How cool is that!
So, get your entries in (only 19 days to go…) and send them a quick email to claim your theme goodness!
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Good post on WLTC about using conditions for plugin output in themes.
This is how we include a lot of things in the Farms theme packs that get released on WPMU DEV, so that they can be used straight of the bat, for free, and WPMU DEV Premium plugins can also be slotted into them with ease too!
And, incidentally, we’ve just release an updated 100 theme pack for members over at Premium :)
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Just quickly, as a short interlude from the plugin contest, some theme news.
We’ve heard that quite a lot of people liked the Edublogs homepage theme (and why not, it took a heck of a while to build!) so , we decided to make it available on WPMU DEV Premium.
A couple of years ago we actually released an (much) older version of the theme on the free site - but were then inundated by issues with it being used for splog sites (hence putting it on Premium this time).
Here’s what it looks like, and you can download it from here:
We’d ask that you don’t just change the logo and use it like that… but feel free to hack the heck out of it, lift the good bits and generally enjoy it for all you are worth.
Some cute code bits include the login form, full support and integration for our MU avatars plugin, some really cute css / design stuff, the on page RSS tabber (controlled by the theme options) and we’ll be releasing shortly plugins to allow you to manage a list of recently updated blogs (with avatars) just like our ‘Supporters’ section and also, possibly, some of our global tagging stuff (although Donncha’s MU tags should work just as well!)
More cool CMS / Frontpage themes will be coming to WPMU DEV Premium soon too.
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Welcome to WPMU.org. a blog dedicated to post news, tutorials, plugins, themes, hacks, tips, etc… related to WordPress MU.
What’s WordPress MU?
Wordpress Multi-User (Wordpress MU) is a fork of WordPress created to allow simultaneous blogs to exist within one installation. Wordpress MU makes it possible for any one with a website to host their own blogging community, control and moderate all the blogs from a single dashboard. Wordpress MU adds eight new data tables for each blog. (Wikipedia)
By the way this is just another unofficial blog not affiliated with WordPress MU developed by Automattic.
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