IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I'm Justin Seeley, and welcome to
Creating a Blog Network with WordPress.
| | 00:08 | In this course, we'll take a look at
how to create a WordPress Multisite
| | 00:11 | Installation, how to effectively manage
a blog network using WordPress, and how
| | 00:15 | to add a layer of security by
backing up your multisite environment.
| | 00:19 | I'll start off by showing you how to
enable the multisite feature using a code
| | 00:22 | editor and a little PHP.
| | 00:24 | Then we'll see how to manage our
WordPress Multisite using the Network
| | 00:27 | Administration panel.
| | 00:29 | We'll see how to create complete
backups of your WordPress site using
| | 00:32 | the BackupBuddy plug-in and how
to store those backups to various
| | 00:35 | remote destinations.
| | 00:36 | We'll be covering all of the features
of WordPress Multisite, plus I'll have
| | 00:40 | plenty of tips, tricks, and time-
saving workarounds along the way.
| | 00:43 | Now let's get started with
Creating a Blog Network with WordPress.
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1. Getting to Know MultisiteIntroducing multisite| 00:00 | Before we get started with the nuts and
bolts of WordPress Multisite, let's take
| | 00:04 | a brief look at some of the
basic information about the software.
| | 00:06 | In this movie, we'll take a look at
exactly what Multisite is and what it allows
| | 00:10 | you to do in your web site. We'll also be looking
at a brief history of Multisite so that you understand
| | 00:15 | exactly where it came from, and then
finally we'll take a look at who is using
| | 00:18 | Multisite on the web today.
| | 00:20 | So exactly what does Multisite do?
| | 00:23 | Well, WordPress Multisite allows you
to create a network of multiple sites or
| | 00:27 | blogs inside of one single
installation of WordPress.
| | 00:30 | It also enables the user to easily launch
new sites with a single click of a button.
| | 00:35 | You can also allow your users to
create their own blogs through the sign-up
| | 00:38 | process if you choose to allow that option.
| | 00:40 | Now, let's take a look at
exactly what WordPress looks like with
| | 00:43 | Multisite turned off.
| | 00:45 | As you can see, with Multisite
turned off WordPress is just a single
| | 00:48 | stand-alone web site or blog.
| | 00:50 | However, with Multisite turned on, you
can turn your site into an entire network
| | 00:54 | of blogs or web sites that have
their own unique look and feel as well as
| | 00:58 | utilize their own themes and plug-ins.
| | 01:01 | Now let's take a look at
the history of Multisite.
| | 01:03 | You may know WordPress Multisite as
WPMU or WordPress MU because it started as
| | 01:08 | a fork of WordPress.
| | 01:10 | WPMU and WordPress existed as
separate entities until recently in the
| | 01:15 | WordPress 3.0 release.
| | 01:16 | WPMU was usually a few
versions behind in the software.
| | 01:20 | However, in WordPress 3.0, we saw the two
sides merge into one, and Multisite was born.
| | 01:26 | So exactly who is using WordPress
Multisite today? Let's take a look.
| | 01:30 | Best Buy is actually using
WordPress Multisite for their retail blogs.
| | 01:34 | Each individual store has its own
unique WordPress site generated from
| | 01:38 | WordPress Multisite.
| | 01:39 | There you can find things like Store
Information, Open Box Items, Clearance
| | 01:43 | Items, News & Announcements, Special
Products, and other information, all of
| | 01:47 | this controlled dynamically
through a site generated by WordPress.
| | 01:51 | We also have the weblogs at Harvard Law School.
| | 01:54 | This site allows for students in the law
school program to come and create their
| | 01:58 | own blog right here at harvard.edu.
| | 02:02 | Reuters also uses
Multisite to control its blog form.
| | 02:06 | Finally, and probably the most popular
form of WordPress Multisite is wordpress.com.
| | 02:12 | Each and every time a new user
creates a blog at wordpress.com, it is an
| | 02:16 | extension of the wordpress.com
multisite installation.
| | 02:19 | As you can imagine, this is one
of the biggest WordPress multisite
| | 02:22 | installations in the world.
| | 02:24 | According to wordpress.com,
they have over 350,000 bloggers.
| | 02:28 | That's one big multisite.
| | 02:31 | Now that we have a good understanding
of exactly what WordPress multisite is,
| | 02:34 | how it works, and who is using it,
let's actually take a look at how we can
| | 02:37 | start to use it in our own workflow.
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| Common use cases for multisite| 00:00 | There's no question that WordPress
Multisite has some pretty cool features, but
| | 00:04 | not everyone needs to create
an entire network of sites.
| | 00:07 | So now let's take a look at some of
the common use cases for WordPress
| | 00:10 | Multisite so you can
determine if it fits into your needs.
| | 00:13 | First of all, we will take a look at
the benefits of using WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:16 | Then we will go into ways that you
can actually use WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:20 | Next, we'll take a look at who exactly
needs WordPress Multisite, followed by who
| | 00:24 | doesn't need WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:26 | So the benefits of WordPress Multisite:
| | 00:29 | Number one, it's a huge timesaver.
| | 00:32 | WordPress Multisite allows you to easily
create sites on the fly with almost a single click.
| | 00:37 | It's fantastic.
| | 00:39 | Second, you install once, you upgrade once.
| | 00:42 | That means you run off one single
installation of WordPress and you will only
| | 00:45 | have to update that instance of
WordPress each and every time they release a new
| | 00:49 | version of WordPress.
| | 00:50 | It doesn't matter if you're running
one site or 50 sites; you only have to
| | 00:54 | upgrade once, and that is
going to save you a ton of time.
| | 00:58 | It also allows for a more rich user experience.
| | 01:01 | You can actually allow your users to
create their own blog as they sign up to
| | 01:06 | become members of your site, and
for crying out loud, let them blog!
| | 01:09 | It's a great way to get them
interacting and expand your online community.
| | 01:13 | It's also a great tool for freelancers
because they can easily manage multiple clients.
| | 01:18 | And finally, if you have more than one
site, it's just easier on you, and this
| | 01:22 | is actually my favorite
part of WordPress Multisite.
| | 01:25 | I have a ton of online presences, and
it helps me manage those really easily.
| | 01:29 | I have all of my different sites, which
aren't necessarily connected in any way,
| | 01:33 | rolled into one single WordPress Multisite.
| | 01:36 | I can deploy plug-ins, themes,
upgrade WordPress, add new users to help me
| | 01:41 | manage content. Whatever it is I
want to do, I can do that from this one
| | 01:45 | single install point.
| | 01:47 | It just makes things so much easier on me.
| | 01:50 | So what are some creative ways
that you can use WordPress Multisite?
| | 01:53 | Well, number one is a client management tool.
| | 01:56 | Let's say for instance that
you're a small graphic design agency.
| | 01:59 | You have several clients coming to you all
the time wanting to have a web site built.
| | 02:03 | It's kind of a pain to go ahead and
install a new version of WordPress on each
| | 02:07 | individual one of their domains.
| | 02:09 | Why not have one single installation of
WordPress, so that you can manage all of
| | 02:13 | those clients from that one single place?
| | 02:16 | It makes it so much easier on you and
in the long run, it's a lot better if you
| | 02:21 | ever have to migrate or move
anything from one server to another.
| | 02:25 | Second would be for blog networks, like
online magazines and things like that.
| | 02:29 | Any web site that has multiple
divisions like sports, weather, classifieds, et
| | 02:35 | cetera, they can all be rolled into
one single installation of WordPress and
| | 02:39 | then controlled individually outside of that.
| | 02:42 | This would be perfect for things like
online magazines, newspapers, et cetera.
| | 02:46 | Multisite can also be used as a social
networking tool for your users or readers.
| | 02:51 | If you're using the BuddyPress plug-
in in your WordPress Installation for
| | 02:54 | instance, you can set it up so that
each one of your new users can create their
| | 02:58 | own blog or web site at your domain.
| | 03:01 | It makes it so much easier
to expand your community.
| | 03:05 | You could also use multisite
for multifaceted marketplaces.
| | 03:08 | Let's say for instance that you
sell several different products:
| | 03:12 | jewelry, hardware, and electronics.
| | 03:15 | In this multifaceted marketplace
environment, you can have each one of those in
| | 03:19 | their own individual site with their
own look and feel, their own checkout
| | 03:23 | system, everything
individualized for each one of them.
| | 03:26 | However, they're all driven from that
one single installation. Very powerful!
| | 03:32 | Finally, WordPress Multisite is a great
educational tool for teachers and students.
| | 03:38 | Let's say for instance that
you are a web design instructor.
| | 03:40 | You can actually show your class
how to create a WordPress Multisite
| | 03:43 | installation and then walk them
through creating their own web site or blog
| | 03:48 | based upon that WordPress installation.
| | 03:50 | You could also allow your students to
create their own WordPress multisite
| | 03:53 | installations, and then have their
friends set up their own web site or blog
| | 03:57 | based on those installations.
| | 03:58 | It's a very powerful tool to teach
students and teachers how to utilize the
| | 04:03 | web more effectively.
| | 04:04 | So exactly who needs Multisite?
| | 04:06 | Well, first and foremost, freelance
designers and small graphic design agencies.
| | 04:11 | If you have clients that you need to
manage, WrodPress Multisite is the answer
| | 04:15 | for that. Second, professional
bloggers and online magazines.
| | 04:19 | I will go ahead and tack
newspapers onto this as well.
| | 04:22 | If you're a newspaper or a magazine or
a blog that has multiple divisions and
| | 04:27 | you're not using WordPress Multisite,
you're really doing yourself a disservice.
| | 04:31 | Also, schools and universities.
| | 04:33 | As I said, it's a great educational tool.
| | 04:35 | It's also a great way to allow students
to interact with your school or university.
| | 04:40 | Media companies and podcasting networks.
| | 04:43 | Let's say for instance that you host
multiple podcasts. One could be a radio
| | 04:47 | show, one a TV show, and one
just a regular talk show.
| | 04:50 | All of these can be utilizing WordPress
Multisite to have their own individual
| | 04:55 | site, their own look and feel, their
own RSS feed, but they're all controlled
| | 04:59 | from one single point. Awesome!
| | 05:02 | Finally, people like me who
have multiple homes on the web.
| | 05:06 | As I said before, I have lots of web
sites and they're not all necessarily
| | 05:10 | related at all, but I have them all
wrapped up in that one single installation
| | 05:15 | of WordPress which makes
it so much easier on me.
| | 05:18 | So who doesn't need Multisite?
| | 05:20 | Well, first and foremost, the casual blogger.
| | 05:23 | These are people who have one single web
site and just use that to pump out content.
| | 05:27 | You don't need WordPress Multisite if all
you're doing is using one single site or domain.
| | 05:33 | Second, small businesses? well, maybe.
| | 05:36 | If you're a small business with a single
focus, WordPress Multisite is not for you.
| | 05:40 | However, if you're a small
business with several divisions, WordPress
| | 05:44 | Multisite might be for you.
| | 05:46 | It's just something to look at. And
finally, THAT client, and you all know
| | 05:50 | exactly who I'm talking about.
| | 05:51 | This is the person that frustrates
you with phone calls at 2 in the morning
| | 05:54 | about something they broke on their web
site while they were poking around in the code.
| | 05:58 | This is not the level of control that
you want to give someone who is really
| | 06:01 | nosy about poking around
the backend of their site.
| | 06:04 | And as we all know, they are going
to come right back to you as soon as
| | 06:07 | they break something.
| | 06:08 | Hopefully by now, you have a better
understanding of the benefits of using
| | 06:11 | WordPress Multisite, as well as some
creative ways that you can use WordPress
| | 06:14 | Multisite in your workflow, and whether or
not WordPress Multisite is right for you.
| | 06:19 | If it is, now you're ready to start
configuring your hosting environment.
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| Understanding multisite server requirements| 00:00 | In this movie, I will be discussing
the requirements for running a WordPress
| | 00:03 | Multisite installation.
| | 00:05 | These are merely the recommended
specifications as outlined by the WordPress Codex.
| | 00:09 | We will first start out with server
requirements, outlining exactly what your
| | 00:13 | web server needs to be running in
order for to support WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:16 | Then we'll take a look at
the WordPress requirements,
| | 00:19 | what you need to know about running
WordPress on the backend before you get going.
| | 00:23 | One of the most important things to
check before installing any kind of web
| | 00:26 | software are the server requirements.
| | 00:28 | If your server requirements don't
match up to these recommended settings, it
| | 00:31 | might be time to upgrade or
even change your hosting plan.
| | 00:35 | Your web server should be
running PHP 5.2.4 or greater.
| | 00:39 | You also need to be running MySQL 5.0.15
or greater, and you also need to make
| | 00:45 | sure that your web server has
support for the Apache mod_rewrite module.
| | 00:49 | This is essential because this is what
allows your blogs to be created inside of
| | 00:53 | your WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:55 | Now, what about the
requirements for WordPress itself?
| | 00:57 | Well, first and foremost, WordPress must be
installed in the root directory of your domain.
| | 01:03 | Also, the site address and
WordPress address must be the same.
| | 01:08 | This refers to two fields that are
located inside of the General Settings of
| | 01:11 | your WordPress Dashboard.
| | 01:12 | Here, you'll see the WordPress
address and the Site address.
| | 01:16 | You would only want to change the Site
address if you wanted your homepage of
| | 01:20 | your web site in a different
directory from where you installed WordPress.
| | 01:24 | This is not possible in WordPress Multisite.
| | 01:27 | So you must make sure that both of
these are identical to one another.
| | 01:31 | Once you have gone through and made
sure that your WordPress installation meets
| | 01:34 | all of these minimal requirements,
you are ready to start enabling your
| | 01:37 | WordPress Multisite network.
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| Optimizing your hosting environment| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to
take a look at how you can check your
| | 00:02 | hosting environment to ensure that you have
what it takes to support this type of software.
| | 00:06 | First, we'll take a look at how to
determine the versions of software that
| | 00:09 | you're running on your current web server.
| | 00:11 | Next, we will look at phpMyAdmin and
how you can utilize that to get a bird's
| | 00:15 | eye view of what's going on with your
SQL databases as well as various PHP
| | 00:18 | processes that are going on as well.
| | 00:20 | Finally, we will take a
look at WordPress itself.
| | 00:22 | How to install it, and also, how to
make sure that it's in the right place when
| | 00:26 | you're using WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:28 | Most hosting companies provide you with
a cPanel which is a user-friendly way of
| | 00:32 | viewing various parts of your web site.
| | 00:34 | In this case, I am logged in to my
cPanel and I want to go down and see exactly
| | 00:38 | what versions of the web software I'm
currently running, like PHP and MySQL.
| | 00:41 | So let's go down to the bottom and
find a link that says Program Versions.
| | 00:47 | Once I click on that link,
it takes me to this screen.
| | 00:51 | In this screen, I get to see all of
the different program versions that I'm
| | 00:54 | running on my current web hosting platform.
| | 00:56 | Stuff like my Apache
configuration, which is running 2.2.21.
| | 01:00 | I can also see that my MySQL is set to 5.1.56.
| | 01:05 | Now it does tell me that my
PHP version is only 5.2.17.
| | 01:10 | However, I know that based upon my
current host configuration, that my host
| | 01:14 | provides me with a PHP 5.3 and
5.2 Dual Hosting Environment.
| | 01:19 | If you're unsure about how to
determine what version of software or how to
| | 01:22 | access this inside of your cPanel, my
suggestion would be to read through the
| | 01:26 | support documentation provided by your host.
| | 01:28 | Once you've determined that all of your
software is up-to-date and ready to run,
| | 01:32 | you can go into different parts of
your site like phpMyAdmin to take a bird's
| | 01:36 | eye view of things like your SQL databases.
| | 01:38 | Let's see how to find that now.
| | 01:39 | I'll go back to my cPanel and I will
scroll up, and over here on the right,
| | 01:44 | you'll notice that I have a Databases section.
| | 01:46 | In the Databases section,
there's a link to phpMyAdmin.
| | 01:49 | Once I click on that, it
launches the phpMyAdmin screen.
| | 01:53 | This way, I can take a bird's eye
view at all of my Databases, the Status,
| | 01:57 | different Processes that are running.
| | 01:59 | I can also Export and
Import various databases as well.
| | 02:02 | If I want to check what version of
MySQL is running on my server, I can tell
| | 02:06 | by looking right here.
| | 02:08 | Once I have determined that
everything is ready to go, I need to start
| | 02:10 | installing WordPress.
| | 02:12 | Remember, when you're installing
WordPress for use with Multisite, it must be
| | 02:16 | installed in the root directory of a domain.
| | 02:18 | Let's take a look at how to do that.
| | 02:20 | I'll go back over here to my cPanel, and
inside of most cPanel applications, you
| | 02:24 | are going to have a link to something
called Fantastico De Luxe, or maybe even a
| | 02:28 | link to quick install
WordPress directly from this screen.
| | 02:31 | However, if you can't find that
WordPress one click install, simply choose
| | 02:35 | Fantastico De Luxe, and then inside of Fantastico,
| | 02:38 | you'll notice that on the left-
hand side, they have a list of all of
| | 02:41 | the available software.
| | 02:42 | Underneath Blogs, you'll see WordPress.
| | 02:45 | If I click on WordPress, it takes me
here, shows me a brief description of what
| | 02:49 | it is, a support forum, and allows
me to create a new installation.
| | 02:53 | If I choose New Installation, it goes
through, and I can choose what domain to
| | 02:57 | install it on and also I
can pick an install directory.
| | 03:01 | However, in this case, we are going
to be working with WordPress Multisite.
| | 03:05 | As I said before, WordPress Multisite
cannot be stored inside of a directory.
| | 03:09 | It must be installed inside of
the root level of the domain.
| | 03:12 | Therefore, this field
should always be left blank.
| | 03:15 | Once you enter in all of the rest of
the admin data that's required, simply
| | 03:19 | hit Install WordPress, and Fantastico
automatically installs all of that for
| | 03:23 | you, and then you will get an email
with a confirmation along with your
| | 03:26 | username and your password.
| | 03:28 | If you want to ensure that WordPress
has been installed correctly, simply
| | 03:31 | connect to your web server via FTP.
| | 03:33 | Once you've connected via FTP, look in
the root directory of your domain, and
| | 03:37 | make sure all of the WordPress related
files are exactly where they should be.
| | 03:40 | Most of them start with wp-.
| | 03:43 | After you've got WordPress installed
in your root directory, and all of your
| | 03:45 | server configurations and everything
are checked, you're ready to continue
| | 03:49 | working with your
WordPress Multisite installation.
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| Using subdomains vs. subdirectories| 00:00 | One of the big decisions that
you'll have to make during your Multisite
| | 00:02 | installation is whether or not you want
to use subdomains or subdirectories when
| | 00:06 | you're creating your new web sites or blogs.
| | 00:08 | Before we talk about which one I prefer
personally, let's take a look at what I
| | 00:11 | mean by subdomain or subdirectory.
| | 00:14 | A subdomain refers to a web address
that appends something to the beginning
| | 00:17 | of your normal domain.
| | 00:18 | For instance, if my web address is
mydomain.com, then an example of a subdomain
| | 00:24 | would be site.mydomain.com.
| | 00:28 | A subdirectory, on the other hand,
appends itself to the end of the web address.
| | 00:32 | Therefore, if you choose subdirectories,
your address would be mydomain.com/site
| | 00:38 | as opposed to site.mydomain.com.
| | 00:40 | There are no major advantages or
disadvantages to using either of these methods.
| | 00:45 | However, it should be noted that
depending on your permalink structure, using
| | 00:48 | subdirectories could create some issues for you.
| | 00:51 | It's for that reason that
I prefer to use subdomains.
| | 00:53 | The good news is that
Multisite defaults to subdomains.
| | 00:57 | So really you don't have to do
anything special during your setup.
| | 01:00 | During this course, I will
be using a subdomain install.
| | 01:02 | But just know that the process is
exactly the same as a subdirectory install.
| | 01:06 | You don't have to decide right now
though, but just put it in your mind going
| | 01:09 | forward because once we get to the
Multisite Network Configuration Screen,
| | 01:13 | you'll need to pick one, either
a subdomain or a subdirectory.
| | 01:17 | It should be noted that if you're
installing your Multisite network locally on
| | 01:20 | your computer, you will have to choose
subdirectories instead of subdomains.
| | 01:23 | That's a restriction of the WordPress
software that is simply unavoidable.
| | 01:26 | If you attempt to install
Multisite using subdomains locally, your
| | 01:30 | installation will fail.
| | 01:31 | Another important note is that you'll
be able to change your installation type
| | 01:34 | once you've completed your network installation.
| | 01:37 | However, that's somewhat difficult
if your site has already launched.
| | 01:40 | So now that we have seen the
differences between subdomains and
| | 01:42 | subdirectories, take a look, find out
which one fits your needs the best, and
| | 01:47 | choose that one going forward.
| | 01:48 | Stick with it, because as I said, it
can be a little bit difficult to change it
| | 01:52 | once your site is live on the web.
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2. Configuring Your Multisite NetworkEnabling the Network feature| 00:00 | Now it's time to actually enable the
Multisite feature here inside of WordPress.
| | 00:04 | So as you can see, I'm logged into the
WordPress Dashboard, and I'm going to have
| | 00:07 | that open throughout this movie.
| | 00:09 | I'm also going to jump over
into my code editing application;
| | 00:12 | this could be any type of
editing application that you wish.
| | 00:15 | In this case, I happened to be using Coda.
| | 00:17 | I've already got open my wp-config
file which should be located in the root
| | 00:22 | directory of your WordPress installation.
| | 00:24 | It's simply labeled wp-config.php.
| | 00:28 | You'll also need access
to a file called .htaccess.
| | 00:33 | In most code editing applications
you won't see hidden files by default.
| | 00:37 | The .htaccess file is one of these hidden files.
| | 00:40 | In Coda, I simply go up to View
and choose Show Invisible Files.
| | 00:44 | Your process may vary, depending on the
type of application that you are using.
| | 00:47 | Once you've located the .htaccess file,
simply open it up in your Code Editing
| | 00:52 | window and you are ready to go.
| | 00:53 | I am going to start by going
back over to my wp-config.php file.
| | 00:58 | Inside of this document you need to
scroll down until you find something that
| | 01:02 | says, That's all, stop editing!
| | 01:04 | Happy blogging. Should be
around line 83 or 82 of the code.
| | 01:08 | Once I find that area, I need to
click in the line directly above it and
| | 01:12 | start to add some code.
| | 01:14 | This is the code that is used to
actually enable the WordPress Multisite feature
| | 01:18 | inside of WordPress.
| | 01:19 | I start off by saying that I'm going to
define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true, and
| | 01:40 | then we will close our parentheses.
| | 01:42 | At the end of the parentheses,
we're going to type a semicolon.
| | 01:45 | It's very important that while you're
typing out this code snippet that you keep
| | 01:49 | everything exactly how
you see here on the screen.
| | 01:51 | You also want to make sure that the WP_
ALLOW_MULTISITE portion of the code is in
| | 01:56 | all capital letters.
| | 01:57 | Once you have this code typed out, all
you have to do is save your wp-config
| | 02:02 | file and then re-upload it to your server.
| | 02:05 | Once it's uploaded to your server, go
back to your WordPress installation.
| | 02:09 | Once you are back inside of your
WordPress installation, simply refresh the page,
| | 02:13 | and if you want to make sure that
everything went smooth while you were enabling
| | 02:16 | your network, simply go down to the
tools menu and you should see a link that
| | 02:20 | points to Network Setup.
| | 02:22 | If you see that link, everything is
good and you are ready to proceed to the
| | 02:25 | next step.
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| Installing your network| 00:00 | Now that we have the Multisite
feature enabled inside of our WordPress
| | 00:03 | Installation, it's time to go through
and actually complete the installation.
| | 00:06 | Simply enabling the feature doesn't
actually turn anything on, so in order to do
| | 00:10 | that we need to go back into
our cPanel and do some leg work.
| | 00:13 | So I'm going to jump back over to my
cPanel, and the first thing I'm going to do
| | 00:17 | is I'm going to come
down to the Domains section.
| | 00:21 | Once I find the Domains section,
I'm going to click on Subdomains.
| | 00:25 | This is where I can enable
the subdomains for my web site.
| | 00:28 | Now, it should be noted that your
hosting platform has to support something
| | 00:31 | called Wildcard DNS.
| | 00:34 | If your host does not support Wildcard
DNS, it will be impossible for you to do a
| | 00:39 | subdomain install of WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:42 | If you are unsure if your host
supports this or not, my suggestion would be
| | 00:45 | to read through the support documentation or
contact them directly to make sure that they do.
| | 00:50 | In order to enable Wildcard subdomains
on your domain that you choose to use for
| | 00:54 | WordPress Multisite, simply find the
domain in the list of domains here in the
| | 00:58 | right, and then in the Subdomain
portion simply enter in an asterisk.
| | 01:03 | Once you have that asterisk done,
simply click the Create button.
| | 01:08 | Once you have done that, you'll
notice that it tells me the subdomain *.my
| | 01:12 | domain.com has been created.
| | 01:14 | Once I've done that, I'm going to go back.
| | 01:16 | I then need to go and create a new
folder inside of my wp-content folder.
| | 01:21 | So I'm going to do this by going Home
and then scrolling down to something
| | 01:26 | called the File Manager.
| | 01:27 | You could do this inside of your web
FTP program or also inside of your code
| | 01:31 | editing application if you chose to.
| | 01:32 | Since I'm already in the cPanel, it
just makes sense for me to stay here.
| | 01:36 | I'll go to File Manager. In this case it's
going to ask me what domain I want to use.
| | 01:40 | I'll pick the domain where I'm installing
Multisite, and then I'm just going to hit Go.
| | 01:45 | It's going to open up with the File Manager
and I can navigate to my wp-content folder.
| | 01:51 | Inside of wp-content you have
to add a folder called blogs.dir.
| | 01:58 | This is a directory that you are creating where
your blog sites will actually be delivered from.
| | 02:03 | You are not actually creating content
in this folder necessarily, but all of
| | 02:07 | your sites will be served up
dynamically through your database via this folder.
| | 02:11 | So let's go ahead and create that now.
| | 02:13 | I'll go up and choose New Folder, and
it's going to ask me what I want to call it.
| | 02:17 | I'm just going to call it blogs.dir,
and then I'll click Create New Folder.
| | 02:24 | In some cases, it may give you an error
like I'm getting here, but that's no big deal.
| | 02:28 | This is just a simple AJAX error that
occurs sometimes. Go ahead and hit OK.
| | 02:31 | You will notice that it creates the
blogs.dir folder without any problem.
| | 02:36 | Okay, so now I've got my subdomains and my
blogs.dir directory created. I'm ready to go.
| | 02:43 | So I'll go back to the WordPress Dashboard.
| | 02:46 | Once I get inside the WordPress
Dashboard, I can go over here to tools and
| | 02:50 | choose Network Setup.
| | 02:52 | Inside of the Network Setup
I'll be able to choose sub-domain
| | 02:56 | versus sub-directory.
| | 02:57 | In this case, it's telling me that I can
only use sub-domains and that's because
| | 03:01 | my install is not what they call New;
| | 03:04 | in this case it means the
installation is older than 30 days.
| | 03:07 | If your installation is newer than 30
days you will be able to pick between
| | 03:10 | sub-domain and sub-directory.
Unfortunately, if it's older than 30 days you are
| | 03:14 | stuck with sub-domains.
| | 03:16 | It will actually tell you that your
install is not new and that your WordPress
| | 03:19 | site network must use sub-domains.
| | 03:22 | You also have to choose the Network
Title. In this case I'm just using
| | 03:26 | mydomain.com and the word Sites.
| | 03:28 | You also need to input an
email address for the admin.
| | 03:31 | Once you've got this information
entered, all you have to do is click
| | 03:34 | the Install button.
| | 03:36 | Once you click the Install button, you
are going to notice that WordPress comes
| | 03:39 | up with several lines of code.
| | 03:41 | You don't even have to know what
these mean. All you have to do is copy and
| | 03:44 | paste these into the proper locations.
| | 03:46 | The best part is WordPress walks you
through exactly what you need to do here.
| | 03:50 | WordPress tells you that you need to
create a blogs.dir directory inside of this
| | 03:55 | particular folder, the wp-content folder.
| | 03:58 | And it tells you this directory is
used to store uploaded media for your
| | 04:01 | additional sites and it must
be writeable by the web server.
| | 04:05 | It should be noted here that the permissions
on this particular directory should be 755.
| | 04:10 | Also, it tells you you need access to
your wp-config and your .htaccess files.
| | 04:16 | You can access those by connecting to
your host via remote FTP and opening them
| | 04:21 | up inside of a code editing application.
| | 04:23 | Let's go do that now.
| | 04:24 | I'll jump over into my Code Editor,
and as you can see, I've already got
| | 04:27 | wp-config.php open and .htaccess open as well.
| | 04:33 | If you are unable to see the .htaccess
file, you simply need to enable Show
| | 04:38 | Invisible Files inside of whatever code
editing application you might be using.
| | 04:42 | Once you have both of these files
open, you are ready to cut and paste.
| | 04:45 | So go back to your WordPress
Installation, and you will notice here that it
| | 04:49 | tells me to add the following to my wp-
config file and it also gives me exactly
| | 04:54 | what line to put it on.
| | 04:55 | It tells me put it above the line that reads,
That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging.
| | 05:00 | So I'll go ahead and select this code.
| | 05:03 | I'll copy it to my clipboard, jump
back into my code editing application, and
| | 05:09 | right above that line that
says, That's all, stop editing!
| | 05:12 | Happy blogging, I'll hit Return to add
some space and then simply paste in the code.
| | 05:18 | Then I'll save and re-upload that file
and I'll go back over into WordPress.
| | 05:23 | Inside of WordPress, I'll scroll
down so I can see this, and I need to
| | 05:26 | select this code as well.
| | 05:29 | It tells me to add the following code
to my .htaccess file and it also tells me
| | 05:34 | to replace any other WordPress
rules that might be in there already.
| | 05:37 | Now if I go back into my .htaccess
file you will notice that I don't have any
| | 05:43 | WordPress rules inside of there yet.
| | 05:45 | So I'm just going to go down and I'm going
to create an area for my WordPress files.
| | 05:50 | Once I've created some space at the
bottom of my .htaccess file, I'm ready to
| | 05:53 | input some text for my WordPress rules.
| | 05:56 | You may already see some code in here
that looks something like this, # Begin
| | 06:02 | WordPress, and then something in
between, and at the end, # End WordPress.
| | 06:11 | Anything you see inside of this area
here you need to replace with the rules
| | 06:15 | that are inside of the WordPress Dashboard.
| | 06:18 | So again, copy this code inside of this
window and then inside of your .htaccess
| | 06:23 | file simply paste that
information right in between those two tags.
| | 06:27 | Once you've pasted it, save it and
then navigate back to your Dashboard.
| | 06:32 | In your Dashboard you should see a
link at the bottom that says once you've
| | 06:34 | completed these steps, your network is
enabled and theoretically configured.
| | 06:38 | You will need to log in again.
| | 06:39 | So you click the Log In
link and it takes you here.
| | 06:43 | Once you're at this screen, simply
click Log In using your admin username and
| | 06:47 | password, and it should take you
right back into the WordPress Dashboard.
| | 06:50 | If you want to make sure that
everything has been installed and configured
| | 06:53 | correctly, you need to make sure that
you see something in your Admin bar
| | 06:56 | that says My Sites.
| | 06:58 | Once you hover over My Sites, you
should be able to see Network Admin and
| | 07:02 | links to things like your Network Admin
Dashboard, Sites, Users, and also Visit Network.
| | 07:08 | If you see all these, that means your
network is up and running and you are
| | 07:11 | ready to go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Troubleshooting network configurations| 00:00 | Okay, now I have got my WordPress
Multisite installation finished and
| | 00:03 | theoretically everything
is configured correctly.
| | 00:05 | However, I know that in some
cases you may run across some errors.
| | 00:08 | So let's take a look at some of the more
common errors and how you can fix them.
| | 00:12 | First of all, you might get an error message
telling you that the network cannot be enabled.
| | 00:16 | This occurs when the Site URL is
different from the Home URL inside of WordPress.
| | 00:20 | In order to fix that, simply go into
your Settings, choose General, and make sure
| | 00:25 | that the Home URL field and the Site
URL field are identical. If they're not,
| | 00:30 | change them to be identical.
| | 00:31 | If your Site URL is a localhost, you
will notice that you are only able to
| | 00:35 | use subdirectories.
| | 00:36 | So unfortunately if you are trying to
use subdomains on a localhost install of
| | 00:40 | WordPress Multisite, it's not going to work.
| | 00:42 | You will have to switch this install
type over to a subdirectory install.
| | 00:46 | If your Site URL is an IP address,
you are only able to use subdirectories.
| | 00:51 | Therefore if you are using a web
server for development purposes and it only
| | 00:54 | has an IP address versus a domain, you are not
going to be able to use the subdomain install.
| | 00:59 | You will have to revert to subdirectories.
| | 01:01 | If you have WordPress installed inside
of a folder versus the root directory, you
| | 01:06 | will only be able to use subdirectories as well.
| | 01:09 | Therefore, if you have your
WordPress installation set up at
| | 01:11 | mydomain.com/something, you'll only be
able to use subdirectory installs for
| | 01:17 | that WordPress Multisite installation.
| | 01:20 | If your install happens to be more
than 30 days old, you will only be able to
| | 01:23 | use the subdomain installation process.
| | 01:26 | Therefore, if you are trying to use
subdirectories and you installed WordPress
| | 01:29 | like two months ago, you are
not going to be able to do that.
| | 01:32 | You are only going to be able to
utilize the subdomain installation method.
| | 01:36 | Finally, and this is the one that I
have run across most often, you've
| | 01:39 | incorrectly configured your wildcard domains.
| | 01:41 | Let me show you exactly what I mean by this.
| | 01:44 | If I go back into my WordPress
Multisite installation and I go to create a new
| | 01:49 | site, I'll go up to My Sites >
Network Admin and I'll choose Sites.
| | 01:55 | Inside of the Sites area, I'll
simply hit Add New and I'll fill in this
| | 01:59 | information really quickly.
| | 02:06 | When I click Add Site, theoretically
I've just added a new site to my dashboard.
| | 02:11 | However, if I go into Edit Site and then
click on the link to that site, you are
| | 02:17 | going to notice that I get a 404 page.
| | 02:20 | This can be very frustrating and this
is something that took me a long time to
| | 02:23 | figure out exactly what was going on.
| | 02:25 | So exactly what was going on?
| | 02:28 | Well, let me jump into my
cPanel and I'll show you.
| | 02:31 | Once I'm inside of my cPanel, I'll
simply scroll down and find my subdomains.
| | 02:36 | When I find my subdomains you're going
to notice that the subdomain I created
| | 02:40 | earlier is exactly like it should be,
except for one small detail. That's right
| | 02:45 | here in the Document Root.
| | 02:47 | You will notice the document root
points to my public HTML folder.
| | 02:50 | It doesn't actually point to the
folder where my domain is housed.
| | 02:54 | If I need to change this, which I do,
I click this little Edit icon, and now
| | 02:58 | instead of public_html, I simply
append a slash and then my domain name.
| | 03:05 | Now I'll hit Change.
| | 03:07 | It updates my Document Root and I'll hit OK.
| | 03:10 | Now if I jump back over into
WordPress, I'll go and Add a New site.
| | 03:23 | Once I click Add Site, I'll then go to
All Sites. You will notice here there
| | 03:27 | is my new testing2.
| | 03:29 | If I open this up to visit the site,
everything works flawlessly just as it should.
| | 03:35 | So when you are creating your wildcard
subdomains inside of your cPanel, be sure
| | 03:40 | to change that Document Root of your subdomain.
| | 03:43 | That way, it points the right location
and you can easily create sites here
| | 03:46 | inside of your WordPress installation.
| | 03:48 | Hopefully this has given you a
better idea on how to troubleshoot some of
| | 03:51 | those nasty little errors that you
might get when you are installing the
| | 03:54 | WordPress Multisite feature.
| | 03:55 | If you need any extra help with errors
that might be kicked back to you during
| | 03:58 | the installation process, visit the
WordPress Codex at codex.wordpress.org.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Disabling your network installation| 00:00 | At this point in time, you are either
thinking that WordPress Multisite is the
| | 00:03 | coolest thing you have ever
seen, or you are saying, "Man!
| | 00:05 | This is way over my head.
| | 00:07 | I don't really need this stuff.
| | 00:08 | Let's get rid of it."
| | 00:09 | If you are in the latter group, you're in luck.
| | 00:11 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
disable the WordPress Multisite feature so
| | 00:15 | that you never have to see it again.
| | 00:17 | But first things first, let's
make a backup of some things.
| | 00:20 | I'll jump over into my code editing
application, and inside the root directory of
| | 00:24 | my domain, I'll navigate
to the wp-content folder.
| | 00:28 | In the wp-content folder, you are looking
for that blogs directory that you created.
| | 00:32 | Basically, I want you to make a backup
of this file just so you can have all of
| | 00:36 | the different files and things that are
associated with the sites backed up, in
| | 00:40 | case you ever want to turn this stuff back on.
| | 00:42 | So I will take the blogs.dir, right-
click on it, and in this case I will just
| | 00:46 | download it to the home folder on this computer.
| | 00:49 | You could simply drag and drop that to your
desktop or save it in any way you see fit.
| | 00:53 | Now I'll go back into the
root directory of my domain.
| | 00:56 | I need to open up the wp-config
and the .htaccess file.
| | 01:00 | If you are unable to see the .htaccess file,
you need to enable Show Invisible Files.
| | 01:05 | Inside of this application, Coda, I just
go to View and hit Show Invisible Files.
| | 01:10 | In this case, I already have it turn on,
so now it says Hide Invisible Files.
| | 01:15 | Take a look at the documentation of your
code editing application to see exactly
| | 01:18 | how to enable that feature.
| | 01:20 | Once you have wp-config and .htaccess
open, you are basically just going to
| | 01:24 | remove the stuff that you put in there earlier.
| | 01:27 | If you have a backup of the original
wp-config or the original .htaccess, simply
| | 01:32 | re-upload those on top of these other
ones and that way it will replace them
| | 01:36 | with their original state.
| | 01:37 | It's a lot safer to do it that way.
| | 01:39 | I'll scroll down here and find
the Multisite code that I added.
| | 01:44 | In this case I know it's everything above,
That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging.
| | 01:48 | I will select this and go all the way
up to where I defined WP_Allow_Multisite.
| | 01:53 | I will delete that and save it.
| | 01:56 | In my .htaccess file I will remove all
of the rules inside of BEGIN WORDPRESS
| | 02:02 | and END WORDPRESS, and I will Save it.
| | 02:06 | Once I go back into WordPress, if I
refresh my page, it's going to ask me to
| | 02:11 | log in again. I will log in, and as
you can see, all of the network options
| | 02:16 | have now disappeared.
| | 02:18 | I now have a stand-alone
regular version of WordPress.
| | 02:22 | So if WordPress Mulitsite's not for you,
that's how you get rid of it. Simply go
| | 02:26 | in and restore your wp-config and
.htaccess files to their original state.
| | 02:31 | If you have a backup, that's the best
way to go about it, but at least now you
| | 02:35 | know how to do it manually as well.
| | 02:37 | So if WordPress Multisite is not
for you, go ahead and turn it off.
| | 02:40 | If it is, keep going,
we've got a lot more to cover.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing your install type| 00:00 | Even though it's probably best that
you determine exactly what type of
| | 00:03 | installation that you are going to
use with WordPress Multisite before you
| | 00:06 | get started using it,
| | 00:08 | It's good to know that you can always
change the installation type at any time,
| | 00:12 | and that'S what we are going to do here.
| | 00:13 | We are going to change the
installation type here inside of our WordPress
| | 00:16 | Multisite installation.
| | 00:17 | So in this case, I've got a
Subdirectory Install created and I want to change
| | 00:21 | that over to a sub-domain install.
| | 00:23 | I am going to walk you through it step by
step on how to change it from one to the other.
| | 00:27 | So the first thing you have to do, and
this is kind of the bad part and why you
| | 00:30 | should always pick the
right one before you start...
| | 00:34 | The first thing you have to do is
delete all of your extra sites that you've
| | 00:37 | created inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:39 | That's right, no matter what, you have
to delete all those sites, because they
| | 00:42 | won't transfer over.
| | 00:43 | So, I'm going to go back into my Dashboard
and I'm going to choose Network Admin > Sites.
| | 00:50 | As you can see, in this WordPress
Multisite installation, I have two extra
| | 00:53 | sites, test and test2.
| | 00:55 | I'm going to select both of those
and under Bulk Actions I'm going to hit
| | 00:59 | Delete, and then I'm going to click Apply.
| | 01:03 | Once I click Apply, you're going to
notice that all of my sites disappear
| | 01:07 | except for the root site.
| | 01:10 | This means that I've deleted those
sites permanently and they are no
| | 01:13 | longer available to me.
| | 01:14 | Now let's go back over into my code
editing application. And I'm inside of the
| | 01:18 | wp-config.php file and what you are
going to do is scroll down to line 83 or 84,
| | 01:23 | depending on how much space you gave
yourself when you copy and pasted, and
| | 01:27 | you are going to find where it says
define SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL, and then it's
| | 01:32 | going to say one of two things.
| | 01:33 | If you're using a subdomain
install, it will say true.
| | 01:37 | If you're using a Subdirectory Install
like I'm using here, it will say false.
| | 01:41 | Whichever one you want to switch to, just
change the word to either true or false.
| | 01:46 | So in this case mine is false,
so I'm going to change it to true.
| | 01:50 | I'll select it and then
simply replace that with true.
| | 01:54 | Once I click save, it re-uploads
to my server and I will go back into
| | 01:59 | WordPress Multisite.
| | 02:01 | From here, I have to go into the
site itself and visit the Dashboard.
| | 02:06 | Once I'm inside the Dashboard, I'm going to
go down to Settings and select Permalinks.
| | 02:11 | Inside of the Permalinks section, I'm
simply going to scroll down and click Save.
| | 02:16 | That updates my Permalinks
structure and locks in the subdomain change.
| | 02:20 | Now if I go back to My Sites > Network
Admin > Sites, I can go down and create a
| | 02:26 | new site by clicking Add New.
| | 02:29 | As you can see, the options have
updated, so that I can now do subdomain
| | 02:33 | installs and I'll do test.mydomain.
Then I'll simply click Add Site.
| | 02:47 | Once I do that, it has created my site
for me. And if I go back to Sites, you
| | 02:52 | will notice that I have test, and if I
were to open that up it would take me to
| | 02:57 | that particular site, allowing me to
edit it and work with it, the same as I
| | 03:01 | would with my Subdirectory Install.
| | 03:02 | So as you can see, it's not that hard
to change the installation type, but if
| | 03:06 | you've already got a live site with
multiple network sites underneath it and you
| | 03:10 | want to change the installation type
of that, you can see where that could be
| | 03:13 | kind of a headache to do with.
| | 03:15 | So just a word of advice, pick the
Installation Type that you think that you are
| | 03:18 | going to use and stick with it.
Otherwise, you can cause yourself some serious
| | 03:22 | headaches down the road.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Removing the blog permalink| 00:00 | Once you start using WordPress Multisite,
you are going to notice that WordPress
| | 00:04 | does some funky things to your
Permalinks structure of your posts inside of your
| | 00:08 | WordPress installation.
| | 00:09 | For instance, let's take a look here.
| | 00:11 | This is in the standard Hello World!
| | 00:12 | post that's generated with
every new installation of WordPress.
| | 00:15 | If you look up here in the address bar
of my browser, you will notice that at
| | 00:19 | the end of my domain name
there is a /blog section.
| | 00:23 | Now in most cases this wouldn't be a
big deal, but if you're not running a blog,
| | 00:27 | per se, or you want it to say
something else like news or something like
| | 00:30 | that, you might want to be able to change that.
| | 00:33 | The problem with this is you have to do
this for each individual site inside of
| | 00:37 | your WordPress network.
| | 00:38 | Therefore, if you have created several
different sites, this can be kind of a tedious task.
| | 00:42 | Luckily though, this is a pretty
new install and I don't have any sites
| | 00:45 | created yet, so I can simply go in
and change the main one and it should
| | 00:48 | reflect across the board.
| | 00:50 | So if I go back into my Network Admin,
find the domain, and hit Dashboard, then I
| | 00:56 | can go in and I can choose the
Settings and choose Permalinks.
| | 01:01 | Inside of Permalinks I come down
here and find where it says blog.
| | 01:05 | If I wanted to change this to something
like news, simply add /news, or I
| | 01:11 | can remove it altogether
simply by deleting it out.
| | 01:16 | Once I do that I click Save Changes.
| | 01:19 | After I save my changes, let's go
back and view the homepage of my web site.
| | 01:23 | When I go down to the Hello World!
| | 01:24 | post and hover over it I noticed that
the link at the bottom shows the blog
| | 01:28 | permalinks has been removed.
| | 01:30 | If I want to test that, I
will just open the post.
| | 01:32 | When I open it, you will notice up
here in the Address bar that the blog
| | 01:36 | permalink has been removed,
leaving me with a more traditional
| | 01:40 | permalink structure.
| | 01:41 | If you are still not happy with the
permalink structure, you can always come
| | 01:43 | back and add your own
custom permalink structure here.
| | 01:47 | If you are unsure about how to set up
your permalink structure, all you have
| | 01:50 | to do is come right here to where it says "a
number of tags are available" and open that link.
| | 01:55 | Once you open that link, it's going to
take you to the WordPress Codex and it
| | 01:58 | will explain to you in
detail how to use permalinks.
| | 02:01 | It talks about the default "ugly"
permalinks that you see here, how to change
| | 02:05 | those to "pretty permalinks" like you see here.
| | 02:08 | And finally, at the very bottom, it
talks about how to utilize the custom
| | 02:13 | permalinks structure that you see here.
| | 02:15 | So if you need a crash course on how to
utilize WordPress Permalinks, that's the
| | 02:19 | place to go: codex.wordpress.org.
| | 02:23 | Now let's just go back into my
WordPress Dashboard and I'll select My Sites >
| | 02:28 | Network Admin > Sites.
| | 02:31 | Once I return back here, I can go
through and I can edit any other individual
| | 02:35 | sites that I have to alter their
permalinks structure accordingly.
| | 02:38 | If I don't have any other sites yet,
that permalinks structure should permeate
| | 02:41 | throughout any additional sites that I create.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Network AdministrationGetting to know the network admin interface| 00:00 | One of the differences between a
standard installation of WordPress and a
| | 00:03 | WordPress Multisite installation is
the addition of the WordPress Multisite
| | 00:07 | Network Admin panel.
| | 00:09 | In previous versions of WordPress
this was located underneath the section
| | 00:12 | over here by your name.
| | 00:13 | You would hover over it
and choose Network Admin.
| | 00:16 | In this case, in WordPress 3.3,
they've updated it with its own menu item.
| | 00:21 | You'll notice over here on the
left you have the My Sites link.
| | 00:24 | Underneath My Sites you have a
direct link to the Network Admin.
| | 00:27 | Let's start off by taking a
look at the Admin Dashboard.
| | 00:31 | Once I click on the Dashboard, you're
going to notice that it looks similar to
| | 00:34 | the standard WordPress Dashboard,
although there are some parts missing.
| | 00:37 | For instance, all of the
content creation pieces aren't here.
| | 00:41 | That's because this is an administrative panel.
| | 00:44 | You're not going to be doing any sort
of content creation from this particular
| | 00:48 | section of WordPress.
| | 00:49 | This is all about managing the network itself.
| | 00:51 | You'll notice here under the Right Now
panel where you normally see things about
| | 00:55 | posts, pages, and all that kind of stuff,
| | 00:57 | you now have Create a New Site or Create a
New User directly from within this panel.
| | 01:01 | You still have things like Plugins and
WordPress News, but missing are things
| | 01:05 | like the Recent Comments and Quick Press.
| | 01:07 | These are not available in
the Network Admin Dashboard.
| | 01:10 | You'll also notice some new menu items
over here on the left as well as some
| | 01:14 | that have been altered somewhat.
| | 01:15 | The first of which is the Sites menu.
| | 01:18 | This allows you to go in and view all
of your sites as well as add a new site.
| | 01:21 | You'll also have access to the Users
menu which allows you to view all of your
| | 01:25 | users or create a new user.
| | 01:28 | The Themes menu allows you to go in to
view all of your installed themes, add a
| | 01:32 | new theme, and even access the Theme Editor.
| | 01:35 | Once you've enabled WordPress Multisite,
you'll notice that the Editor option
| | 01:38 | goes away when you're using
a single site's dashboard.
| | 01:41 | Therefore, if you want to edit a theme
from the backend of WordPress you have to
| | 01:45 | be logged in and using the Network Admin screen.
| | 01:48 | The same holds true for Plugins.
| | 01:50 | If I hover over the Plugins menu,
you can see that I can access installed
| | 01:53 | plug-ins where I view a list of all of them.
| | 01:56 | I can add a new plug-in, and I
can also go into the Plugin Editor.
| | 02:00 | The Settings menu is significantly
reduced inside of the Network Admin.
| | 02:04 | You have things like Network Settings
and Network Setup, both of which we'll
| | 02:07 | cover in future movies.
| | 02:09 | Finally, you have the Updates panel.
| | 02:11 | The Updates panel allows you to go in
and see the available updates for your
| | 02:14 | WordPress network as well as update your
entire network with themes, plug-ins, or
| | 02:19 | even the version of WordPress itself.
| | 02:20 | This is just a brief tour
of the Network Admin screen.
| | 02:23 | My suggestion is for you to take some
time and really explore this thing and get
| | 02:27 | to know it as well as you can.
| | 02:28 | As a network administrator, you're
going to be spending a lot of time inside of
| | 02:32 | this part of WordPress and it's
important that you know each individual piece
| | 02:36 | so that any time a problem arises,
you'll be right there to take it on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring the network| 00:00 | One of the most important things you're
going to do as a network administrator
| | 00:03 | is to actually set up and configure
your site, so let's take a look at how we
| | 00:07 | can do that inside of the WordPress Dashboard.
| | 00:09 | I'm currently logged in as the Network
Admin and I'm here on the Network Admin screen.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to move over here to the
Settings section, and underneath the Settings
| | 00:16 | menu you'll notice that I have two
options: Network Settings and Network Setup.
| | 00:21 | The first one, Network Settings, refers
to basic setup that you can perform on
| | 00:25 | your network; we'll cover that in just a moment.
| | 00:27 | Let's start off with Network Setup.
| | 00:29 | If I click that link, it takes me
here, to the Network Setup page.
| | 00:33 | You'll notice this page looks almost
identical to the page that you saw when you
| | 00:37 | were setting up the WordPress
Multisite. This is where you can get basic
| | 00:40 | instructions in case something ever breaks.
| | 00:42 | You can also copy and paste the code to
your wp-config file, or your .htaccess
| | 00:47 | file in the case that you
make a mistake and change those.
| | 00:51 | This screen is mainly informational
and doesn't contain any settings that you
| | 00:54 | need to be aware of.
| | 00:55 | Now let's move over and choose Network Settings.
| | 00:58 | Inside of the Network Settings panel
this is where you set up all of the
| | 01:01 | options for your site.
| | 01:03 | Everything from the name of the site,
to the user registration process, and
| | 01:07 | to things like controlling the upload
limit on each individual site in your network.
| | 01:10 | Let's take a look at some basic settings
that you need to be aware of before you
| | 01:14 | get going with your
WordPress Multisite installation.
| | 01:16 | First and foremost is the Network
Name. This is where you can alter the name
| | 01:20 | of your network site.
| | 01:22 | In this case it's just my
domain and the name Sites.
| | 01:25 | If I wanted to change this to something
better, I could just select that and change it.
| | 01:29 | So in this case I'm going to pretend as
if I'm working with a photo blog, so
| | 01:32 | I'm just going to call this PhotoBlog.
| | 01:36 | If I want to refer to it as a network I
can, but I don't necessarily have to, so
| | 01:40 | I'll just leave it at PhotoBlog.
| | 01:42 | Underneath there you can
change the network admin email.
| | 01:45 | If at any time you need to change the
network administration email, all you have
| | 01:48 | to do is select that,
change it, and you're done.
| | 01:52 | Underneath here are the
registration settings for your blog.
| | 01:54 | We're going to go through this in a
future movie, so we don't have to worry
| | 01:57 | about that right now, but let's scroll down a
little bit and check out the New Site Settings.
| | 02:02 | In the New Site Settings, you're
going to be able to control things like
| | 02:04 | the welcome email, the welcome user email,
the first post, first page, and first comment.
| | 02:10 | Let's take a look at all of
these individual items here.
| | 02:13 | In the welcome email, this is the
email that is sent to new site owners.
| | 02:17 | So any time you create a site or a user
creates a site inside of your WordPress
| | 02:21 | Multisite installation, this is the
email that is sent to them to let them know
| | 02:25 | exactly what they need to do and
where they can log in to view their site.
| | 02:29 | If you want to customize these to be
specific to your site, go ahead and do so,
| | 02:32 | but you don't have to. All of the
relevant information is already here.
| | 02:36 | The Welcome User Email--this is
an email that's sent to users, not
| | 02:40 | necessarily site owners.
| | 02:42 | So basically this just tells the user,
hello, your account has been set up
| | 02:46 | and you can login with the following
information, and it gives them their
| | 02:49 | username and password.
| | 02:50 | The next couple of fields are actually
pretty cool and pretty important as well.
| | 02:54 | The first one is first post.
| | 02:57 | This is the information that's going to
be included inside of the first post of
| | 03:00 | each new site that you create.
| | 03:02 | This could be some information about
the site, information about you, or your
| | 03:06 | agency, or whoever you are.
| | 03:08 | You could also include instructions to
the site owner, so that they can know
| | 03:11 | exactly what they need to do.
| | 03:13 | The First Page--you can also specify the
content that goes on the first page. This
| | 03:17 | again could be an about page that you
automatically create, an instructions
| | 03:21 | page, a tutorial page.
| | 03:22 | It's totally up to you what
goes in this content field.
| | 03:25 | You can also control the first comment.
| | 03:28 | This will replace the default
comment that usually accompanies a new
| | 03:31 | installation of WordPress.
| | 03:33 | You can also define the Comment Author.
| | 03:35 | If you want this to be yourself, type
in your name. If you want this to be
| | 03:38 | somebody else, just type it in,]. You
can also include a First Comment URL.
| | 03:42 | This is the URL that the user will be
directed to ones they click on the author.
| | 03:46 | Once you set up your first page, first
comment, and first author information, you
| | 03:50 | can go down to the Upload Settings.
| | 03:52 | Inside of the Upload Settings you get
to control some pretty specific things
| | 03:55 | like limiting the total size of files
that are uploaded to each individual site.
| | 03:59 | By default this is limited to 10
megabytes which isn't a whole lot of space,
| | 04:03 | especially if I'm doing a photo blog.
| | 04:05 | So in this case I think what I'll do is
uncheck that so that there's no limit on the upload size.
| | 04:10 | Upload file types--these are the file types
that you allow to be uploaded to your site.
| | 04:15 | In this case it's allowing me to upload
JPEGs, PNGs, GIFs, MP3s, MOVs, AVIs, and
| | 04:21 | various other formats.
| | 04:23 | If I want to remove any of these
all I have to do is select them.
| | 04:26 | In this case I'm running a photo blog,
so I only want images in my particular
| | 04:29 | installation, so I'm going to
delete everything after GIF.
| | 04:34 | Once I do that, I'll no longer be able to
upload things like PDF, MOVs, MP3s, et cetera.
| | 04:40 | You can also specify a max upload
size for each individual upload.
| | 04:44 | By capping this, it sort of overrides
the site upload space at the top because
| | 04:49 | you could cap this at a lower
amount, thus making this a moot point.
| | 04:54 | In this case, I think I'll just
restrict this to 2000 kilobytes.
| | 04:58 | That means nothing over 2000
kilobytes will be allowed in my upload.
| | 05:02 | Finally, Menu Settings. Do you allow
administrators of individual sites to
| | 05:06 | access the Plugins menu?
| | 05:08 | If you do, go ahead and check that box.
| | 05:10 | If you don't want them to have
access to it, leave it unchecked.
| | 05:13 | Giving people control to various parts
of your blog is your choice, but again,
| | 05:17 | it runs a serious security risk if you
don't trust the people running the site.
| | 05:21 | So here, this is totally up to you,
but I'd recommend restricting access to
| | 05:25 | things like this just so you have
full control over the network itself.
| | 05:29 | Once you've made all of the changes
inside of this section, all you have to do
| | 05:32 | is click Save Changes.
| | 05:34 | All of those changes are then saved
and immediately applied network wide.
| | 05:38 | As you can see up here in the Title
Bar, it now says Network Admin for the
| | 05:42 | PhotoBlog, as opposed to the
domain name that we had earlier.
| | 05:45 | That means my settings have been
saved and I can continue working.
| | 05:48 | So take some time and go through
each one of these settings individually.
| | 05:52 | As you can see, there is a lot in this panel,
so you've got to take the time and get it right.
| | 05:56 | Once you have everything set up, save
it and everything should be good, and
| | 05:59 | you're ready to keep managing your network.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating your first site| 00:00 | The whole point of using WordPress
Multisite is to actually have more than one site.
| | 00:04 | So in this movie we're to be taking a
look at how to create your first site
| | 00:08 | inside of your WordPress Multisite installation.
| | 00:11 | In order to do this, we're going
to use the Network Admin panel.
| | 00:14 | So be sure you're logged in as the
Network Administrator and you're viewing the
| | 00:17 | Network Admin Dashboard.
| | 00:19 | Once you get to the Dashboard, you can
go about reaching the new site creation
| | 00:22 | screen in one of two ways.
| | 00:24 | You can go up to My Sites > Network
Admin and choose Sites, or you can simply
| | 00:30 | come over here to the left and
choose Sites and hit Add New.
| | 00:34 | Once you click Add New, you're taken
directly to the Add New Site screen.
| | 00:39 | On the Add New Site screen, there are
few things you need to be aware of.
| | 00:42 | First of all, the Site Address.
This is the actual address of the site
| | 00:46 | that you're creating.
| | 00:47 | If you're using a sub-domain install,
you'll see a blank field and directly
| | 00:50 | underneath it, the domain name
to which you're attaching it to.
| | 00:53 | You'll notice here that you're only
able to use characters A through Z and
| | 00:57 | numbers 0 through 9.
| | 00:59 | You're not supposed to use anything like
underscores, dashes, or anything like that.
| | 01:03 | Also underneath that, you'll
define a Site Title and an Admin Email.
| | 01:08 | As you'll see underneath, it tells you
that a new user will be created if the
| | 01:11 | above email address is not in the database.
| | 01:14 | What that means is if this email
address is somebody who's not currently in the
| | 01:17 | system, it will automatically create a
new user account for them and make them
| | 01:21 | the admin of this particular site.
| | 01:24 | It does not, however, make
them a network administrator.
| | 01:27 | You'll have to do that in the Users
panel and we'll cover that in a future movie.
| | 01:30 | It also tells you that the username and
password will be emailed to this email address.
| | 01:35 | So you don't have any control over
their username or their password.
| | 01:38 | It's automatically created for them right here.
| | 01:41 | The username is usually the name of
the site and the password will be an
| | 01:45 | auto-generated password.
| | 01:47 | Once you're finished filling out
this information, you click Add Site.
| | 01:50 | Let's go ahead and create our first site now.
| | 01:52 | So in this case I'm running my photo blog still.
| | 01:55 | So I'm going to add a tutorials sub-
site, so I'll add tutorial and it will be
| | 02:01 | tutorial.mydomain.com.
| | 02:04 | The Site Title, I'm going to call it
PhotoBlog Tutorials. And underneath, I'm going
| | 02:11 | to enter in an Admin Email address.
| | 02:16 | Once I click Add Site, the
new site has been created.
| | 02:21 | If I want to, I can visit the Dashboard,
and once I get to the Dashboard you'll
| | 02:28 | notice that it's a
standard WordPress site dashboard;
| | 02:32 | everything you would expect inside of
a normal WordPress site. Let's go ahead
| | 02:36 | and take a look at the site itself.
| | 02:38 | If I go here and choose Visit Site, it
automatically opens up to show me the
| | 02:43 | PhotoBlog Tutorials site.
| | 02:45 | You'll notice it uses the
standard WordPress 2011 theme.
| | 02:48 | It also has the Hello World!
| | 02:50 | post and the first comment as defined
by the standard WordPress installation.
| | 02:54 | We could have customized this
during our site setup process.
| | 02:59 | You'll also notice that up
here in the Address Bar I now have
| | 03:02 | tutorial.mydomain.com, which is exactly
what I set up in the site creation field.
| | 03:08 | Let's go back to the Dashboard now.
| | 03:10 | Once I'm back inside the Dashboard,
you'll notice that I still see the link up
| | 03:14 | in my Admin Bar to My Sites.
| | 03:16 | That's because the email address that I
used when creating this new site was the
| | 03:19 | same as my network admin email.
| | 03:22 | That means that I am now the network
administrator as well as the administrator
| | 03:26 | of this particular site.
| | 03:28 | If I had used a different email
address that was not already a network
| | 03:30 | administrator, I would not be able
to access the My Sites section of my
| | 03:34 | Multisite installation.
| | 03:36 | If I go back to MySites, I can
choose Network Admin, or I can go to the
| | 03:41 | Dashboard for the original domain or for the
PhotoBlog Tutorials which is where I'm at right now.
| | 03:46 | Let's go back to the
Network Admin and choose Sites.
| | 03:51 | Once I'm on the Sites screen, you'll
notice here that I have the ability to
| | 03:54 | hover over these sites and edit them to make
changes, view their dashboard, or visit the site.
| | 04:00 | You'll also notice that I get
information about when the site was last updated,
| | 04:04 | when the site was registered, and the
users that are attached to that site.
| | 04:09 | Currently I only have one
user, and that's me, the admin.
| | 04:12 | If I'm working on a sub-site, for instance
the tutorial page, you'll notice here
| | 04:17 | that I have the ability to not only edit
and visit the site, but I also have the
| | 04:21 | ability to deactivate the site,
which temporarily turns it off.
| | 04:25 | I can also archive it which, just puts it
into an archive situation, not visible,
| | 04:30 | and then finally I can spam it.
| | 04:32 | So let's say for instance that I have
open registration allowed on my site.
| | 04:37 | If I allow open registration. that means
anybody can come to my site and create a
| | 04:40 | web site or blog. In many cases,
those are going to be spam bots.
| | 04:44 | So if I come in here and I see sites
that I haven't personally created or none
| | 04:47 | of my admins have created, I can spam
those and that will help in fighting
| | 04:51 | future spam sign-ups.
| | 04:53 | I can also delete the site if I choose
to, and if you delete the site, it's gone
| | 04:57 | forever, including all of
the content you've put into it.
| | 05:00 | So be careful with hitting that button.
| | 05:02 | Once you're finished managing your sites,
you can go back to the Network Admin and
| | 05:08 | continue working from the Dashboard.
| | 05:09 | Now we've seen how to create a
new site inside of our WordPress
| | 05:12 | Multisite installation.
| | 05:13 | This should make it really
easy to create future sites.
| | 05:16 | You simply fill out the information,
click the button, and you're off and running.
| | 05:19 | So you should be well on your way to
creating multiple sites inside of your
| | 05:23 | WordPress Multisite.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Managing your user database| 00:00 | As the network administrator or
super admin of your WordPress Multisite
| | 00:04 | Installation, you have the ability
to manage your user database from the
| | 00:08 | Network Admin Dashboard.
| | 00:09 | Let's take a look at how we can create
and edit users inside of the Dashboard.
| | 00:14 | The first way we can do that is
directly from the home screen of the Dashboard.
| | 00:18 | As you can see here underneath the Right
Now panel, I have the ability to create
| | 00:21 | a new site or a new user
directly from this screen.
| | 00:25 | If I happen to click Create a New
User, that takes me to the Create New
| | 00:28 | User screen where I can identify the
user, add their email address, and add
| | 00:32 | them to the system.
| | 00:33 | I can also search for users
and search for sites as well.
| | 00:38 | Let's take a look at how
I can create a new user.
| | 00:40 | I'll click Create a New User, and here
I have two basic parameters--a Username
| | 00:45 | and an Email address.
| | 00:47 | Inside the Username, let's type in and
jimsmith, and we will just give Jim a fake
| | 00:53 | email address, and I'll click Add User.
| | 01:01 | Once I've added the user to the system,
their password is emailed to them at the
| | 01:06 | email address that I added.
| | 01:07 | I don't get any other further control of the
user until I actually go into the Users panel.
| | 01:12 | So let's move over to the All Users screen.
| | 01:16 | Once I get to the All Users screen,
you will notice that I have a couple of
| | 01:19 | extra users in there already.
| | 01:21 | I created those before we got started.
| | 01:23 | At any time if I need to make a change
to a user, I simply find them in the list
| | 01:28 | and click the Edit button.
| | 01:30 | Once I get into the Edit User screen, I have
some pretty cool options that I can control.
| | 01:35 | I can disable or enable the
Visual Editor when they are writing.
| | 01:38 | This means when they're writing poster
pages, are they stuck in a standard HTML
| | 01:42 | environment or do I give them
control with a WYSIWYG Editor?
| | 01:46 | If you want them to have a WYSIWYG
Editor, leave this box unchecked.
| | 01:50 | If you think they are savvy enough to
write their own code, go ahead and check
| | 01:53 | this box to disable the Visual Editor.
| | 01:55 | Also, you can choose their admin color scheme.
| | 01:58 | If you like the default grays, stick with those.
| | 02:00 | If you want to spice things up a little bit
and give them some color, choose the Blue.
| | 02:04 | You can also choose to enable
Keyboard Shortcuts for your users.
| | 02:07 | If this is something you're interested
in, this means that you can enable them
| | 02:11 | to use keyboard shortcuts throughout
the WordPress Dashboard. If you want more
| | 02:14 | information on using the keyboard
shortcuts inside of WordPress, simply click
| | 02:17 | this link here for more information
which will take you to the WordPress Codex,
| | 02:21 | where they explain in detail all of the
keyboard shortcuts associated with WordPress.
| | 02:26 | This is a big one that a lot of users
will appreciate if you happen to turn it
| | 02:29 | off for them ahead of time--The Admin Bar.
| | 02:31 | The Admin Bar was introduced in
WordPress 3.0 and it's something that gets on a
| | 02:35 | lot of people's nerves because it tends
to get in the way when you are viewing
| | 02:38 | your site, and if you don't know what
that is it's this dark gray bar that goes
| | 02:41 | all the way across the top of the screen here.
| | 02:43 | And by default that's turned on
when you're viewing the actual site.
| | 02:46 | This can seriously distract you when you're
trying to view the site or judge the design.
| | 02:50 | So a lot people like to turn this off
when they are viewing the site. If you
| | 02:53 | want to be nice and turn this off
automatically, go ahead and uncheck that
| | 02:56 | box; that way your users won't see the
Admin Bar until they're inside of the Dashboard.
| | 03:03 | Other parameters that you can change
include whether or not to make this user a
| | 03:07 | super admin. Allowing users to become a
super admin grants the user super admin
| | 03:12 | privileges over the network,
meaning they get your job.
| | 03:15 | They get access to all of the themes, plug-
ins, and settings that the network admin has.
| | 03:20 | You really need to trust this
person before you give them that access.
| | 03:23 | So my recommendation is
just to leave that unchecked.
| | 03:26 | You can also enter in information
like their name or their nickname.
| | 03:29 | In this case I am going to type out Jim Smith.
| | 03:32 | I am not going to work with the
nickname because I am not going to use that
| | 03:36 | for anything currently.
| | 03:38 | However, I am going to change the
Display name publicly as. I can click that, and
| | 03:43 | as you can see, I can display them
publicly as Jim, Smith, Jim Smith or Smith
| | 03:48 | Jim. In this case I want to say Jim Smith.
| | 03:52 | What this means is when the user posts
something, either a post or a page, chances
| | 03:56 | are there is going to be some metadata
that's associated with that poster page.
| | 04:00 | And when it's displayed dynamically
inside of WordPress, it will actually say,
| | 04:04 | Posted by Jim Smith, as
opposed to their username.
| | 04:07 | This is also a security measure, because
I don't want people to know Jim Smith's
| | 04:10 | username for the site.
| | 04:12 | Therefore, changing their username only
lets them see whatever I display here. In
| | 04:16 | this case it's his first and last name.
| | 04:18 | I can also change the Contact Info for Jim.
| | 04:21 | I can add in his web site, his
AOL Instant Messenger, his Yahoo!
| | 04:24 | Instant Messenger or his Google Talk name.
| | 04:28 | Finally, at the bottom we
can add in biographical information.
| | 04:31 | If Jim has a bio--maybe he is a famous
author, I don't know--but if we enter in
| | 04:35 | his biographical information that's
going to be displayed dynamically when they
| | 04:38 | call the author template inside of WordPress.
| | 04:41 | Finally, I can determine the password.
| | 04:43 | I've already sent Jim a password via
email when I registered him for the site.
| | 04:47 | However, if I want to change that
password, I can change that. That makes it
| | 04:51 | easier for Jim to remember the
default password that's been given to him.
| | 04:54 | Trust me, the ones given to you by default by
WordPress, they are not that easy to remember.
| | 04:59 | So maybe I'll give him a password like
changeme1234, and that way when Jim gets
| | 05:04 | in here, he types in his password,
maybe that reminds him to go change his
| | 05:07 | password after the fact.
| | 05:09 | Let's go ahead and
change Jim's password for him.
| | 05:13 | I changed it to changeme1234.
| | 05:15 | As you can see, WordPress considers
that to be a strong password generation.
| | 05:18 | I don't necessarily agree with that,
but I think they are going on the basis
| | 05:22 | of the length of the password and
also whether or not I included any
| | 05:25 | alphanumeric characters.
| | 05:26 | As you can see, it tells you here that
the password should be at least seven
| | 05:29 | characters long and to make it
stronger, use upper and lowercase letters.
| | 05:33 | You can use whatever you want here
though, because chances are, Jim is going to
| | 05:36 | change it once he gets into WordPress anyway.
| | 05:38 | I have to confirm the password and
one of my favorite features about
| | 05:42 | WordPress is as I'm typing out the password,
you will notice it tells me that it's a mismatch.
| | 05:47 | This is great for password fields
because you can't see what you are typing.
| | 05:51 | So in this case I'll keep typing, and
once I finally match it up it'll indicate
| | 05:55 | it by flashing green and
telling me that it's strong.
| | 05:58 | Once I'm finished with this,
I will click Update User.
| | 06:01 | At the top I get a confirmation message
letting me know that the user has been
| | 06:04 | updated and I can then
return back to the user screen.
| | 06:08 | Once I am inside of the user screen, I
have the ability to edit or delete any
| | 06:12 | users that I see fit.
| | 06:14 | In this case, I'm going to delete Jane Smith.
| | 06:17 | So I will select her and I will click Delete.
| | 06:20 | It's going to ask me here if I want
to transfer or delete posts and links
| | 06:23 | before deleting the user.
| | 06:24 | Well, in this case Jane hasn't made
any posts or anything inside of the
| | 06:27 | WordPress installation;
| | 06:29 | therefore this screen is blank.
| | 06:30 | If there were any posts, pages, or
links associated with her they would be
| | 06:34 | listed here, but in this case they are
not, so I can simply Confirm Deletion.
| | 06:39 | Once a user has been deleted, they are gone.
| | 06:41 | There is no trash or
repository for deleted users.
| | 06:44 | Therefore you cannot recover them.
| | 06:46 | So once you've deleted them, they're gone.
| | 06:48 | Now I am also going to edit the user
John Smith. Let's take a look at this.
| | 06:52 | I will edit John, and what I'm going to do
is I'm going to first turn off his Admin Bar.
| | 06:58 | I am just being nice.
| | 07:00 | And then second, I'm going
to make John a super admin.
| | 07:03 | This means John has the
exact same privileges as I do.
| | 07:06 | And once I scroll down and hit Update
User, you'll notice at the top it gives me
| | 07:11 | a message indicating, hey, you just did
something important here, the user now
| | 07:15 | has super admin privileges.
| | 07:16 | This is just WordPress's way of
saying, "Are you sure? If you are, great.
| | 07:21 | If not, you might want to
scroll down and turn that off."
| | 07:23 | Now let's go back to the Users panel.
| | 07:25 | Inside of the Users panel
you'll notice some changes.
| | 07:28 | Number one, here is me, the admin. I
am the Super Admin. Next to johnsmith,
| | 07:33 | same thing, Super Admin.
| | 07:35 | This indicates that I have made John a
Super Admin, and at the top I also get
| | 07:39 | another confirmation telling me
there are two super admins on my list.
| | 07:43 | If at any time I want to go turn that off,
I simply revisit John's profile, scroll
| | 07:49 | down, uncheck it, and save the options.
| | 07:53 | If I go back, I'm the only super admin
and John is just a regular user again.
| | 08:00 | So now that we have seen how to
manage your user database here inside of the
| | 08:03 | WordPress Multisite Installation,
hopefully you have a better idea of exactly
| | 08:07 | what's going on in here, how to add
people, how to remove people, and how to
| | 08:11 | change their role inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Installing and enabling themes| 00:00 | One of the things that attracted me to
WordPress initially, and probably still my
| | 00:04 | favorite part of WordPress, is the
ability to add themes at a moment's notice and
| | 00:09 | change the entire look and feel of your site.
| | 00:11 | Inside of a WordPress Multisite
Installation, this is no different. As a
| | 00:15 | matter of fact it's even more fun
because you can have different themes for
| | 00:19 | each site that you create.
| | 00:21 | You can also install themes and
enable them network-wide, meaning that
| | 00:25 | everything has a consistent look and feel.
| | 00:27 | This is perfect for branding or making sure
everything is as consistent as you need it to be.
| | 00:32 | In this movie we are going to be taking
a look at how to install themes inside
| | 00:35 | of the Network Admin Dashboard and
then how to enable them site-wide so that
| | 00:39 | your users can then
activate them anytime they need to.
| | 00:43 | The first thing I need to do is
go over here to the Themes section.
| | 00:46 | If I just click on Themes it takes me
right here to the Themes section of the
| | 00:50 | WordPress Dashboard. By the way, I'm
still logged in as a network administrator.
| | 00:55 | You have to be logged in as a network
administrator in order to get to the screen.
| | 00:58 | Here, you will notice all of the themes
that I have, which ones that are enabled,
| | 01:02 | and if any are disabled.
| | 01:04 | If I go to Enabled, it filters out the
ones that are there. If I go to Disabled
| | 01:09 | it shows me the other one.
| | 01:11 | In this case it's just the default 2011
and 2010 themes that ship with WordPress.
| | 01:15 | If I want to make the 2010 theme
available to all of my sites I can simply hit
| | 01:19 | Network Enable. In this case I don't
think I am going to use it, so I'm just
| | 01:23 | going to go ahead and choose Delete.
| | 01:26 | Once I delete, it's telling me that this
theme may be active on other sites in my network.
| | 01:31 | However, I know this is a fresh
install of WordPress Multisite so I know I am
| | 01:34 | not using it anyway.
| | 01:35 | I will go ahead and say, "yeah,
go ahead delete the theme."
| | 01:38 | Once I do that, you are going to notice
I'm still here on my Themes Dashboard
| | 01:42 | with the only one theme
that I have installed, Twenty Eleven.
| | 01:45 | Let's take a look now at how
we can install a new theme.
| | 01:49 | I will simply go up to
the top and choose Add New.
| | 01:52 | Inside of WordPress you can
search their vast database of themes.
| | 01:55 | There's literally thousands of
free themes that are available to you.
| | 01:59 | You can also purchase themes at
premium theme marketplaces across the web.
| | 02:03 | I will talk about some of those in a minute.
| | 02:05 | Let's go ahead and take a look at a free theme.
| | 02:08 | So right here I am just going to type in
photo, because I am running a photo blog.
| | 02:14 | I hit Search. Once I click Search,
WordPress returns to meet any results that
| | 02:18 | match the criteria that I put
here. In this case it's photo.
| | 02:21 | I am going to go ahead and go
with the Modularity Lite theme.
| | 02:25 | It's a pretty cool template.
| | 02:26 | If I want to see the theme,
I can simply click Details.
| | 02:30 | This tells me it's at version 1.3, who
the author is, and what star rating it has.
| | 02:35 | It's got four out of five.
| | 02:35 | That's pretty good.
| | 02:36 | I can also click on the theme and it
gives me a live preview of what it's going
| | 02:41 | to look like on my web site.
| | 02:43 | In this case it's pretty basic, but
this hasn't been customized in any way.
| | 02:47 | If you read the theme description it
tells me I can customize the header image
| | 02:50 | and a lot of other stuff.
| | 02:51 | So I am going to go with this theme.
| | 02:52 | I will click the X to close, and
then I will click the Install button
| | 02:56 | directly beneath it.
| | 02:58 | Once I click Install, it's going to
ask me one more time, are you sure?
| | 03:02 | I go ahead and say, "yeah, install it."
| | 03:05 | It automatically downloads it from
wherever the theme was located, unpacks it,
| | 03:09 | and installs it into WordPress.
| | 03:11 | I then have the ability to
make it available network-wide.
| | 03:15 | If I don't make it available network-wide,
then nobody is going to be able to use it.
| | 03:19 | I will go ahead and say, "Yes, Network Enable."
| | 03:22 | Once it's been network enabled, it's
now available to anybody inside of my
| | 03:26 | network running a site.
| | 03:27 | So if I wanted to activate this theme
on the base domain, I simply come up here
| | 03:31 | to My Sites, find the
original domain, and choose Dashboard.
| | 03:37 | Inside of the Dashboard panel I'll go
to Appearance and I'll choose Themes.
| | 03:42 | Inside of the Themes panel you'll
notice the 2011 theme is what we had
| | 03:45 | activated by default.
| | 03:46 | If I scroll down I can then
activate the Modularity theme.
| | 03:50 | There we go. The new theme has been
activated and now if I went to my site
| | 04:00 | there's the new theme active.
| | 04:02 | If I go back to the Dashboard and visit
the tutorial site, you will notice here
| | 04:12 | it is still using the 2011
standard WordPress theme.
| | 04:16 | That's because we didn't go into the site
Dashboard for this site and enable the other theme.
| | 04:20 | As a matter of fact, I'm going to use two
different themes for both of these sites.
| | 04:25 | So let's close this up, and let's close this
up, and we will go back into the Dashboard.
| | 04:31 | First thing I am going to do is choose My
Sites > Network Admin and choose Dashboard.
| | 04:37 | I'll go back underneath
Themes and I'll choose Add New.
| | 04:42 | In this case I want to add a
theme that's not inside of the
| | 04:44 | WordPress Repository.
| | 04:46 | This theme is on a web site.
| | 04:48 | So let's take a look at how I can put
this theme into my WordPress installation.
| | 04:51 | I am going to navigate over to a site
called press75.com which has several
| | 04:56 | multimedia-centric themes available to you.
| | 04:58 | A lot of them are paid themes,
but some of them are actually free.
| | 05:02 | So I am going to scroll down
and find a theme called Side Blog.
| | 05:07 | Once I find the Side Blog theme, I
can choose Live Demo and just like
| | 05:11 | WordPress.org it shows me a
live preview of the theme.
| | 05:14 | It's going to be perfect for tutorials.
| | 05:17 | So once I find this, I can go back,
scroll down again to find a Side Blog theme,
| | 05:25 | and go to Theme Info.
| | 05:26 | You will notice on the right-hand side
there is a link that says Free Download.
| | 05:30 | I will choose that and it
downloads the theme for me.
| | 05:33 | Now I will go ahead and navigate back
to my Dashboard and this time instead of
| | 05:37 | searching for a theme, I'll choose Upload.
| | 05:39 | It asks me to select a file.
| | 05:43 | I will find the Side Blog zip file,
open it up, and click Install Now.
| | 05:52 | Once it has been installed,
I can choose Network Enable.
| | 05:55 | So now it's available to all
of the sites on my network.
| | 05:58 | Let's go back to My Sites and choose the
PhotoBlog Tutorials and I will hit Dashboard.
| | 06:03 | Once I hit Dashboard, I can
go to Appearance > Themes.
| | 06:09 | Inside of the Themes section,
Side Blog is now available to me.
| | 06:13 | I will hit Activate.
| | 06:16 | Now that theme has been activated.
| | 06:17 | If I go back here and choose Visit Site,
there's my new PhotoBlog Tutorials.
| | 06:25 | If I go back to My Sites in the
original domain. go to its Dashboard, I can
| | 06:31 | visit that site as well.
| | 06:33 | So here's my original
site and the PhotoBlog site.
| | 06:37 | They're both running the same
installation of WordPress, but they're both
| | 06:40 | distinctly different because I have
changed the theme on both of them.
| | 06:43 | Let's close these back up and
return to the Network Admin screen.
| | 06:49 | So as you can see, it's pretty easy to
install and enable themes for all of your
| | 06:53 | sites in your WordPress Multisite Installation.
| | 06:55 | This is a great way to create some
distinction between each one of your
| | 06:58 | individual sites or a great way to
maintain consistency as well if you want to
| | 07:02 | deploy the same theme to all of your sites.
| | 07:04 | It's totally up to you, and
that's why you're the network admin;
| | 07:07 | you get control over everything.
| | 07:09 | So take some time, find the themes
that work for you, and then start putting
| | 07:13 | them to use inside of
your Multisite Installation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Enabling themes on a per-site basis| 00:00 | As you're working throughout your
WordPress Multisite environment, you may
| | 00:03 | notice that you need to enable a theme
on a specific site that doesn't need to
| | 00:06 | be enabled for the rest of
the sites on your network.
| | 00:09 | This could be because you only have a
license to display this theme on one
| | 00:12 | site, or you just want that site to have its
own look and feel, independent on the others.
| | 00:18 | In this movie we'll be taking a
look at how to enable a theme on a
| | 00:21 | site-specific basis.
| | 00:22 | In order to do that, you have to be
logged in as the Network Admin. And once
| | 00:26 | you're inside of the Network Admin Dashboard,
you go over to the left and choose Themes.
| | 00:30 | Once you select Themes, choose Add New.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to search for a
magazine theme and click Search.
| | 00:38 | Once I've find the theme that I want,
in this case it's called Cover WP, I'll
| | 00:42 | click the Install button.
| | 00:44 | Once I hit Install Now, that
theme is now installed inside of my
| | 00:48 | Network Installation.
| | 00:49 | Normally, I would choose Network Enable
for this theme, but in this case I only
| | 00:54 | want to apply it to one site in my network.
| | 00:57 | So I'm not going to click Network Enable.
| | 00:59 | That's very important.
| | 01:01 | In order to enable this for one
specific site, I need to go up to the My Sites
| | 01:05 | section of my Admin panel,
choose Network, and then select Sites.
| | 01:11 | Once I get to the Sites section of my
Network Admin panel, you'll notice that I
| | 01:15 | have a new site called Magazine.
| | 01:17 | This is the site that I want to
enable this one particular theme on.
| | 01:20 | So I'm going to choose Edit.
| | 01:23 | Once I'm taken into the Edit screen,
you'll notice you have several parameters
| | 01:27 | that you can change on this particular site.
| | 01:29 | Stuff like the Domain, the Path,
when it was Registered, when it was Last
| | 01:33 | Updated, and also various
Attributes there at the bottom.
| | 01:36 | You'll also be able to change things
like the Users, change the Theme, and
| | 01:41 | also edit the Settings.
| | 01:43 | In this case, we're going to be
working with the Themes section.
| | 01:45 | So go ahead and click on the Themes tab.
| | 01:48 | Once you've clicked the Themes tab,
you'll notice that you have a list of the
| | 01:51 | available themes that you have.
| | 01:53 | In this case, the only theme that has not
been enabled network wide is the Cover WP.
| | 01:58 | So once I click Enable, that theme has now
been enabled for that one particular site.
| | 02:05 | However, once you enable it for that
site it doesn't make it the active theme.
| | 02:08 | You have to go into the site's
dashboard and activate the theme yourself.
| | 02:12 | So let's go back up to My Sites, find the
Magazine site, and open up the Dashboard.
| | 02:20 | Once I'm inside the Dashboard for
that Magazine site, I need to find the
| | 02:23 | Appearance tab on the left and select Themes.
| | 02:27 | Once I'm inside the Themes section,
you'll notice that the two themes that I
| | 02:30 | network activated, Modularity and
Side Blog, are listed at the bottom.
| | 02:34 | I've also got Cover WP.
| | 02:37 | This is only enabled for
this one particular site.
| | 02:40 | This is the site I want to put
it on, so I'll click Activate.
| | 02:43 | Once it's activated, I can go and visit
that site, and you'll notice that it's no
| | 02:48 | longer appearing as the default 2011 theme.
| | 02:51 | It now has that magazine
theme enabled and it's active.
| | 02:55 | Let's close this up and close
up the Dashboard for that site.
| | 02:59 | Now I'm back inside of my Network Admin panel.
| | 03:02 | Let's go back to My Sites and let's view
the tutorial site that I created earlier.
| | 03:06 | If I visit that dashboard and take a
look at the Appearance tab and select
| | 03:12 | Themes, you'll notice that
| | 03:14 | that Cover WP theme is not available here.
| | 03:17 | That's because I only
enabled it for that Magazine site.
| | 03:20 | If I want to network enable that theme,
all I have to do is go back to the
| | 03:24 | Network Admin Dashboard, choose Themes >
Installed themes, find the theme that I
| | 03:31 | want to network enable,
and click Network Enable.
| | 03:34 | Once I do this, that theme will be
available to all sites in my network. But I
| | 03:38 | don't want to do that, and in
many cases, you won't either.
| | 03:42 | You either have a license to only put it
on that one site or you just want that
| | 03:46 | site to have its own distinct look and feel.
| | 03:48 | Either way, now we can see exactly
how easy it is to enable themes on a
| | 03:52 | site-by-site basis here
inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Defining a site-wide default theme| 00:00 | If you're using WordPress Multisite
as a network administrator, chances are
| | 00:04 | you're working with a lot of sites.
And if you're working for a business or
| | 00:07 | corporation, you may want to have a
consistent look and feel across all of your sites.
| | 00:11 | Therefore, you need to make it so
that each time you create a new site, it
| | 00:15 | adopts a default theme.
| | 00:17 | Oddly enough, it's not that easy just
to point and click and do this inside of
| | 00:20 | the Network Admin Dashboard.
| | 00:21 | You need to go into the code of
the wp-config file inside of your
| | 00:25 | WordPress installation.
| | 00:27 | So the first thing you need to do is
navigate over to your Code Editing window,
| | 00:31 | remote FTP into your site, and
open up your wp-config.php file.
| | 00:37 | Let's jump over into my Code Editing
window and let's take a look at how
| | 00:40 | to enable this theme.
| | 00:41 | I've got my wp-config.php open and I've
navigated down to line 72, where you'll
| | 00:47 | see that it says- define WPLANG.
| | 00:49 | What I'm going to do here is create a
space underneath by hitting Return, and
| | 00:53 | then I'm simply going to type out
the definition to call a default theme.
| | 00:57 | I'll type out define, open
parentheses, single quote 'WP_DEFAULT_THEME',
| | 01:07 | close the single quotes, type a comma, then
I'll use an opened and a closed single quote.
| | 01:15 | I'll navigate outside the
parentheses and type a semicolon.
| | 01:18 | Now I need to define the name of the
theme, and that's easy enough to find.
| | 01:23 | If I go over here to the wp-content
section, I can open up the Themes directory.
| | 01:28 | All you have to do is find the folder
name of the theme that you're wanting to
| | 01:32 | activate as the default theme and put
that in-between those single quotes.
| | 01:36 | So in this case I want to
enable the Side-Blog theme.
| | 01:39 | So I need to type out side-blog.
| | 01:40 | I'll come in between those
single quotes and type in side-blog.
| | 01:49 | I can then collapse up my wp-content folder.
| | 01:52 | I can save my wp-config file, and re-upload it.
| | 01:56 | Once I go back into the WordPress
dashboard, I'm ready to try it out and make
| | 02:00 | sure that my new default theme is ready to go.
| | 02:02 | So I'm going to come right here to
the Create a New Site section of the
| | 02:06 | WordPress dashboard.
| | 02:09 | I'm just going to call this test...
| | 02:12 | This is a Test, and enter an admin email.
| | 02:17 | I'll click Add Site, and the site has been added.
| | 02:21 | Once I click Visit Dashboard, I can
go into the site itself and notice here
| | 02:26 | underneath the Right Now panel, it tells
me I'm running the theme of Side Blog
| | 02:31 | instead of the default 2011 theme.
| | 02:33 | That's because inside of my wp-
config I overrode that by adding in the
| | 02:38 | definition for side blog.
| | 02:39 | If I go over to Appearance and choose
Themes, you'll notice Side Blog is the new
| | 02:44 | active theme at the top.
| | 02:45 | Any time for this site, I can go and
activate another theme, but by default it
| | 02:50 | adopts this theme because I told it to.
| | 02:52 | Now any time I create a site inside of
WordPress Multisite, it automatically
| | 02:56 | adopts that default theme that I
defined inside of my wp-config file.
| | 03:01 | So if you find yourself needing to
create a unified design or unified look
| | 03:05 | throughout all of the sites in your
multisite network, that's how easy it is to
| | 03:08 | get in, change the theme, and keep working.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Installing and activating plug-ins| 00:00 | Another one my favorite parts of
WordPress is the ability to extend the
| | 00:03 | experience for both you and your
users using something called plug-ins.
| | 00:07 | And in WordPress Multisite, that's no different.
| | 00:10 | You still need plug-ins to
extend the user experience and your
| | 00:12 | personal experience as well.
| | 00:14 | This helps you add on some really
cool stuff to the WordPress installation.
| | 00:17 | It's a little bit different for
WordPress Multisite, but if you understand the
| | 00:20 | basic concepts of uploading and
installing plug-ins in a regular WordPress
| | 00:23 | environment, you should
have no trouble with this one.
| | 00:26 | So in this movie, we will be taking a look
at how to enable plug-ins across your
| | 00:30 | entire network using WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:31 | The first thing I am going to do
is go to the Plugins section of my
| | 00:35 | Dashboard and, by the way, I'm
logged in as the network admin and this is
| | 00:38 | the Admin Dashboard.
| | 00:39 | I am going to choose Add New plug-in.
| | 00:41 | From the Add New screen, I can upload a
plug-in, view a list Featured, Popular,
| | 00:47 | Newest, and Recently Updated plug-ins as well.
| | 00:50 | I am just going to choose from the Popular
tags here at the bottom and select Facebook.
| | 00:54 | Once I select the Facebook tag, it
brings up a list of all the available
| | 00:58 | plug-ins that are tagged with the Facebook tag.
| | 01:01 | In this case I am going
to choose Simply Sociable.
| | 01:03 | It's the top link right here.
| | 01:05 | This plug-in automatically appends
social media links to the bottom of each one
| | 01:08 | of your blog posts, stuff like
Google+, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera.
| | 01:12 | If I install that plug-in, it
comes up and asks me for confirmation.
| | 01:16 | I hit OK and the plug-in is active.
| | 01:19 | If I choose Network Activate, that plug-
in is now live across all of my sites.
| | 01:26 | If I were to visit one of my sites, I go out
to My Sites and let's do the tutorial site.
| | 01:31 | I will visit that site.
| | 01:36 | Once I click on the first post, you
will notice at the bottom I have links to
| | 01:40 | Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. All
of those were added automatically by
| | 01:46 | installing that plug-in across my network.
| | 01:48 | If I go back and visit another site like
the magazine site, the same should hold true.
| | 01:54 | Let's go here and view the Hello world!
| | 01:57 | post, and there at the bottom:
Google+, Twitter, Facebook--
| | 02:02 | The same links that were available
to me when I viewed the previous site.
| | 02:05 | Now, this theme actually has individual social
media links at the bottom of each page as well.
| | 02:11 | And that's fine.
| | 02:11 | It's just another layer of
social interaction. No big deal.
| | 02:14 | I will go ahead and close this up and
go back into my Network Admin panel.
| | 02:19 | Now, you'll notice I have a couple of
plug-ins that aren't activated across the
| | 02:22 | network, and that's Akismet and Hello Dolly.
| | 02:25 | Hello Dolly is just a proof of concept really.
| | 02:28 | You can actually get rid of that plug-in
without doing any damage to your site.
| | 02:31 | Akismet is actually a great plug-in
for fighting spam in your blog.
| | 02:35 | If you wanted to, you can network activate
that, but I am going to do that right now.
| | 02:39 | I'm going to show you how to
activate it on one single site.
| | 02:41 | So let's go up to My Sites.
| | 02:43 | Let's go to the tutorial
site, and choose Dashboard.
| | 02:47 | Now since I'm logged in as the network
admin I'm able to access the plug-ins
| | 02:51 | section here on the left.
| | 02:52 | However, that's turned off by default.
| | 02:54 | So what you will need to do is go back
to the Network Admin Dashboard and visit
| | 02:57 | your Site Configurations and
enable the Plugins menu for other users.
| | 03:01 | Once I click Plugins, you will notice
I have a list of the plug-ins that are
| | 03:04 | installed, but not activated across the network.
| | 03:07 | If I want to enable Akismet for this one
particular site, I simply hit Activate.
| | 03:12 | Once I hit Activate, it tells me at the
top that the plug-in has been activated.
| | 03:16 | Akismet also requires that you enter
an Akismet API key which you can get by
| | 03:20 | clicking the blue link right here.
| | 03:22 | Once you click that, you go through
the process and get your API key and then
| | 03:25 | you are automatically off
and running with Akismet.
| | 03:26 | And this is a great plug-in, like I said,
for fighting spam that comes into your blog.
| | 03:32 | Before I started using Akismet, I
used to get spam comments and malware
| | 03:35 | interjected into my site all the time.
| | 03:37 | Now I hardly get any spam comments whatsoever.
| | 03:41 | It's fantastic; it's one of the
best plug-ins I have ever used.
| | 03:43 | I highly recommend it.
| | 03:44 | Now let's go back to My Sites,
choose Network Admin, and Dashboard.
| | 03:50 | Once I am back in the Dashboard, I can
go back to the plug-ins section and look
| | 03:53 | at the installed plug-ins.
| | 03:54 | Now as I said, Akismet is a very
good plug-in and it needs to be
| | 03:57 | activated network-wide.
| | 03:59 | It doesn't matter that I've only
activated it on that one site already.
| | 04:02 | I can go back any time I
want and network activate it.
| | 04:06 | As for Hello Dolly, if I don't want anybody
to see that plug-in, which I kind of don't,
| | 04:11 | I can hit Delete.
| | 04:13 | It also warns me that this plug-in may
be active on other sites in the network.
| | 04:16 | There is no way to tell from the
screen, unfortunately, whether or not it is
| | 04:20 | running on another site.
| | 04:21 | So if one of your admins had activated
this plug-in, you might not know it from here.
| | 04:25 | It's always good practice to check or
at least visit the sites before you ever
| | 04:29 | delete a plug-in network-wide.
| | 04:30 | But in this case, I know I am not
using this plug-in anywhere, so I am safe.
| | 04:34 | I'll click Yes, delete the files.
| | 04:37 | Once I do that, Hello Dolly will not
show up on any of my site dashboards, nor
| | 04:41 | will it show up here in
my Network Admin Dashboard.
| | 04:44 | Now let's say that I get tired of the
Simply Sociable plug-in and I don't want
| | 04:47 | that on any of my sites anymore, or
maybe I want to deactivate it across the
| | 04:51 | network and only activate it on certain sites.
| | 04:54 | Let's go ahead and Network Deactivate it now,
and that way it's not available to new sites.
| | 04:58 | Any site that had activated it on their
own still has it activated on their site.
| | 05:02 | However, those social links will not
show up on any site that didn't have
| | 05:05 | it already activated.
| | 05:07 | Let's go back to My Sites.
| | 05:09 | Let's go back to the PhotoBlog
Tutorials page and choose Visit Site.
| | 05:12 | If I visit the site and click on the first
link, you notice the social links are gone.
| | 05:18 | But what if I want to add them
back for that one particular site?
| | 05:21 | Let's go back, My Sites > Tutorials >
Dashboard > Plugins > Activate Simply Social.
| | 05:32 | Now once I've done that, I will refresh the page.
| | 05:35 | There's my Simply Social links.
| | 05:37 | But if I go back to the magazine site,
remember it already had social media
| | 05:42 | links at the bottom.
| | 05:43 | So I will visit that site, click the
first post. The social media links that are
| | 05:49 | in the theme by default are still there,
but the extra ones have been removed,
| | 05:52 | creating a much more consistent look.
| | 05:54 | Close this up a return back to my Dashboard.
| | 05:57 | Hopefully, by now you have a better
understanding of exactly how to install and
| | 06:00 | activate plug-ins across your network
and how to manage the various plug-ins
| | 06:04 | that you have inside of your
WordPress Multisite installation.
| | 06:07 | Take some time and
explore the plug-ins directory.
| | 06:09 | You'll find some hidden gems in there
for sure and those are great ways to
| | 06:12 | extend the WordPress
experience for you and your users.
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| Updating your network installation| 00:00 | One of the big benefits of using
WordPress Multisite as opposed to several
| | 00:04 | different individual WordPress
installations is the fact that you get to update
| | 00:08 | your files one time.
| | 00:10 | And no matter what, once you click update,
it propagates throughout the entire network.
| | 00:14 | Now that can be good and it can be bad,
depending on if the update is stable or not.
| | 00:18 | But let's assume that the update is
stable and that you're doing a good thing.
| | 00:22 | Updating in one place for
like 20 sites? That's amazing!
| | 00:26 | It used to take me hours to go
through and update individual sites over and
| | 00:31 | over and over again. It was so tedious.
| | 00:34 | Now that I'm rolling everything into
Multisite, it makes it so much easier for
| | 00:38 | me to just go in, click a button, and I'm done.
| | 00:41 | In this movie I will show you how to
update your WordPress Multi site network.
| | 00:45 | You'll be amazed that how easy it is.
| | 00:47 | As you can see on this screen here, it's
telling me that I've already updated my
| | 00:51 | main installation of WordPress.
| | 00:53 | And I have updated my installation of WordPress.
| | 00:56 | I'm running the current
beta version of WordPress 3.3.
| | 00:59 | However, I have not updated
every single site of my network.
| | 01:03 | And it's telling me here,
Thank you for Updating!
| | 01:06 | Please visit the Update Network
page to update all of your sites.
| | 01:09 | Any time there's an update available
inside of WordPress, it will tell you in one
| | 01:12 | of these yellow boxes here.
| | 01:14 | If you want to update this stuff,
just click on Update Network.
| | 01:18 | Once you get to this section, you'll
notice that it tells me I can update all of
| | 01:22 | the sites on my network through this one page.
| | 01:25 | It explains a little bit of how it does it to.
| | 01:27 | It says it works by calling the
update script for each site automatically.
| | 01:31 | So basically what you would be doing
by going to each site and hitting the
| | 01:34 | update button one by one,
WordPress does that for you. Pretty neat!
| | 01:38 | If there are any other available updates,
you can see them over here on the left
| | 01:42 | underneath the Available Updates screen.
| | 01:44 | To update your network,
just click Update Network.
| | 01:49 | As you can see, it goes through
and updated all four of my sites.
| | 01:51 | You saw it do it in succession,
and then it tells me, All done!
| | 01:55 | Now the yellow update marker goes
away and everything is up-to-date.
| | 01:59 | If I go to my Available Updates, you'll
notice here that it says WordPress Updates.
| | 02:04 | It tells me the time that it last checked.
| | 02:06 | I can check again and if any new updates
have come through, it will show me that here.
| | 02:10 | Since I have the BackupBuddy plug-in
currently running on my site, it tells me
| | 02:14 | here to remember to back up
everything before upgrading WordPress.
| | 02:18 | And that's a good rule of thumb.
| | 02:19 | Any time you're getting ready to do
an update, create yourself a backup.
| | 02:23 | It also tells me here that an
updated version of WordPress is available.
| | 02:27 | It's telling me this simply because I
am running the beta version of WordPress
| | 02:30 | 3.3 and they have downloadable
nightly builds of the software.
| | 02:35 | Nightly builds aren't exactly as stable as
point releases or standardized beta releases.
| | 02:40 | So I don't necessarily recommend
unless you're a developer or you seriously
| | 02:43 | know what you are doing.
| | 02:44 | However, if you wanted to update, you
could click Update Now and it would go
| | 02:48 | through and update everything
inside of your WordPress install.
| | 02:51 | If you have any plug-ins or themes
that need to be updated and the author has
| | 02:54 | tied into that hook to let WordPress
know that the theme needs to be updated,
| | 02:58 | it will automatically show those
updates here and you can update those
| | 03:01 | network wide as well. So easy.
| | 03:04 | So the next time you log in to your
WordPress Multisite Dashboard, take a look
| | 03:08 | and see if you have any yellow
warnings indicating that there's an update
| | 03:10 | available for WordPress or simply
visit the Updates section on the left-hand
| | 03:14 | side of the navigation.
| | 03:15 | Once you get in here, check it out,
see if there's anything that needs to be
| | 03:18 | updated and if so, you can apply
it network-wide in just seconds.
| | 03:22 | It's that easy and it's
going to save you a ton of time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Controlling User AccessSetting up user permissions| 00:00 | As the network administrator for your
WordPress Multisite installation, one of the
| | 00:03 | great things you have the ability
to do is pass the buck to your users.
| | 00:07 | So in this movie, we are going to be
taking a look at how to add and configure
| | 00:11 | user permissions inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:14 | So the first thing you need to make
sure of is that you're logged in as the
| | 00:17 | network admin and you're looking
at the Network Admin Dashboard.
| | 00:19 | Second, you want to come over here to
the Settings and find Network Settings.
| | 00:24 | Underneath the Network Settings, you
want to go down to Registration Settings
| | 00:27 | because this is where you determine
exactly what users are allowed to do, if
| | 00:31 | they're allowed to sign up for your
site, if they're allowed to sign up for
| | 00:34 | your site and create a new site of their
own, or if you allow them to do both at once.
| | 00:39 | It's all up to you.
| | 00:40 | My recommendation is to utilize this option--
Logged in users may register new sites.
| | 00:45 | What this means is the user
has to be in the system first.
| | 00:48 | But once they are in the system, they have
the ability to then go and create a new site.
| | 00:52 | So I am going to choose Logged
in users may register new sites.
| | 00:57 | Once I do that, I will go down to
the bottom and I'll click Save Changes.
| | 01:01 | Once the options are saved, this means
any user in my system now has the ability
| | 01:05 | to create their own site inside my network.
| | 01:08 | In a future movie I will talk about how to
configure the registration process a little bit more.
| | 01:11 | But in this movie, let's assume that
the user is already in our database and we
| | 01:15 | just want to give them the
ability to create their own site.
| | 01:17 | So the first thing I am going to do is
navigate to my Users, select All Users,
| | 01:22 | and find the user I want to use.
| | 01:23 | In this case, it's John Smith.
| | 01:25 | So I will go in and Edit John.
| | 01:27 | I am just going to change his password.
| | 01:30 | I am changing the password so I know
what it is so I can log in as John and show
| | 01:35 | you how to create your own site.
| | 01:39 | Once I click Update User, John is updated,
and I'm now ready to go create my own site.
| | 01:44 | If the user is already in the
database and you had not enabled sign up or
| | 01:49 | registration beforehand, chances are
they won't get the email that tells them
| | 01:53 | exactly how to sign up for the site.
| | 01:54 | So you might want to send John an
email, or in this case myself an email,
| | 01:59 | indicating exactly where they need
to go to sign up for their new site.
| | 02:02 | Let's jump over into another web
browser, and I'll visit my site.
| | 02:07 | At the end of the domain name, what they
will have to type in is wp-signup.php.
| | 02:14 | That's the address of the page that is
used to sign up for a new web site or blog.
| | 02:19 | You'll notice that when I visit this
site and visit wp-sign-up.php, that the
| | 02:23 | domain tells me, You must first log in,
and then you can create a new site.
| | 02:27 | That's easy enough.
| | 02:28 | I will click log in.
| | 02:29 | I will log in as johnsmith and click Log In.
| | 02:36 | Once I am logged in, I can create my own site.
| | 02:38 | So I will create johnsmith, This is
John's Blog, and then he gets to choose
| | 02:46 | whether or not it appears in search
engines like Google, Technorati, et cetera.
| | 02:49 | In this case I will just say no.
| | 02:51 | Then I will create a site.
| | 02:54 | Once I create it, I get my
domain and the ability to log in.
| | 02:58 | So let's go ahead and log in.
| | 03:00 | Once I do that, I'm instantly
directed to the Dashboard of that new site.
| | 03:07 | So theoretically, I'm John Smith and I now
have access to my own blog on this domain.
| | 03:13 | Pretty cool!
| | 03:14 | Let's close this up.
| | 03:16 | Now that you have seen how easy it is
to let users create their own sites or
| | 03:19 | blogs here inside of your WordPress
Multisite installation, you're ready to
| | 03:22 | start working on the user registration
process so that you can make it as easy
| | 03:25 | as possible for them to create
their own web site or blog using your
| | 03:29 | installation of WordPress.
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| Defining the registration process| 00:00 | As you start to expand your WordPress
Multisite environment, it's a good idea to
| | 00:04 | get a handle on the registration process
that users have to go through in order
| | 00:07 | to create a profile or even a new
blog or site inside of your WordPress
| | 00:11 | Multisite environment.
| | 00:12 | In this movie, I'll review how you
can customize the WordPress registration
| | 00:16 | process here inside of the
WordPress Admin Dashboard.
| | 00:19 | I will also show you a cool plug-in to
add a little bit of something extra to
| | 00:22 | the registration process as well.
| | 00:24 | Let's first start off by being logged in as
the network administrator here on my photo blog.
| | 00:28 | Once I am logged into the network
administrator, I want to make sure that I
| | 00:31 | am viewing the Dashboard, and I'll go down
to the Settings and choose Network Settings.
| | 00:36 | Inside of the Network Settings, you
can see here that we have a section for
| | 00:39 | Registration Settings.
| | 00:41 | We talked about the Allow new
registrations in a previous movie.
| | 00:44 | Now let's talk about the rest of these options.
| | 00:47 | Registration notification--do you
want to send the network administrator an
| | 00:50 | email every time someone registers for the site?
| | 00:53 | Do you want to allow site
administrators to add new users to their site?
| | 00:57 | If you want to give that level of
control to everyone else that's an
| | 01:00 | administrator in your network,
go ahead and check that box.
| | 01:04 | You can also choose some New Site
Settings from here as well--stuff like the
| | 01:07 | Welcome Email, the Welcome User
Email, First Post, and First Page.
| | 01:12 | The Welcome User Email is the email
that users receive as soon as they sign up
| | 01:16 | for a new account here.
| | 01:17 | You can customize this
with any text, including HTML.
| | 01:21 | The Welcome Email is the same way.
| | 01:23 | It tells you that their new site
name has been successfully created once
| | 01:26 | they've created a new blog
inside of your WordPress Multisite.
| | 01:29 | If there's anything extra you want
to provide here, go ahead and do that.
| | 01:33 | Once you get all of these options set
up the way you like it, simply come down
| | 01:36 | to the bottom and click Save Changes.
| | 01:39 | Once you do that, all the options are
then saved and any time anyone goes to
| | 01:42 | create a new web site or blog inside of
your WordPress Multisite, all of these
| | 01:46 | options should follow suit and send the
proper emails and use the settings that you define.
| | 01:50 | Now if you want to take it one step
further and be part of the cool crowd, you
| | 01:55 | can utilize an awesome plug-in
than I found called Signup Code.
| | 01:58 | Signup Code limits who can sign up for
your blog or a user account on your site,
| | 02:04 | by requiring that they
enter in a special Signup Code.
| | 02:06 | This is like a beta invite that a lot
of these custom social sites on the web
| | 02:11 | are utilizing today.
| | 02:12 | You can get this plug-in as a
part of the premium wpmudev.org site.
| | 02:17 | It does cost a little bit of money,
but it adds that extra level of
| | 02:20 | professionalism to your site.
| | 02:22 | All you have to do is
download Signup Code and install it.
| | 02:24 | Then you go in and you define the code yourself.
| | 02:27 | Once someone comes to sign up for your
site, they have to enter in that code in
| | 02:31 | the area that you see here.
| | 02:33 | Once they enter it in, they're in,
but they don't have the code,
| | 02:36 | they're not getting in.
| | 02:38 | Adding that level of exclusivity to
your site could add a little something
| | 02:41 | extra, and it makes you
little bit more mysterious.
| | 02:43 | Let's go back into the Network Settings.
| | 02:45 | Once I return back here, I can make
any necessary changes I want or continue
| | 02:49 | customizing my site.
| | 02:51 | Hopefully by now you see that it's
pretty easy to define the user registration
| | 02:54 | process here inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | 02:56 | And with the help of the plug-in,
you can make it even more cool.
| | 03:00 | So take some time and craft out the
perfect user registration process.
| | 03:04 | Make it as interactive as possible
and you will keep your users coming back
| | 03:07 | for more.
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| Controlling access to sites| 00:00 | One of the challenges that we face as
an administrator inside of WordPress
| | 00:03 | Multisite is the ability to add users
to different web sites or blogs inside of
| | 00:07 | our Multisite installation.
| | 00:09 | By default, users are allowed to sign up
and create as many blogs as we want, if
| | 00:13 | we give them permission to.
| | 00:14 | However, there is no point and click
way to assign a user to another blog, or
| | 00:18 | web site without using a plug-in.
| | 00:20 | In this movie, I'll cover how to
control access to your various web sites or
| | 00:23 | blogs using this simple user Admin Plugin.
| | 00:26 | The first thing I need to
do is go find the Plugin.
| | 00:28 | So let's go over to the left-hand side and
visit the Plugins menu and choose Add New.
| | 00:34 | Inside of the Install Plugin screen, I
am going to come right here and I'll just
| | 00:37 | type in Simple User Admin.
Then I'll click Search Plugins.
| | 00:44 | It should be the first result returned,
| | 00:45 | nut you are looking for Simple User
Admin and the author is Chris Taylor.
| | 00:50 | Once you find that plug-in, click Install Now.
| | 00:53 | WordPress will ask you, Are you sure
if you want to install this plug-in?
| | 00:56 | Go ahead and say OK.
| | 00:58 | It will then Download it, unpack
it and install it, and then you can
| | 01:01 | Network Activate it.
| | 01:04 | Once the plug-in has been Network
Activated, you can then visit the Users tab on
| | 01:08 | the side menu and then
select Simple User Management.
| | 01:12 | It's a little confusing since the actual tab
name is different than the name of the plug-in.
| | 01:15 | So you have to remember, you're
installing the Simple User Admin plug-in, but
| | 01:20 | then it becomes Simple User
Management when inside of your installation.
| | 01:25 | Once you have reached the Simple User
Management screen, you have two options.
| | 01:28 | You can Search for Users and then add
them to blogs, or you can Search for Blogs
| | 01:32 | and add users to them.
| | 01:34 | In this case, I'm just going to go down
to the bottom of the screen and pick the
| | 01:38 | blog that I want to add a user to.
| | 01:40 | In this case, I want to add a user to Magazine.
| | 01:45 | You'll notice here that I have a couple of
users already assigned to this. And that's okay.
| | 01:49 | I'll go ahead and add another
user by searching for them here.
| | 01:52 | I will just type in dave.
| | 01:54 | Once I hit Search, it goes through
and it finds dave in my user database.
| | 02:00 | If I want to assign dave a
role, I can by clicking here.
| | 02:03 | We will cover roles in
depth in a future movie.
| | 02:06 | For now, I'm just going to
leave dave as an administrator.
| | 02:09 | Once I have dave as an
administrator, I can click Add user to blog.
| | 02:14 | As you can see, dave has been added to
my list and I get a confirmation message
| | 02:18 | letting me know that the user
has been added to this blog.
| | 02:20 | His User ID is 5, the Blog ID is 5,
and the Role is administrator.
| | 02:25 | So as you can see, adding users to
other web sites or blogs inside of WordPress
| | 02:29 | Multisite is somewhat challenging
if you don't utilize this plug-in.
| | 02:32 | So remember, it's called
the Simple User Admin plug-in.
| | 02:36 | And once you add that to your site, you
will be well on your way to adding users
| | 02:39 | in a point and click fashion right
here inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Importing users from another blog| 00:00 | One of the biggest pain points if
you've developed a list of people over the
| | 00:04 | years from an email sign up or even
running another blog or web site is to
| | 00:08 | import those users into an existing
WordPress installation or even a WordPress
| | 00:12 | Multi-site installation.
| | 00:14 | In this movie, I'm hopefully going to
correct that for you by showing you how to
| | 00:17 | utilize a plug-in to bulk import users
from anywhere into your site using simply
| | 00:22 | their email address.
| | 00:24 | So here I am logged in to the
Network Admin panel of my WordPress
| | 00:27 | Multi-site installation.
| | 00:28 | From here I'm going to go into the
Plugins section on the left-hand side
| | 00:32 | and choose Add New.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to search for a plug-in and
the plug-in is called simple import users.
| | 00:40 | When I click Search Plugins it should
be the first result returned at the top.
| | 00:45 | As you can see, it requires
WordPress 3.0 or greater and Network mode or
| | 00:49 | Multi-site mode to be enabled.
| | 00:51 | Once I find it, I'll hit Install Now,
hit OK, and it's activated. Then I'll
| | 00:56 | click Network Activate.
| | 00:59 | Once the plug-in has been activated, I
can then visit the web site or blog that
| | 01:03 | I wish to import users into.
| | 01:04 | So I'll go up to My Sites, go to
my Magazine site and hit Dashboard.
| | 01:10 | Inside of the Dashboard I can go over
here to the left-hand site and find the
| | 01:13 | tools menu, when I find tools I should
see an option that's called Import Users.
| | 01:18 | Inside of this I'll be able to
enter in all of the email addresses that
| | 01:23 | correspond to the users that I want to
bring into this blog. Underneath that I
| | 01:27 | can determine the role for these users.
| | 01:28 | By default, the role is set to Author,
but you can add Administrator, Editor,
| | 01:33 | Contributor, or Subscriber as well.
| | 01:35 | We'll cover roles in depth in another movie.
| | 01:38 | At the bottom you get to
determine the email content.
| | 01:41 | This is the email that's sent to every
one of these users once you've imported
| | 01:44 | them into the system.
| | 01:45 | It will let them know that they've
been imported, why they've been imported
| | 01:48 | maybe, and it gives you
spot to add some content.
| | 01:51 | By default, it tells them that their
account has been created and it gives them
| | 01:55 | their username and password.
| | 01:56 | You might want to explain to them why
their account has been created though. If
| | 01:59 | they just get an email out of the
blue with a username and password,
| | 02:02 | they might not understand what you're doing.
| | 02:04 | So if you're migrating from a static
site that's been collecting email addresses
| | 02:07 | to a sign-up form, or you're just trying to
move from one WordPress installation into
| | 02:11 | a Multi-site installation,
| | 02:12 | this is a great opportunity to explain
to your users exactly what's going on.
| | 02:16 | At the bottom we'll also see
Content, which is sent to all accounts.
| | 02:21 | This is just a general email that's sent to
everybody who's not already in your system.
| | 02:25 | When you're finished with this, you hit Import Users.
| | 02:28 | Once you do that, all of the users should
be imported into your system and all of
| | 02:32 | the emails should be sent
out to those users as well.
| | 02:34 | Let's add a couple of email
addresses here and see how it works.
| | 02:42 | Once I've typed all my email addresses, I'll
go down to the bottom and hit Import Users.
| | 02:48 | As you can see, it tells my processing is
complete and I can view the results below.
| | 02:52 | It created my username Jack,
Bob, Tim, Barry, and Janice.
| | 02:57 | You can also see that those users have
been added to the blog. Jack, Bob, Tim,
| | 03:01 | Barry, and Janice--all of them
successfully imported. So let's review.
| | 03:06 | I went into my Network Admin panel.
| | 03:08 | I found the plug-in called Simple Import
Users, and once I found that plug-in I was
| | 03:12 | able to network activate it and then add
a group or list of people based on their
| | 03:17 | email address to a specific site or blog
in my WordPress Multisite installation.
| | 03:21 | Now, I could do the same thing for any
one of the WordPress Multisite sites that
| | 03:25 | I have, or I can just continue working.
| | 03:27 | So if you've exported a list of email
addresses out of MailChimp or any other
| | 03:30 | mail collecting software or even out
of an Excel spreadsheet, you could paste
| | 03:35 | all of those email addresses right here
into this Import Users screen and import
| | 03:38 | them successfully into your blog.
| | 03:40 | It's a very easy way of
importing users into your WordPress
| | 03:43 | Multisite installation.
| | 03:45 | Hopefully this makes it a little bit
easier for you to manage your users and
| | 03:48 | also makes it easier for you to
migrate from one platform to another.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding user roles| 00:00 | If you're new to using WordPress Multi-
site or even new to WordPress in general,
| | 00:04 | one of the more confusing things about
using WordPress is the default user roles
| | 00:08 | and permissions that are
baked into the software.
| | 00:10 | In this video, hopefully I'm going
to unravel that mystery for you
| | 00:13 | as we go in depth into each one to
explain exactly what the role is and what its
| | 00:17 | function is inside of
WordPress. First up is Admin.
| | 00:20 | This is your administrator.
| | 00:22 | This person has access to all of
the admin features of the site.
| | 00:25 | That means they can create content,
manage content, manage installed themes and
| | 00:29 | plug-ins, all of that great stuff.
| | 00:31 | They have access to everything.
| | 00:33 | Editors--editors are publishers of
content, as well as managers of content as well.
| | 00:38 | They have the ability to publish and
create their own post, pages, and links, as
| | 00:43 | well as manage other
users' posts, pages, and links.
| | 00:46 | Editors are great for users that you don't
necessarily trust to publish their own content.
| | 00:50 | Editors can come in, approve it, or unapprove it.
| | 00:53 | Authors--authors can create and
publish their own content, but they cannot
| | 00:58 | manage other users content.
| | 01:00 | A contributor--a contributor is
someone who's allowed to come in and create
| | 01:03 | their own post or or page.
| | 01:05 | However, they do not have the right to
publish that page inside of WordPress.
| | 01:09 | This is where the editors come in handy,
because editors can then come into a
| | 01:12 | contributor's post or page and make
that content public or publish it.
| | 01:17 | Subscribers--subscribers are
the consumers of the content.
| | 01:20 | They're the people that are subscribed
to read and also comment on the blog posts
| | 01:24 | or pages inside of the WordPress installation.
| | 01:26 | There's also one other
role that's not on this slide.
| | 01:29 | It's called the Super Admin.
| | 01:31 | And this is only a role that is
assigned to someone inside of WordPress
| | 01:34 | Multi-site who is given the
ultimate level of control.
| | 01:37 | The Super Admin has access to all of
the blog network administration features
| | 01:41 | and he's able to control the entire network.
| | 01:44 | Every time you see me going to the
Network Administration panel, I've been
| | 01:48 | logged in as the Super Admin, and
this is the top level of all of the roles
| | 01:53 | inside of WordPress.
| | 01:54 | Now that we've got all of the roles and
permissions explained to us, let's take
| | 01:57 | a look at how we can actually start to
change user roles and permissions for
| | 02:02 | existing users inside of
our WordPress installation.
| | 02:04 | As you can see, I'm logged in to
one of my sites inside of my WordPress
| | 02:08 | Multi-site installation.
| | 02:09 | I'm not currently acting as the Super
Admin because I'm actually accessing the
| | 02:13 | Dashboard for the photo blog magazine site.
| | 02:16 | I am, however, logged in as an administrator.
| | 02:18 | Therefore I have the ability to
access all of the administration features
| | 02:22 | inside of this dashboard.
| | 02:23 | In order to manage the user roles, you
need to find the Users section on the
| | 02:26 | left-hand side navigation. Then go to All Users.
| | 02:29 | Once you're inside of the All Users
screen, you have the ability to edit the
| | 02:33 | users on an individual basis.
| | 02:34 | In this case, let's find Dave.
| | 02:38 | I'll click Edit to go into Dave's profile.
| | 02:40 | Currently Dave's role is set to
Administrator and he's the administrator of his own blog.
| | 02:45 | If I want to change Dave's role I
simply come to right here, click, and I
| | 02:49 | can change Dave to be anything from an
administrator all the way down to a subscriber.
| | 02:53 | In this case, I don't think Dave needs
the ability to manage individual pieces
| | 02:57 | like themes and users and plug-ins
inside of his dashboard, so I'm just going to
| | 03:00 | make Dave an editor.
| | 03:02 | This ensures that Dave is able to
create content as well as manage content
| | 03:06 | inside of his blog, but I, the
administrator, still have full control over that blog.
| | 03:11 | Now I'll scroll down and hit Update User.
| | 03:15 | Once I update that, I can go to the back
to Users link and that takes me back to
| | 03:19 | my Users screen and I can continue to
manage my users inside of WordPress.
| | 03:24 | Hopefully by now you have a better
understanding of what each one of these
| | 03:26 | individual roles is used for inside of
the WordPress installation, and you can
| | 03:30 | use this information to control the
access to different parts and pieces of your
| | 03:34 | content creation system by
utilizing these roles and permissions.
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| Changing user roles on signup| 00:00 | If you're managing multiple users and
blogs here inside of WordPress Multi-site
| | 00:03 | environment or if you're going to
allow open registration on your web site or
| | 00:07 | blogs in WordPress Multi-site, you
might want to think about adding a plug-in
| | 00:10 | that allows you to set a default role
for each new user inside of Multi-site.
| | 00:14 | The best plug-in I've found for this is one
called Multisite User Management. Let's
| | 00:18 | go find that plug-in now and in this
movie I'll show you how to set a default
| | 00:22 | role for each individual blog inside of
your Multi-site environment to control
| | 00:27 | the user role upon sign-up.
| | 00:28 | Let's go and find the plug-in underneath
the Plugins directory and choose Add New.
| | 00:32 | Inside of the Add New screen, I'm going
to type in multisite user management and
| | 00:38 | I'll click Search Plugins.
| | 00:40 | It should be the first result returned,
but you're looking for the plug-in
| | 00:43 | called Multisite User Management
version 1.0 and the author is Brent Shepherd.
| | 00:49 | Once I find it, I'll click Install Now.
Once I click Install, I'll hit OK. The
| | 00:55 | plug-in is unpacked and
installed, and I can Network Activate.
| | 00:59 | Once it's been network activated,
it's time to go set up your roles.
| | 01:02 | So go over to the Settings
section and choose Network Settings.
| | 01:07 | Inside of Network Settings you're
going to scroll down. Towards the bottom of
| | 01:11 | the Network Settings, you'll see a new
section called Multisite User Management.
| | 01:16 | Here it tells you to select the default
role for each one of your sites in your
| | 01:19 | WordPress Multi-site environment.
| | 01:20 | It tells you that new users will receive
these roles when activating their account.
| | 01:24 | Existing users will receive these
roles only if they have the current default
| | 01:28 | role or no role at all for a particular site.
| | 01:31 | Any user that you've already assigned a role to,
such as made an admin or an editor et
| | 01:35 | cetera, their roles will not
be affected by this plug-in.
| | 01:39 | So in this case, for John's Blog, I'm going
to set the default user role to Subscriber.
| | 01:46 | Under This is a Test, that's just a
test blog that I set up, so again, Subscriber.
| | 01:52 | For the PhotoBlog Magazine I want users
to be able to write articles for this.
| | 01:56 | So I'm going to go ahead
and add them as a Contributor.
| | 01:59 | For the PhotoBlog Tutorial site, I
want people to submit as many tutorials
| | 02:03 | as they can so my community can grow, so
I'll go here and also add that as a contributor.
| | 02:09 | Now remember, as a contributor, these users will
be able to create content but not publish them.
| | 02:14 | Therefore I have final say over
what gets published on the blog.
| | 02:17 | Finally, for the Photo Blog, I'm going to
set this role to Author because I want
| | 02:22 | people to post their pictures
and stories from around the globe.
| | 02:26 | Therefore, on the Photo Blog site, they
are an author and they can create their
| | 02:29 | own content as well as
publish their content as well.
| | 02:32 | Once I'm finished, I hit Save Changes.
| | 02:34 | Any new user that signs up for the
sites will automatically adopt these roles,
| | 02:38 | making it so much easier for me to
control the flow of content in all of my
| | 02:42 | WordPress Multi-site environments.
| | 02:44 | So again, we use the Multisite User
Management plug-in to set default roles for
| | 02:50 | any of our WordPress Multisite
environments here inside of the Dashboard.
| | 02:54 | It's a quick and easy way of making
sure that you are control of the content.
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| Exploring blog privacy settings| 00:00 | One of the questions that I get asked
the most when I am teaching any type of
| | 00:03 | WordPress class is "how do I
control the privacy settings on my blog?"
| | 00:07 | Well, the short answer to that is
there are not a whole lot of privacy
| | 00:10 | settings for a blog.
| | 00:11 | However, you can set some default
privacy settings inside of your WordPress
| | 00:15 | installation to make it a
little harder for people to find you.
| | 00:18 | At the end of this movie I'll walk you
through setting up a plug-in that allows
| | 00:21 | you to completely put your blog behind a wall.
| | 00:24 | Let's first start off by
visiting the dashboard of one of my
| | 00:27 | multisite environments.
| | 00:28 | I'll go to My Sites and in this case
I'll just go to the default, Dashboard.
| | 00:33 | Inside of the Dashboard of this site I
can go down to the Settings and inside of
| | 00:36 | Settings there is a Privacy section.
| | 00:39 | However, when I click on Privacy, you'll
notice that the controls are somewhat limited.
| | 00:44 | In this case I have the ability to
control what is called site visibility.
| | 00:47 | However, the site visibility only
refers to whether or not search engines are
| | 00:51 | allowed to index this site.
| | 00:53 | It tells you at the bottom that neither of
these options blocks access to your site.
| | 00:57 | It is set up so search
engines will honor your request.
| | 01:00 | Basically this just means that it puts
a little strip of code into your side
| | 01:04 | that tells search engines, "hey, don't crawl
me and don't index me in your search results."
| | 01:08 | So in this case if you wanted a blog
to be "private" you could ask search
| | 01:13 | engines not to index your
site and click Save Changes.
| | 01:17 | Once you do that and go back to
the dashboard, you're all set.
| | 01:21 | Theoretically your site will not show up
in search results when someone Googles you.
| | 01:25 | However, you may want a level of security
that's just a little bit deeper than that.
| | 01:29 | So let's take a look at how to put
your web site behind a wall so that users
| | 01:32 | have to log in before
they're allowed into the site.
| | 01:35 | I'll go back to My Sites >
Network Admin and select the Dashboard.
| | 01:40 | When I get to the Dashboard I need to
go to the Plugins section. I go to Add New.
| | 01:45 | On the Install Plugins page go ahead
and search for Login configurator and
| | 01:51 | click Search Plugins.
| | 01:54 | It should be the first result
returned, but if it's not, look for Login
| | 01:57 | Configurator version 1.6 by
GrandSlambert. I'll hit Install Now and hit OK. Then
| | 02:06 | I'll choose Network Activate.
| | 02:10 | Once I have Network Activate on, I
can go ahead and go back to My Sites and
| | 02:14 | let's go back to that default
domain and choose Dashboard.
| | 02:18 | Inside of the Dashboard I now have the
ability to put the blog behind a wall. I
| | 02:22 | do this by going to Settings
and choosing Login Configurator.
| | 02:27 | The Login Configurator screen is full
of options and I advise you to go through
| | 02:31 | and check out all of the ones
that are available to you here.
| | 02:34 | The only ones that I am interested in
are right here on the Plugin Settings.
| | 02:37 | First and foremost, do you want to Force Login?
| | 02:41 | You can say OFF - Do not force login on
any page, On - A user must login to see
| | 02:47 | the entire site, including the homepage.
| | 02:49 | This means that any time someone comes
to your site, they're automatically going
| | 02:52 | to be prompted with a user login screen.
| | 02:55 | It will not let them pass that screen
unless they have a username and password.
| | 02:59 | That's pretty handy. Also, you can use a Teaser.
| | 03:02 | This allows for non logged in users to
see the homepage, but it forces logins on
| | 03:07 | any other page in the site. So
theoretically they could come to your homepage
| | 03:10 | and view some of the posts that
you've made, but any time they try to click
| | 03:13 | through to the full version of the
post or even click on a page, they're
| | 03:17 | prompted to login and
they can't go anywhere else.
| | 03:20 | Finally, you can only force login
when a user wants to see a post.
| | 03:24 | This is handy if you are trying to control access
to just your blog post or your news feed.
| | 03:28 | The great part about this plug-in, and
this is something new that they've added
| | 03:31 | in a recent update, URLs to ignore.
You can actually Whitelist certain pages
| | 03:36 | or URLs inside of your site and make those
publicly available and not force users to log in.
| | 03:41 | So theoretically you could Whitelist
the sign-up page, for instance, and force
| | 03:45 | users to sign up for your blog
before they're allowed to view anything.
| | 03:49 | That's a pretty good way
of getting more followers.
| | 03:52 | You can also choose to Ignore the feed URL.
| | 03:55 | If you've protected it, that means you've
protected the feed URL as well as the blog.
| | 03:59 | Even if somebody types in the address
to your RSS feed inside of any reader,
| | 04:03 | they won't get any content unless they
come and register for your site. Pretty cool. huh?
| | 04:07 | You can also ignore that and not
protect the feed URL if you choose to.
| | 04:11 | Finally, you can choose the Redirect URL.
| | 04:14 | This is where users are sent once they log in.
| | 04:17 | If you ignore this and don't put
anything here, they're automatically redirected
| | 04:20 | to whatever page they came from.
| | 04:22 | However, if you redirect, you can
redirect to the homepage or specified URL
| | 04:26 | in the field provided.
| | 04:28 | Let's go ahead and turn
on some of these options.
| | 04:30 | First thing I'm going to do is Force
Login, meaning nobody can see anything
| | 04:34 | unless they're logged into my site.
| | 04:35 | Then I'm going to go down and
I'll protect the RSS feed as well.
| | 04:39 | I want them be redirected to the
homepage once they log in. Then I'll click Save
| | 04:43 | Settings at the bottom.
| | 04:46 | Now, if I go up and I visit my site,
you'll notice that I'm able to see
| | 04:51 | everything on the homepage and that's because
I'm currently logged in as the administrator.
| | 04:55 | Let's go back to my Dashboard, go
to the top right corner, and Log Out.
| | 04:59 | Once I'm logged out of my site, if I
go back to the Homepage and Refresh, I'm
| | 05:06 | prompted with a Log In screen.
| | 05:08 | Here, at the bottom you'll
notice it says Back to this domain.
| | 05:12 | If I click that, it's not letting me go anywhere.
| | 05:14 | My blog is now behind a wall and
inaccessible to anyone who's not a registered user.
| | 05:20 | That's an awesome privacy control.
| | 05:22 | If I wanted to, I could log back in and
then go back to my Dashboard and turn
| | 05:26 | this off or even change some of the options.
| | 05:28 | So in review, we took look at how to
change the blog privacy settings as by
| | 05:32 | default inside of WordPress.
| | 05:34 | That just meant that we control
whether or not search engines could crawl us or
| | 05:37 | not--not that big of a deal.
| | 05:39 | But then we took a look at this
awesome plug-in called Log in Configurator
| | 05:43 | that allowed me to put my site behind a wall
where only registered users can access my content.
| | 05:48 | That's an awesome way to make sure that
people both register for your site and
| | 05:51 | grow your numbers at the same time.
| | 05:53 | So take some time and utilize this plug-
in and go through all of those different
| | 05:57 | options that I showed you to find
the best privacy setting for you.
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| Enabling features for site administrators| 00:00 | By default, inside of WordPress
Multisite, it's rather difficult for
| | 00:03 | individual site administrators to
access certain portions of their site that
| | 00:07 | they may need access to.
| | 00:09 | As a network administrator, you have
the ability to give them access to this
| | 00:12 | portion of their site.
| | 00:13 | In this movie, we'll be talking
about how to enable features for
| | 00:16 | site administrators.
| | 00:17 | And in this case, we're talking
specifically about the plug-ins feature inside
| | 00:21 | of WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:22 | As you can see here, I'm working inside
of the Network Administration Dashboard.
| | 00:26 | Since I'm logged in as the Super Admin,
or the Network Administrator, any time I
| | 00:30 | go to one of my sites here and view
their dashboard, you'll notice that I have
| | 00:35 | access to the plug-ins
over on the left-hand side.
| | 00:38 | If I click that, I have the ability to
enable individual plug-ins inside that
| | 00:41 | site, unless the plug-in has
already been network enabled.
| | 00:44 | That way it won't show here in my list.
| | 00:47 | However, let say I'm logged in as a regular
administrator, as is the case in this blog.
| | 00:51 | I am logged into John's blog as John
and if I look over on the left I don't see
| | 00:58 | a link to the plug-ins area.
| | 01:00 | Therefore I cannot add any plug-ins
to this site, even though John is an
| | 01:03 | administrator, which theoretically is
supposed to have full control over this site.
| | 01:08 | So how do I give John access to the plug-ins?
| | 01:11 | Well, let's go back into the
regular network admin dashboard.
| | 01:15 | Let's go to the Settings section
and check out Network Settings.
| | 01:20 | If I go down to the bottom of Network
Settings, you'll notice that there is a
| | 01:23 | Menu Settings section.
| | 01:25 | This is where I can Enable administration menus.
| | 01:27 | Unfortunately, it only gives me
control for plug-ins, so if I want more
| | 01:31 | granular control over
individual features inside of a WordPress
| | 01:34 | Multisite environment,
| | 01:35 | I'll have to find a plug-in to do
that, but for now I'm just going to
| | 01:38 | worry about plug-ins.
| | 01:39 | Let's go ahead and check that box and
then move down and click Save Changes.
| | 01:44 | Once I've clicked Save Changes, I can
then go back into John's Blog environment.
| | 01:48 | Once I'm back inside John's Blog
environment, I can refresh the page. Watch the
| | 01:52 | left-hand side of your screen.
| | 01:56 | Once I refresh, you'll notice that I have
the Plugins option on the left-hand side.
| | 02:00 | From the Plugins section, I have the
ability to then activate plug-ins inside of
| | 02:05 | this site environment without
being logged in as a super admin.
| | 02:08 | That's a huge advantage and
is going to save a ton of time
| | 02:11 | because otherwise, John would just be
sending me emails all they saying, "Hey, can
| | 02:15 | you go ahead and activate this plug-in
for me?" And I really don't want to spend
| | 02:18 | my day activating plug-ins for
all of my site administrators.
| | 02:21 | So, I recommend turning this on.
| | 02:23 | That way they have access to it
and they can control the plug-ins.
| | 02:26 | Let's go over to the
Plugins menu now and click on it.
| | 02:30 | You'll notice that only the plug-ins that
have not been network enabled are listed here.
| | 02:34 | That's the same for all of the admin screens.
| | 02:37 | If the plug-in has been network enabled,
it won't show up here, but if hasn't
| | 02:40 | been, it'll be listed like
the Simply Sociable plug-in.
| | 02:43 | Let's go ahead and activate that.
| | 02:46 | Now I've activated that
for this one particular site.
| | 02:49 | If I happen to go to John's blog and
visit the site, you'll notice that when
| | 02:52 | I click on the first post, it includes the
social networking links at the bottom. Very cool.
| | 02:58 | Now we'll close that up and we'll go
back into my WordPress Multisite Dashboard.
| | 03:04 | So again, all you have to do is find
the network settings of your multisite
| | 03:07 | environment, scroll to the bottom, and
turn on the plug-in menu management.
| | 03:12 | Once you have that enabled, all of
your site administrator should be able to
| | 03:15 | access that feature inside of their
particular site giving them control over the
| | 03:20 | plug-ins and alleviating
your headaches in the future.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Working with Network-Wide ContentDisplaying posts from network sites on the home page| 00:00 | In many cases when you're running a
WordPresse Multisite environment, you'd love
| | 00:03 | to aggregate the content from all of
your different sites and display them in
| | 00:07 | one central location.
| | 00:09 | In this movie I'm going to show you
how to accomplish this and also how to
| | 00:12 | display that content on the
homepage of your main blog using a plug-in
| | 00:16 | inside of WordPress.
| | 00:17 | The first thing I need to do is install
the plug-in and then network activate it.
| | 00:21 | So let's go over to the
Plugins menu and choose Add New.
| | 00:26 | Once I get to the Install Plugin screen,
I'm simply going to search for the term
| | 00:29 | that I'm looking for.
| | 00:30 | In this case I'm looking for a plug-
in called Multisite Latest Post Widget.
| | 00:36 | When you search for that plug-in, it
should be the first result returned.
| | 00:40 | As of this recording, it's at
version 1.4 and the author is Tristan Min.
| | 00:46 | Let's go ahead and install that plug-in now.
| | 00:49 | I'll hit OK to confirm and it
returns me back and allows me network
| | 00:54 | activate the plug-in.
| | 00:56 | There's nothing more you need
to do to configure the plug-in.
| | 00:58 | It's already up and
running on all of your sites.
| | 01:01 | However, I want to display this
content dynamically all across my sites.
| | 01:05 | So let's go back into My Sites.
| | 01:08 | Let's go to the main domain and
I'm going to choose Dashboard.
| | 01:12 | The first thing I need to do is create a
page that allows me to see all of this content.
| | 01:18 | So let's go down to Pages and I'll hit Add New.
| | 01:21 | Since I'm going to eventually make
this my homepage, I'll go ahead and call
| | 01:25 | this Home for the title.
| | 01:28 | Now you can write whatever you
want inside the Content window here.
| | 01:30 | There's only one piece that is
absolutely necessary to display all of the posts
| | 01:35 | from all of your sites
dynamically inside this page.
| | 01:38 | And that's the short code
and you have to get it right.
| | 01:41 | So let's start off by
typing that short code now.
| | 01:43 | I'll type open bracket, the letter m
| | 01:46 | s l p. That just says Multisite
Latest Post. I'll type a space.
| | 01:53 | Now I have to type the word limit,
then I'll type an equals sign.
| | 02:00 | The number that follows the equals
sign is how many of your latest posts you
| | 02:04 | would like to display on this page.
| | 02:06 | In this case I'm going to
grab the latest five posts.
| | 02:09 | Then I'll create another space and I'll
type style, and that can be equal to a
| | 02:16 | list, or you could style it based on
the CSS div tag if you've created one.
| | 02:21 | In this case I haven't created any
specific CSS for this plug-in, so I'm just
| | 02:25 | going to type out list.
| | 02:27 | Once I've finished typing out the
short code, I have to close it with a right
| | 02:30 | bracket Once I've
created, that I'll click Publish.
| | 02:35 | Now I get a link right up
here that says View Page.
| | 02:38 | I'll open this in a new tab so we can see it.
| | 02:41 | When I open it up you'll see that it
gives me a list of all the recent posts for
| | 02:45 | my blogs, so Welcome to the PhotoBlog.
| | 02:47 | If I hover over that I see that the
link takes me to my main domain and a post
| | 02:51 | that says Welcome to the PhotoBlog.
| | 02:53 | Hanging out in Europe--this
comes from John Smith's blog.
| | 02:56 | My Trip to Italy--that's
another post from John's blog as well.
| | 03:00 | Gifts for Photo Geeks--
| | 03:01 | That comes from the Magazine site.
| | 03:03 | And if I open these up, you'll notice
they're all from those different sites.
| | 03:06 | Let's open up a few and take a look at them now.
| | 03:08 | The Gifts for Photo Geeks post, you see
that's displayed here on the magazine site.
| | 03:15 | My Trip to Italy, that's on John's site,
and then Welcome to the PhotoBlog,
| | 03:20 | although they're using the same
theme, it is on a different site.
| | 03:23 | You'll see here it's posted by me.
| | 03:26 | You'll notice that these are different
based upon the address in the Address Bar.
| | 03:30 | This is my main domain going here and
if I switch to the My Trip to Italy,
| | 03:34 | you'll notice it resides
at johnsmith.mydomain.com.
| | 03:38 | And I'll just close these up
and we can go back to this.
| | 03:44 | Now, this is just a proof of concept
to show you exactly how to display these
| | 03:48 | dynamically on a page.
| | 03:50 | You could take the time and go and style
these via CSS and make them look really cool.
| | 03:54 | At this point in time, this plug-in does
not support the use of featured images though.
| | 03:59 | That's one of the few drawbacks of using it.
| | 04:01 | So you can't display an image along
with the post or the post heading.
| | 04:05 | That's unfortunate, but you can get
around that with some creative CSS styling.
| | 04:09 | Okay, we've got all of our posts
displayed dynamically on a page.
| | 04:13 | Now I want this page to become my
homepage, and I'll do that inside of the
| | 04:18 | WordPress dashboard.
| | 04:19 | So I'll close this up.
| | 04:21 | That takes me back into my editing
screen and I can go down to the Settings.
| | 04:25 | Inside of Settings, I want to
go to the General Settings.
| | 04:30 | If I wanted to change anything about the
site, for instance, the site title or the
| | 04:34 | tagline, and in this case I
do want to change the tagline.
| | 04:38 | So in this case, it's thedomain.com, and I'm
just going to say A Collection of Photo Articles.
| | 04:48 | That way people know exactly what
they're getting when they come to my site, and
| | 04:51 | I'll hit Save Changes.
| | 04:52 | Then I'm going to go over and I'll
choose the Reading section of the Settings.
| | 04:57 | Inside of the Reading section, you have
the ability to change what the Front page
| | 05:00 | displays inside of your WordPress
installation, and if you're an admin of the
| | 05:04 | current site working on, you can
change this for any site inside of your
| | 05:07 | WordPress Multisite.
| | 05:09 | So in this case I don't want to
display the latest posts from this site.
| | 05:13 | I want to display the static page that
contains all of the site posts that I just created.
| | 05:18 | So I'll change static page, Front
page is equal to what? Home. Post page.
| | 05:24 | Well, I haven't created anything for that yet.
| | 05:27 | So, I'll just go and save my changes.
| | 05:30 | So now let's go create a page for the
post on this specific site to live on.
| | 05:34 | I'll go to Pages > Add New. In this case
I'll call it Blog and I'll hit Publish.
| | 05:41 | You don't have to put any content in here;
| | 05:43 | WordPress will dynamically fill in the
content areas when you tell it to use
| | 05:47 | this page for your post.
| | 05:49 | Let's go back to Settings > Reading,
Post page, I'll set that to Blog, and now
| | 05:56 | I'll click Save Changes.
| | 05:58 | Now when I go up and visit my domain,
you'll notice that the homepage is now Home
| | 06:04 | and all of those posts from My
Sites are displayed dynamically here.
| | 06:09 | Now let's go back into
my Dashboard for a second.
| | 06:11 | Once I have that done, I can also add
this to the sidebar if I choose to, so I'm
| | 06:16 | going to go here, to the
Appearance tab, and select Widgets.
| | 06:21 | Inside of the Widget area you'll notice
that I have different sidebar areas that
| | 06:25 | have the ability to put things into.
| | 06:27 | I can find the Multisite Latest Post
Widget and I can add that anywhere I want.
| | 06:32 | In this case, I'm going to
add it to the Page Pages.
| | 06:35 | So I'll drag Multisite
Latest Post here and drop it in.
| | 06:39 | It asks me how many I want
to display. Let's get crazy.
| | 06:42 | Let's do 10, and hit Save.
| | 06:44 | I'll close it and I'll go
back and refresh the page.
| | 06:49 | Of course this does need some CSS
styling applied to it, but you can see here it
| | 06:53 | goes out and grabs the latest 10 posts
from all around the multi-site network.
| | 06:58 | You can take the time and style these
individually to make them look absolutely
| | 07:01 | beautiful, and if you're a
master of CSS, I know you can do it.
| | 07:05 | If you're interested in learning more
about CSS so that you can customize the
| | 07:09 | style and look of your latest post
widgets, be sure to check out all of the
| | 07:12 | great CSS styles available in the lynda.com
Online Library, including CSS for
| | 07:17 | designers and CSS for developers.
| | 07:19 | But in this case, it's just a proof
of concept that I can pull all that
| | 07:22 | information from all of my sites
across my network into one central location.
| | 07:27 | It's very quick and very easy
as long as you use this plug-in.
| | 07:31 | So remember, the plug-in is called
Multisite Latest Post Widget, and you can use
| | 07:35 | it dynamically in your sidebar or
in the content window of WordPress.
| | 07:39 | It's up to you, but it's a great way
to create an aggregator of all of your
| | 07:42 | posts across all of your network sites.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Displaying a list of your networked sites| 00:00 | As a way of getting more publicity
for all of the rest of the sites in your
| | 00:03 | network, you may want to aggregate
all of the sites that you offer into a
| | 00:07 | list and display them dynamically
somewhere inside of your WordPress
| | 00:10 | Multisite installation.
| | 00:12 | Therefore, you're going to need to use a
plug-in called Multisite List Shortcode.
| | 00:17 | And in this case, what we're going to do
is we're going to get all of the sites
| | 00:20 | together and display them
dynamically inside of a list on a page that we
| | 00:24 | create on our main site.
| | 00:26 | So let's go ahead and go up to the
Plugins section on the left-hand side of the
| | 00:30 | navigation and choose Add New.
| | 00:33 | For the Term, we're going to type out
Multisite Site List and hit Search Plugins.
| | 00:40 | It should be the first result returned.
| | 00:43 | It's at version 4.0 as of this recording.
| | 00:45 | It's got a 5-star rating,
meaning it's pretty good.
| | 00:47 | The author is Bit51.com.
| | 00:50 | I'm going to go ahead and install it,
hit OK to confirm it, WordPress unpacks
| | 00:56 | it, downloads it, and installs it.
| | 00:57 | Then I'm going to Network Activate it.
| | 01:01 | Once the plug-in has been network
activated, it's now available on all of my
| | 01:04 | sites, but in this case I only
want to use it on my main site.
| | 01:09 | So let's go to the main
site and visit the Dashboard.
| | 01:12 | Once I'm inside the Dashboard, I can go
down into the Settings and down at the
| | 01:16 | bottom of the Settings, you should see a
new option called Multi-site Site List.
| | 01:21 | I'll click on that and that takes me
to the Site List Shortcode Options. And
| | 01:25 | you'll notice at the top
| | 01:26 | it gives you some instructions, and it
tells you to place a check mark next to
| | 01:30 | the sites below that you
wish to exclude from the list.
| | 01:33 | Therefore if you have something like a
development site or a testing site, you
| | 01:37 | can exclude that from the
list and nobody will see it.
| | 01:39 | You can also put the short code that
they give you here into any post or page
| | 01:44 | where you want the list to appear.
| | 01:46 | And as you can see the short code is kind
of hidden in this description right here.
| | 01:50 | What you'll need to do here is simply take this,
select it, and copy it to your clipboard.
| | 01:56 | Once you have that short code copied,
you're ready to put it in a post or a page.
| | 02:00 | Your List Options are below.
| | 02:02 | You can sort Alphabetically or by Site
Creation Date; either one is up to you.
| | 02:06 | You can also choose to open the
links in a New Window or the Same Window.
| | 02:11 | In this case, I'm just going to
choose to open them in a new window.
| | 02:14 | I won't exclude anything from the list
because I want to give as much publicity
| | 02:17 | as possible to all of the sites in my network.
| | 02:20 | So let's click Save. Once the options are saved,
I'm ready to put them into a post or a page.
| | 02:26 | In this case, I'll put it in the Pages,
I'll choose Add New and I'll change the
| | 02:31 | title of this to Our Sites.
| | 02:35 | You can change this to My Network, Our
Websites, whatever you wanted to put here.
| | 02:39 | Now you can add some content above that
if you want to by typing it in. In this
| | 02:44 | case I'm just going to paste in the short code.
| | 02:47 | Once I've pasted in the
short code, I can publish it.
| | 02:51 | Now once I publish the page I can open
it up to view it. And as you can see here,
| | 02:57 | I get the heading of my page, Our
Sites, and then underneath, a list.
| | 03:02 | You can style as this list via CSS if
you want to or even go in and edit the PHP
| | 03:06 | of the plug-in to display
some sort of featured image.
| | 03:09 | If I click one of these links, you'll
notice it automatically opens a new tab
| | 03:13 | with the Photo Blog Magazine. For the
Tutorials page, if I click that, it opens
| | 03:18 | up the Tutorials page.
| | 03:21 | Pretty quick and pretty easy.
| | 03:23 | If I close this up I can go back into this site.
| | 03:26 | Let's go and visit the site, and
you'll notice up here at the top in my
| | 03:31 | navigation, because the theme
automatically includes all of the pages in the
| | 03:34 | navigation, I now have a link
on the homepage to Our Sites.
| | 03:39 | So if I click that, it takes me
directly to that list, and again you can
| | 03:43 | customize this page in any way
you see fit. Totally up to you.
| | 03:47 | Hopefully by now you see how beneficial
it is to include an aggregate of all of
| | 03:51 | your sites in one central location and
also how easy it can be by utilizing the
| | 03:57 | Multisite Site List Shortcode plug-in.
| | 04:00 | So just simply find that plug-in,
network activate it, and then you can include
| | 04:04 | this post or this page anywhere inside
of your WordPress Multisite installation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Broadcasting news across all sites| 00:00 | There may came a time when you're
working inside of WordPress Multisite and
| | 00:03 | you want to create a post or a page
that you want to broadcast across all of
| | 00:07 | your network sites.
| | 00:08 | This can prove to be pretty difficult
unless you want to spend your day copying
| | 00:11 | and pasting all over the place.
| | 00:13 | Luckily, in WordPress,
there's a plug-in for that.
| | 00:17 | That's right, there's almost always
a plug-in for everything and in this
| | 00:20 | case it's no different.
| | 00:21 | So we're going to be using a plug-in
called ThreeWP Broadcast to create a post
| | 00:27 | that goes across all of the
network sites in our blog.
| | 00:30 | First things first, we have to be
logged in as network administrator, and then
| | 00:34 | we have to add that plug-in into the dashboard.
| | 00:37 | So let's come over to the
Plugins menu and choose Add New.
| | 00:41 | Inside of Plug-ins I'm just going
to search for ThreeWP Broadcast.
| | 00:46 | Once we have typed out ThreeWP
Broadcast, we'll hit Search Plugins.
| | 00:52 | More than likely it's going to be
the only result returned to you, but if
| | 00:55 | not, you're looking for ThreeWP Broadcast
Version 1.4, and it's developed by Edward Hevlund.
| | 01:01 | I'll go ahead and click Install Now.
| | 01:03 | When I click Install, it asks
me to confirm. I'll hit OK.
| | 01:07 | It's going to download,
unpack, and install the plug-in.
| | 01:10 | I'll hit Network Activate.
| | 01:12 | The plug-in is now live across my network.
| | 01:14 | And as the super admin, I can go over to
the Settings section and find Broadcast.
| | 01:21 | Inside of the Broadcast settings, I
have things like Broadcast access role.
| | 01:26 | This is the default role that is
required to use the Broadcast function at all.
| | 01:31 | You can say that Site admins are able
to do this, a regular Admin, an Editor,
| | 01:36 | Author, Contributor or Subscriber.
| | 01:38 | In this case I think I'll
stick with the Site admin.
| | 01:41 | That's me--the super admin in other words.
| | 01:44 | You want to be able to link to access roles.
| | 01:46 | Again, in this plug-in, what you'll
have to do is link posts to one another.
| | 01:51 | So do you want people to be able to
link their post, your post et, cetera?
| | 01:54 | Again, I'm leaving most of these
on as the Site administrator because
| | 01:58 | broadcasting across all
networks is a serious deal.
| | 02:02 | So in this case, I think I'll
leave all of these on their default.
| | 02:05 | If you do change any of these, simply go
down to the bottom and click Save Options.
| | 02:10 | Once you do, all those roles are changed.
| | 02:12 | Other things that you might want to look
at inside of the settings... Required list.
| | 02:17 | The Required list specifies which blogs
users with write access will broadcast to.
| | 02:23 | This is a required list and it will
force users to broadcast to all of the
| | 02:27 | blogs that you specify.
| | 02:28 | If you don't want to use the
Required list, don't check the box.
| | 02:32 | In this case, I do want to determine
exactly where people are allowed to broadcast to.
| | 02:38 | So I'll say Always use the required
list, and I want them to broadcast to the
| | 02:43 | PhotoBlog, the Tutorials
page, and John's Blog as well.
| | 02:48 | Once we've got those
options set, we'll click Save.
| | 02:51 | Now let's move over to the Blacklist section.
| | 02:55 | These are the domains that I don't
want to allow people to broadcast to.
| | 02:59 | In this case, the only one I want to restrict
is the main domain, so I'll hit Save Options.
| | 03:05 | You can also go into your Activity Monitor.
| | 03:07 | In the Activity Monitor, you can be
told via email when a user has used the
| | 03:12 | Broadcasts function, when someone
unlinks their post from your original post,
| | 03:16 | or if a group changes.
| | 03:18 | In this case I won't be notified when
someone uses the Broadcasts function and
| | 03:23 | also when someone unlinks.
| | 03:24 | I'm not so much concerned about groups
because I have required them to use the
| | 03:28 | List function each and every time.
| | 03:30 | I'll hit Save Changes and I'm ready to go.
| | 03:33 | Now let's go over to My Sites.
| | 03:35 | I'll visit the main site and create a new post.
| | 03:39 | I'll call this post Sitewide News Update.
| | 03:43 | I'm going to give it some content, but
first let's jump over to a little fun
| | 03:48 | web site, Tunaipsum.com.
| | 03:52 | This is where you can generate some
seriously cool lorem ipsum text based
| | 03:55 | upon fish. Pretty cool.
| | 03:58 | Give me five paragraphs of tuna ipsum.
| | 04:01 | As you can see, it generates
a lot of stuff. Pretty fishy.
| | 04:04 | I'll just copy all this,
close it up and paste it in.
| | 04:11 | It's great for filler content.
| | 04:13 | Now once I have that in there, I can
go down to the bottom right corner to
| | 04:17 | the Broadcast section.
| | 04:19 | I get to choose whether or not
to link this post to its children.
| | 04:21 | The children are all of the posts
that are made on other sites besides this
| | 04:25 | site, meaning every time I update this
post on the main site do the children get
| | 04:30 | updated. Totally up to you.
| | 04:32 | You can also choose whether or
not to broadcast the categories.
| | 04:35 | If you broadcast the categories, you
have to make sure that the categories
| | 04:39 | are exactly the same on all of the other sites;
otherwise it gets posted as uncategorized.
| | 04:45 | In this case I'm not using any
categories. Just doing proof of concept, so I
| | 04:48 | don't have to worry about that.
| | 04:49 | I can also choose to create
categories automatically, which means whatever
| | 04:53 | category I specify here is
automatically created on all the other blogs.
| | 04:57 | Let's try that out.
| | 04:57 | I'll come back up here
and I'll add a new category.
| | 05:02 | In this case I'll type out News. Then
I'll hit Add Category, scroll back down, and
| | 05:09 | I'll Create categories automatically.
| | 05:11 | I can also choose to Broadcast
tags or Create tags automatically.
| | 05:16 | Let's create them, and I'll come up
here and creates some Tags: news, updates,
| | 05:25 | since I talked about fish, I'll type
in fish. Then I'll hit Add. Scroll down.
| | 05:32 | You'll notice I could
also Broadcast custom fields.
| | 05:34 | We're not using any of those.
| | 05:35 | This is just a standard post,
so I won't worry about it.
| | 05:38 | You'll also noticed that Broadcast to
is all grayed out. That's because as the
| | 05:42 | site administrator I went in and
determined that they have to broadcast to these
| | 05:45 | site each and every time.
They don't have an option.
| | 05:48 | I can also set a featured image, but in
this case I'm not to worry about that.
| | 05:52 | Let's go up and let's click the Publish button.
| | 05:58 | Once I click Publish, that post is now live.
| | 06:00 | If I go and visit my site, you'll
see Sitewide News Update appears on the
| | 06:06 | homepage and since I have my aggregate on
this homepage, it's all of the sites together.
| | 06:12 | Let's check them out individually.
| | 06:14 | I'll open up John Smith's blog, the
magazine blog, and the tutorials blog.
| | 06:22 | So there's John Smith's blog, Sitewide
News Update. Everything is there, all
| | 06:28 | my tuna ipsum text.
| | 06:30 | Sitewide News Update here, same
deal. And Sitewide News Update on the
| | 06:36 | tutorials blog as well.
| | 06:37 | Let's close these back up and
move back into my Dashboard.
| | 06:44 | If at any time I want to make changes, I can
go into the Settings and choose Broadcast.
| | 06:50 | Inside of the Broadcast, I have the
ability to read up, in case I need a refresher
| | 06:54 | on how to use Broadcast, and I can also
go into the ThreeWP Broadcast groups.
| | 06:59 | Since I determined that admins can
create groups, they can then create group
| | 07:03 | names and then specify
what blogs go into each group.
| | 07:07 | However, I overwrote this preference
when I said that I forced them to use
| | 07:11 | those listed blogs that I chose in the site
admin, so this is kind of pointless right now.
| | 07:16 | Let's go back up to My Sites >
Network Admin and choose Dashboard.
| | 07:20 | Inside of the Dashboard, if I want to
make any changes, go back to Settings,
| | 07:24 | choose Broadcast again.
| | 07:26 | Inside of the Broadcast section, I can
change any of these roles that I want to.
| | 07:29 | So if I don't like the fact that I've
required them to post to all of those blogs,
| | 07:33 | I can go back to the
Required list and uncheck this box.
| | 07:37 | Hit Save Options, and now the
required list is optional.
| | 07:41 | So theoretically, I could go on to the
tutorials blog, create a post, and only
| | 07:45 | broadcast it to the magazine or John's
blog, or I can go on to John's blog
| | 07:50 | and only broadcast to the
magazine site. Totally up to me.
| | 07:53 | I think that gives you a little bit
more control, but if you want to lock
| | 07:56 | everything down, by all means, require the list.
| | 08:00 | Now that we see how easy it is to
broadcast a news update or even a post of any
| | 08:04 | kind across all of your WordPress
Multisite installations, I hope that you'll
| | 08:08 | use this to create some
uniformity across all spaces.
| | 08:11 | If you want more information on how
to use the ThreeWP Broadcast plug-in, my
| | 08:15 | suggestion would be to read the
developer's web site. You can find that inside
| | 08:19 | the details section when
you're installing the plug-in.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Gathering and using comments network-wide| 00:00 | Another great way to add a layer of
social interactivity to your WordPress
| | 00:04 | Multisite installation is by
aggregating comments that are happening all
| | 00:07 | across your networked sites.
| | 00:09 | Now, you can do this manually through
PHP, but that could take a lot of time.
| | 00:13 | So why not I just use a plug-in?
| | 00:15 | That's exactly what I'm
going to do in this movie.
| | 00:17 | I'll show you how to aggregate comments
sitewide into one centralized location
| | 00:22 | utilizing an awesome plug-in
from the wpmudev.org web site.
| | 00:27 | The first thing you'll need to do is go over
to wpmudev.org and set up a brand new account.
| | 00:33 | It's a premium site, so it's going to
cost a little bit of money, but for the
| | 00:36 | amount of plug-ins you get, its well worth it.
| | 00:38 | Once you've created your new account,
you're simply going to look for plug-in
| | 00:42 | called Recent Global Comments.
| | 00:45 | Once you find that plug-in,
go ahead and install it.
| | 00:47 | I'll show you where in just a second.
| | 00:49 | Let's go over to the
Plugins > Installed Plugins.
| | 00:52 | Alongside of that plug-in, you'll
also need two other plug-ins for it
| | 00:56 | to function correctly.
| | 00:57 | One is called Avatars For Multisite and
the other is called Comment Indexer, and
| | 01:02 | if I scroll down you'll see here's
the Recent Global Comments Widget.
| | 01:06 | Once all three of those are installed,
you're ready to start aggregating
| | 01:09 | comments from across your sites.
| | 01:11 | Let's take a look at how we can use that.
| | 01:12 | I'll go up to My Sites, go down to
the main domain, choose Dashboard.
| | 01:18 | Once I get to the Dashboard, you'll notice that
in the Appearance section, I can go to Widgets.
| | 01:24 | Once I'm inside of the Widgets, I
simply look for Recent Global Comments over
| | 01:27 | here on the left and I drag it to
the area where I want those to appear.
| | 01:31 | In this case, I'll move it to Page Pages.
| | 01:37 | I'll scroll down and you can
see that I can configure a Title--
| | 01:39 | In this case I called it What Folks
are Talking About--the number of comments
| | 01:43 | that I show, the content characters--
that's how many characters of the comment
| | 01:47 | are displayed--whether or not want to
show the avatar of the person, and how big
| | 01:51 | the avatar is going to be.
| | 01:52 | In this case, I think I'll shrink it
down to 16 pixels to make it a little bit
| | 01:56 | more compact, then I'll click Save.
| | 01:59 | It should be noted that only comments
that are created after you activate these
| | 02:03 | plug-ins will be indexed.
| | 02:04 | It cannot index older comments.
| | 02:06 | So if this is something that's really
important to you, you should have this
| | 02:09 | installed as one of your first plug-
ins inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | 02:12 | It'll just make it easier on you.
| | 02:14 | Now, once I have that configured, I
can go up and I can visit my site.
| | 02:19 | Inside of my site, once I get to a
page like you see here, I can see What
| | 02:24 | Folks are Talking About!
| | 02:25 | As you can see, I've only got one
comment that's been posted since I
| | 02:28 | activated those plug-ins.
| | 02:29 | There are a lot more comments on my site,
but only this one gets indexed because
| | 02:33 | it was posted after I activated the plug-in.
| | 02:36 | If I choose to hit the More link right
here, it takes me to that post on that
| | 02:40 | site and I can scroll down and
view that comment. Pretty cool!
| | 02:45 | Now, what if I wanted to enable sitewide
comments on every single one of my sites?
| | 02:49 | That's kind of a different story because
by default this plug-in only allows you
| | 02:53 | to add that Recent Comments
widget to your main web site.
| | 02:57 | In order to change that, you have
to go into the PHP of the plug-in.
| | 03:01 | So I'll jump over into my code editing
application for a minute, and inside of
| | 03:05 | your WordPress installation you'll need
to find the wp-content folder > plug-ins
| | 03:13 | and then find the recent
global comments widget folder.
| | 03:17 | Inside of recent global comments widget,
find recent-global-comments-widget.php.
| | 03:24 | Once you find that, you're going to
scroll down until you find line 34 and
| | 03:28 | this is where it tells you that Recent
Global Comments Widget is only on the main blog.
| | 03:33 | When this value is set to yes, that means
it's only displaying on that one single blog.
| | 03:38 | You can change it to no, as it says here.
| | 03:41 | Once you say no, you've enabled that
widget on all of your sites. Let's do that now.
| | 03:47 | Once you type in no, save it,
and it should be ready to go.
| | 03:51 | Let's go back into my WordPress installation.
| | 03:54 | I'll close up this site and
I'll move over into My Sites.
| | 03:58 | Let's go to the Tutorials
blog. Go to the Dashboard.
| | 04:02 | Once I'm in the Tutorials blog,
I go to the Appearance > Widgets.
| | 04:07 | Inside of the Widget area I
have Recent Global Comments.
| | 04:11 | Let's add this to Single Post Pages.
| | 04:15 | Here, I can call it whatever I want.
| | 04:17 | I'll call it Join the Conversation this time.
| | 04:21 | Number of comments, I'll do 3.
| | 04:25 | Content Characters, 50 is fine.
| | 04:26 | Do I want to show Avatars? Absolutely.
| | 04:31 | Avatar Size, let's change this one
to 32 pixels. Then I'll choose Save.
| | 04:36 | Once that saved, I'll go visit the site.
| | 04:40 | Once I'm on the site, I need to go and
find a single post, I'll choose this one here.
| | 04:46 | On the single post page, Join the
Conversation. There is the comment and a link
| | 04:51 | to it, as well as my avatar in
32 pixel format. Pretty cool!
| | 04:56 | Now let's go ahead and close this up
and I can go back to each one of my
| | 05:00 | individual sites now and customize the
way all of the comments are displayed
| | 05:04 | dynamically in the sidebar.
| | 05:06 | It's totally up to you, but it's a
great way to add that little something extra
| | 05:10 | or a social aspect to your blog or web site.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and using global tags and categories| 00:00 | One of the things that can be sort of
confusing when you're working inside of
| | 00:03 | WordPress Multisite is how to get
things like categories and tags to propagate
| | 00:08 | across all of your sites inside of WordPress.
| | 00:10 | Technically, there's no way to make all
of those sync together, but you can have
| | 00:15 | them created uniformly across all of
your sites using a plug-in, and luckily I
| | 00:20 | found a great one to do it.
| | 00:22 | Take a look at this plug-in
here called New Blog Templates.
| | 00:25 | It touts itself as a comprehensive
new blog default templating plug-in.
| | 00:30 | Basically, it allows you to go through
and say hey, duplicate the content, the
| | 00:33 | theme, the categories, the tags,
everything from this site, and make that the new
| | 00:38 | default going forward on all of my sites.
| | 00:41 | This means that each time you create a
new blog inside of WordPress Multisite, it
| | 00:44 | adopts all of these settings. It's pretty slick.
| | 00:47 | You will have to pay for this
plug-in, as it's a premium plug-in.
| | 00:51 | You can get it from wpmudev.org.
| | 00:54 | Once you've got that plug-in in place
and you download it, simply install it
| | 00:58 | like you would any other plug-in. Then,
once you get into your WordPress Admin
| | 01:02 | screen logged in as the Network
Administrator, go to your Settings.
| | 01:06 | Inside of your Settings
section, find Blog Templates.
| | 01:11 | Inside of the Blog Templates, you'll
get to name your template, and then you
| | 01:14 | have to determine the blog ID.
| | 01:16 | Now in this case, I just use the
base URL, the first site I started with.
| | 01:21 | That's always going to be Blog ID number 1.
| | 01:24 | If you're basing this template off
any other site inside of your WordPress
| | 01:27 | Multisite installation,
you'll have to find that blog ID.
| | 01:30 | The easiest way to do that is to
download a plug-in called WP Show IDs.
| | 01:35 | Now it's going to ask you, what
would you like to copy to the new blog?
| | 01:39 | In most cases, I don't necessarily
need to copy the WordPress settings, posts
| | 01:43 | or pages, or even the users or files,
but if you want to duplicate that
| | 01:47 | information you can do that.
| | 01:49 | In this case, I'm simply going to
copy over Categories, Tags, and Links.
| | 01:54 | That means inside of my main
WordPress installation any categories, tags, or
| | 01:58 | links that I've created will now
propagate across all new sites.
| | 02:02 | It doesn't go back and add these to
the old sites you've created though.
| | 02:05 | So if you've been on a site creation
spree, it's not going to help you that much,
| | 02:10 | but if you're just starting
out it's a great way to do it.
| | 02:13 | Once I do that, I'll add a name, My
Template, and I'll click Create Blog Template
| | 02:20 | and now that's in place.
| | 02:22 | It's telling you here that your
template is called My Template.
| | 02:25 | It's also based upon the main domain.
| | 02:28 | You can make that a default or delete it.
| | 02:30 | In this case, I'll make it a default.
| | 02:33 | Now theoretically any new blog I
creates should have the categories, tags, and
| | 02:36 | links that I have set up in that blog.
| | 02:39 | Let's go ahead and create a new blog.
| | 02:40 | I'll move up to the top, go to My Sites,
navigate to the Network Admin, and choose Sites.
| | 02:47 | I click Add New.
| | 02:50 | You'll notice on the Add New screen I
have a new section for My Template. I'll select
| | 02:55 | that and in this case, I'll just do this
as mutest. The Site Title is going to be
| | 03:01 | A test, and I'll just put in an
Admin Email. Then I'll hit Add Site.
| | 03:10 | Once I hit Add Site, I can go in and
edit the site or simply visit the dashboard.
| | 03:17 | Let's open up the Dashboard and visit the site.
| | 03:20 | You'll notice here in the Dashboard
it tells me, by default now I have 5
| | 03:25 | Categories and 25 Tags.
| | 03:27 | If you remember from when you first
installed WordPress, you had 1 category and no tags.
| | 03:32 | So now in my Categories, I have Events,
News, Photos, Quotes, and Tutorials--
| | 03:39 | all of the categories that were
present inside of my main WordPress
| | 03:41 | installation. Let's go back.
| | 03:44 | In my Tags, I now have stuff like
awesome, cool, coolness, HDR, jpegs, lynda,
| | 03:54 | NEF, photos. All of these are tags
that I used in previous posts in that main
| | 03:59 | WordPress installation and now every
time I create a new web site or blog inside
| | 04:03 | of WordPress Multisite, it automatically
adopts these tags and the categories and
| | 04:08 | also any links that I would have had
created as well, making it easy to sync
| | 04:12 | your blog rolls across
all of your network sites.
| | 04:15 | Hopefully, now you see how easy it is to
extend the WordPress experience using a
| | 04:18 | plug-in like this and how useful it can
be to auto-generate your categories and
| | 04:23 | tags sitewide here
inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | 04:26 | It's going to save you a lot of time
in creating this content yourself and
| | 04:29 | hopefully you can use this to
better your WordPress experience.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring network plug-ins| 00:00 | If you've been following along in this
series, you know that one of the best
| | 00:03 | ways to extend your experience here
inside of WordPress is to use plug-ins.
| | 00:08 | And I'm a big fan of plug-ins.
| | 00:09 | I have been using them several
times throughout this series.
| | 00:12 | In this movie, I am going to be taking
you through some of my favorite plug-ins
| | 00:15 | for WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:17 | These plug-ins aren't necessarily
WordPress Multisite specific, but they make
| | 00:21 | life inside of a Multisite
environment that much easier.
| | 00:23 | Let's go ahead and take a
look at the first one now.
| | 00:26 | The first one is called W3 Total Cache.
| | 00:30 | This is a plug-in that basically
increases the performance of your site.
| | 00:33 | It uses various methods of caching,
including browser caching, page, object,
| | 00:37 | database, and minify as well.
| | 00:40 | All of these combine to make
your site load a whole lot faster.
| | 00:44 | If you deploy this plug-in network-wide,
your WordPress Multisite installation
| | 00:48 | is going to be screaming fast.
| | 00:50 | Next up on the list is the User Role Editor.
| | 00:53 | This is a great plug-in to give users
granular control inside of WordPress
| | 00:57 | Multisite, or any WordPress
installation for that matter.
| | 01:01 | Basically, what this site allows you to
do is go in and tweak the capabilities
| | 01:05 | for each one of the default
roles inside of WordPress.
| | 01:07 | So if you want your editors to be able to
switch themes, you can give them that capability.
| | 01:11 | It's an awesome plug-in.
| | 01:14 | Number three is something
called New Blog Defaults.
| | 01:17 | This plug-in is specific to WordPress
Multisite, and it gives you a whole range
| | 01:20 | of settings that you can define as the
defaults for any new blog that's created
| | 01:24 | inside of your WordPress Multisite environment.
| | 01:26 | This is a great plug-in for
helping your new sites get off the ground
| | 01:29 | quickly and easily.
| | 01:31 | The next plug-in on list is
called EasyTube for Youtube and Vimeo.
| | 01:35 | Basically what this allows you to do is
easily embed YouTube, Google, and Vimeo
| | 01:39 | videos inside of your
WordPress post utilizing a short code.
| | 01:42 | I will show you a live
example of that in just a second.
| | 01:45 | And finally, the WordPress
MU Domain Mapping plug-in.
| | 01:49 | This is a great plug-in to allow you
to run external sites from within your
| | 01:53 | WordPress Multisite installation.
| | 01:55 | If you want more information about
Domain Mapping, be sure to check out Chapter
| | 01:58 | 6 of this series, where I
cover it in depth, step-by-step.
| | 02:02 | Let's go back into my Dashboard and
start actually using some of these awesome
| | 02:05 | plug-ins, the first of which is W3 Total Cache.
| | 02:09 | One quirky thing about W3 Total Cache:
| | 02:12 | it cannot be network activated.
| | 02:14 | So you'll have to go in and individually
activate it on each site inside your network.
| | 02:18 | I will navigate to My Sites and I'll
choose the default blog and go to the Dashboard.
| | 02:23 | I've already got W3 Total Cache
installed and activated on this particular blog.
| | 02:28 | Once I have that activated, I
should see a Performance Tab down here at
| | 02:32 | the bottom of the menu.
| | 02:33 | Here, I can set things like General
Settings, Page Caching, Minifying my code,
| | 02:38 | Database Caching, Object Caching, and many more.
| | 02:42 | My suggestion to you is to take the
time and go through and set up each one of
| | 02:45 | those individually, for each one of your sites.
| | 02:48 | The more you tweak those settings, the
more likely you are to have a screaming
| | 02:51 | fast WordPress installation. It's very cool.
| | 02:54 | Now, let's go take a look
at the User Role Editor.
| | 02:57 | From here, all I have to do is go to the
Users Tab and click on User Role Editor.
| | 03:02 | Inside of the User Role Editor, I can
make changes to each individual role
| | 03:06 | inside of WordPress.
| | 03:08 | If I choose the dropdown here, I get
to pick which role I am working with.
| | 03:12 | So if I trust my Authors enough, I can
give them the capability to do things
| | 03:16 | that most normal authors
inside of WordPress couldn't do.
| | 03:18 | For instance, let's say I trust
them enough to activate plug-ins.
| | 03:22 | I can click Install Plugins, or maybe I
even want them to be able to switch themes.
| | 03:27 | I'll choose switch themes. And then finally,
let's give them the ability to edit other posts.
| | 03:33 | Once I do that, I will scroll
down, and I will click Update.
| | 03:36 | It will warn me that I'm about to
make this update. I'll click OK.
| | 03:41 | Once I've made that change, all authors
inside of this particular site have the
| | 03:46 | ability to install plug-ins, switch
themes, and edit other people's posts.
| | 03:51 | That's pretty powerful.
| | 03:53 | If I do this across all of my sites, as
you see this check box here, that means
| | 03:57 | I give that capability to every author inside of
my WordPress Multisite network. That's awesome!
| | 04:02 | I don't have to go in and
tweak each individual one.
| | 04:05 | Now I have a granular level of control
over each individual capability of all
| | 04:09 | the people that are assigned to the different
blogs and sites in my network. That's fantastic!
| | 04:14 | Now, let's take a look at New Blog Defaults.
| | 04:17 | For this, I will have to go back to
My Sites > Network Admin > Dashboard.
| | 04:22 | Inside of the Settings panel on the left-hand
side, I have a new tab called New Blog Defaults.
| | 04:28 | When I click on it, you are going to
notice that this looks a whole lot like the
| | 04:31 | standard WordPress settings page.
| | 04:32 | As a matter of fact, it's
the exact same information.
| | 04:36 | It's just defining it site-wide.
| | 04:38 | So I can define a new Blog Title for
each one of my new blogs that's created.
| | 04:42 | Don't worry about overwriting existing blogs.
| | 04:44 | This plug-in has nothing
to do with that content.
| | 04:47 | This plug-in merely applies itself
to all of the blogs that are created
| | 04:50 | after you set it up.
| | 04:52 | So I can create a new Blog Title, a new Tagline.
| | 04:56 | I could set its Timezone
information, Time Format.
| | 04:58 | I could also determine the Writing
Settings, like how big the post box is or
| | 05:03 | whether or not they have emoticons.
| | 05:05 | I can turn on things like Remote
Publishing, control how many blog posts are
| | 05:09 | shown on their homepage.
| | 05:10 | I can set up all of the
comments settings from here as well.
| | 05:14 | Towards the bottom, I have things
like Avatar Control, Privacy Settings,
| | 05:19 | Customizing the Permalink Structure.
| | 05:21 | This is my favorite because it saves me
so much time from having to go into each
| | 05:25 | individual site and
change its Permalink Structure.
| | 05:27 | I'm a big fan of the Day
and name Permalink Structure.
| | 05:30 | Therefore, I have that selected.
| | 05:32 | If I wanted to change that to
something else or even determine my own Custom
| | 05:36 | Structure, I can do that.
| | 05:38 | Another great thing is I can define a
Category base and a Tag base as well.
| | 05:42 | So if you want your categories to be
stories instead of categories, you can
| | 05:46 | change it here. Or if you want your tag
base to be keywords instead of tags, you
| | 05:51 | could type that in there.
| | 05:52 | The Media Settings, how big
are the default thumbnails?
| | 05:55 | How big are the medium, the
large ones? All up to you.
| | 05:59 | Finally, some of the Bonus Settings
that you get. The From Email--when someone
| | 06:03 | gets an email from WordPress like the
automated messages that are sent to them
| | 06:07 | when a new site is registered,
where does that email originate from?
| | 06:10 | The From Email name.
| | 06:11 | This could be your name or
your company's name. Your choice.
| | 06:14 | Delete the Standard WordPress
Blogroll Links? Yes please.
| | 06:18 | Those links are so generic and they
don't have anything to do with what I'm
| | 06:22 | doing most of the time.
| | 06:23 | So I love getting rid of those.
| | 06:24 | I can also determine a Default Link Category
which overwrites that generic term Blogroll.
| | 06:31 | Finally, I can define a Default Category.
| | 06:33 | You should note here that you'll need
to have this category already set up so
| | 06:37 | that it propagates throughout the site.
| | 06:39 | You can also define additional
categories that are automatically added to sites.
| | 06:43 | You can also delete the initial
comment, close comments on the Hello World
| | 06:47 | post, close comments on the About Page,
which I always do, and make a first post
| | 06:52 | draft out of Hello World.
| | 06:55 | Once you have all of these settings set
up the way you like them, hit Save Changes.
| | 07:00 | Now, each and every time you create
a new site here inside of WordPress
| | 07:03 | Multisite, it adopts all of those settings.
| | 07:06 | Now, let's take a look at EasyTube.
| | 07:08 | This is the fun one.
| | 07:09 | Let's go to My Sites.
| | 07:10 | I will go to the default
domain and choose New Post.
| | 07:15 | Inside of the New Post window, I am
going to call this A Sample Video.
| | 07:20 | Then all I have to do is type out a short code.
| | 07:22 | You will notice the short code is pretty simple.
| | 07:24 | It's open bracket, the word YouTube, a
colon, the full youtube URL, not just the
| | 07:30 | shortened URL and then after that,
you can determine the width and height.
| | 07:35 | So in this case, I've got this
YouTube video from the lynda.com channel.
| | 07:39 | It's 400 pixels wide and 233 pixels tall.
| | 07:43 | I will go ahead and click Publish.
| | 07:46 | Once I click Publish, I can view my post.
| | 07:50 | Once I look at the post,
there it is, the lynda.com series
| | 07:54 | latest Deke's Techniques.
| | 07:55 | Just click Play and you're off and running.
| | 07:58 | So hopefully now you have a better
understanding of the different types of
| | 08:01 | plug-ins that are available to you.
| | 08:03 | You can use all of them
inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | 08:06 | It's a great way to extend the user
experience as well as the admin experience
| | 08:10 | in any installation of WordPress.
| | 08:12 | So take some time, check out these plug-ins,
but also go into the repository
| | 08:16 | and just do some searching on your own.
| | 08:17 | You will be glad you did.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Working with Multiple DomainsIntroducing domain mapping| 00:00 | There may come a time as you're using
WordPress Multisite that you want to
| | 00:03 | use an external domain on one of your
existing sites inside of the WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:08 | Perhaps this site has grown beyond
being a subdomain inside of your main
| | 00:12 | installation, and it needs
its own domain for you to use.
| | 00:16 | You don't necessarily want to break
this site outside of your WordPress
| | 00:20 | Multisite installation though,
because having it inside that network gives
| | 00:24 | you the security of knowing that you
can update it and maintain it from within
| | 00:27 | that one environment.
| | 00:28 | In this movie, we're going to be
talking about Domain Mapping and exactly what
| | 00:32 | that is and how it can help you.
| | 00:33 | Domain Mapping means that you're
telling your web server what domains you want
| | 00:37 | WordPress to answer to, and which site
you want the visitor to see when they
| | 00:41 | request that domain.
| | 00:43 | This process is a lot like domain
forwarding or cloaking the URL of a domain.
| | 00:47 | However, instead of the site being at
something.yourdomain.com, it can actually
| | 00:53 | live at someotherdomain.com.
| | 00:56 | So let's take a look here.
| | 00:58 | If you look in my Address Bar, this is
my main domain, and if I create any sites
| | 01:02 | inside of my WordPress Multisite
installation, they're always based off of this
| | 01:06 | particular domain. So they'd
be something.thisdomain.com.
| | 01:10 | For instance, I've created the tutorial blog.
| | 01:13 | If I visit that site and we take a look
inside of the Address Bar, you'll notice
| | 01:19 | that the URL is tutorial.thisdomain.com.
| | 01:23 | What if I wanted the tutorial blog to be
its own site with its own independent URL?
| | 01:28 | That's what Domain Mapping does.
| | 01:29 | It actually allows this site to be
called when I type in something completely
| | 01:34 | different into that address field.
| | 01:35 | It's pretty cool, and we can do
this with a little magic behind the
| | 01:39 | scenes inside of our cPanel and in our DNS
records, as well as using a WordPress plug-in.
| | 01:45 | So, if you've got a site that's sort of
outgrown the use of the network, but you
| | 01:49 | still want to keep it "in-house",
Domain Mapping is exactly what you need to do,
| | 01:55 | and that's what we'll be covering in Chapter 6.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using parked or add-on domains| 00:00 | Before we get started with actually
mapping a domain inside of WordPress
| | 00:04 | Multisite, we have to do a little
behind-the-scenes magic in our cPanel.
| | 00:08 | So I've logged into my cPanel
installation here, and you can access that usually
| | 00:12 | by going to yourdomain.com/cPanel or
if your host gave you a proprietary URL,
| | 00:17 | you can access that that way as well.
| | 00:19 | Once you're logged into your cPanel,
you'll need to scroll down to the Domain
| | 00:23 | section, because there are two
things you need to be aware of.
| | 00:26 | You need to know whether or not you need
to use an add-on versus a parked domain
| | 00:31 | inside of your cPanel, and there are a
couple of different reasons why you would
| | 00:34 | use one versus the other.
| | 00:36 | So let's take a look at those now.
| | 00:38 | The first thing I'll talk
about is Parked Domains.
| | 00:41 | Usually, inside of a cPanel, you can
park a domain and that domain is actually
| | 00:45 | going to point to the root
folder of your installation.
| | 00:49 | However, if you are utilizing WordPress
inside of something other than your root
| | 00:53 | directory as I'm doing, you cannot use
Parked Domains in order to map a domain
| | 00:59 | inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | 01:01 | So what you'll have to do is
use an add-on domain for that.
| | 01:04 | If your WordPress installation does
live inside of the Root directory, however,
| | 01:08 | you can use a parked domain, because
all you have to do here is type in the
| | 01:11 | domain name and hit Add Domain.
| | 01:13 | It will automatically point
you to the correct document root.
| | 01:17 | So for instance here, if I have a
domain like mydomain.com, and then I hit Add
| | 01:24 | Domain, it would automatically add it
to this list, the domain root would be
| | 01:28 | here, and that should refer to the
root directory of my domain where my
| | 01:32 | WordPress installation is.
| | 01:34 | If your WordPress files live anywhere
outside of the directory listed here, you
| | 01:38 | need to remove that parked domain,
and go do an add-on domain, and in most
| | 01:43 | cases, you're going to be
able to use the parked domain.
| | 01:46 | But in my case, I'm using a
domain that's not the primary domain.
| | 01:49 | Therefore, it lives in its own
directory, outside of the domain root.
| | 01:54 | So I need to go and use an add-on domain.
| | 01:57 | Let's go take a look at how to do that.
| | 01:58 | I'll click Home, I'll find the
Domain section in my cPanel, and I'll
| | 02:04 | choose Addon Domain.
| | 02:07 | This sections is pretty simple.
| | 02:08 | I type in the address of
the domain I want to register.
| | 02:13 | The subdomain and the FTP username are
already generated for me dynamically. So
| | 02:18 | is the Document Root,
| | 02:19 | however the Document Root
needs to point to the root of your
| | 02:23 | WordPress installation.
| | 02:25 | So in this case, my WordPress
installation lives in public_html/the domain name
| | 02:30 | of my WordPress install.
| | 02:32 | So I need to change this to the root
domain that I've been working with.
| | 02:40 | It should pop up in a little search box like
this, and I can just click it, and it's applied.
| | 02:45 | This is the most important part of this
whole process, making sure the document
| | 02:49 | root points to the domain root.
| | 02:51 | Then you'll set up your password for FTP access.
| | 02:57 | Once you type that in, go
ahead and hit Add Domain.
| | 03:00 | Once you've done that, it tells you the
add-on domain, whatever the domain name
| | 03:04 | was, has been created, and it's now
currently pointing to that document root.
| | 03:09 | So now you can go back to your cPanel home.
| | 03:13 | Once you've returned back to the cPanel,
you're finished with adding on your
| | 03:16 | domain or parking it.
| | 03:18 | This means everything is ready to go,
and you can go on with the next step, which
| | 03:21 | should be configuring your DNS settings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Altering DNS records| 00:00 | Now that we've got our domain parked or
added on to our hosting plan, it's time
| | 00:04 | to change the DNS settings of our domain itself.
| | 00:08 | Now you might already have this set up
to point to the correct location, but if
| | 00:11 | you're unsure about how to do this, I'm
going to walk you through in this movie.
| | 00:15 | The first thing you need to know
are the DNS Servers or Name Servers of
| | 00:19 | your hosting company.
| | 00:21 | In the cPanel, chances are you can find
that towards the bottom of the cPanel on
| | 00:26 | the left-hand side in your Account
Information section. That should tell you your
| | 00:30 | name server information, just like this.
| | 00:33 | Once you have your Name Server
information, you need to go to wherever your
| | 00:36 | domain was registered.
| | 00:38 | In this case, my domain
happens to be registered at GoDaddy.
| | 00:41 | Most registrars offer some sort
of visual tool to change the name
| | 00:45 | server information.
| | 00:46 | All you have to do is
find that section. At GoDaddy,
| | 00:49 | You simply go to My Account, find the
Domain section, and then click the Domain,
| | 00:54 | and it takes you into the
domain editor like you see here.
| | 00:57 | As I scroll down inside of the domain
editing tool, you'll notice that I have
| | 01:01 | a Nameservers section.
| | 01:03 | If you want to change the name servers
of your domain simply hit Set Nameservers.
| | 01:07 | Once you do that, it comes up and you can
either park your domain, forward your domain.
| | 01:14 | You either have a hosting account with
these domains already, or you want to
| | 01:17 | have specific name servers.
| | 01:18 | In this case, my web site's hosted
outside of GoDaddy and I need to have specific
| | 01:23 | name servers in here, so I choose
the bottom option, and then I enter in
| | 01:26 | nameserver 1 and nameserver 2.
| | 01:29 | In some cases you may have three or
four name servers. enter in each one of them
| | 01:33 | individually here. Then hit OK
to commit or Cancel to get out.
| | 01:38 | I already have my name server set up
correctly, so I was allow to click
| | 01:41 | Cancel right there.
| | 01:42 | If you're hitting OK for the first
time and changing the domain name servers
| | 01:46 | of your domain, you will have to wait just
a little while for the domain to propagate.
| | 01:50 | It could take as little as an hour.
| | 01:52 | It could take as long as a day.
| | 01:53 | It just depends on how
quickly the process happens.
| | 01:55 | If it doesn't happen right away,
don't get discouraged. It just takes time.
| | 02:00 | Once you've got your domain name servers
pointing in the right place, you're all
| | 02:03 | set and ready to go.
| | 02:05 | The next step in this process will be
to install the domain mapping plug-in for
| | 02:08 | WordPress and get started with making
this domain live inside of your WordPress
| | 02:12 | Multisite installation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Installing the domain mapping plug-in| 00:00 | In this next movie I'm going to be
showing you how to install and configure the
| | 00:04 | WordPress MU Domain Mapping plug-in.
| | 00:07 | By now we should already have our
domain parked or added on and the name
| | 00:11 | servers up-to-date.
| | 00:12 | If you don't have those steps completed, go back
and watch the previous movies in this chapter.
| | 00:17 | If you're at those steps, let's
go ahead and install the plug-in.
| | 00:21 | The easiest way to do this, because of
the extra steps required to make this
| | 00:24 | plug-in run, is to do it manually through an
FTP program or a code editing window like coda.
| | 00:30 | So I'm going to switch over into my
code editing application, and as you can see,
| | 00:34 | I'm connected via FTP to my domain.
| | 00:37 | In order to install the plug-in, I need
to open up the wp-content plug-ins folder.
| | 00:42 | I'm going to navigate here to my
finder and go out to my desktop,
| | 00:46 | where I have the wordPress-mu-
domain-mapping plug-in downloaded and
| | 00:50 | unpacked. I'll open that up.
| | 00:53 | Inside of this folder are all of the
files needed to make the plug-in run.
| | 00:58 | However, there is one file
that needs to be left alone.
| | 01:01 | Its called sunrise.php.
| | 01:04 | I'm going to take that out and drop it
on my desktop by itself, and I'll go back.
| | 01:09 | So now you can see on my desktop I have
the wordpress-mu-domain-mapping plug-in
| | 01:13 | by itself and sunrise. I'll take
this folder and drop it in to upload it.
| | 01:21 | Now I'm going to go back over into my
Dashboard, look at my installed plug-ins.
| | 01:27 | Inside of the installed plug-ins I
should see WordPress MU Domain Mapping.
| | 01:31 | I'll click Network Activate.
| | 01:33 | Then I'm going to come back to my code
editing window. From my plug-ins folder
| | 01:39 | I'll go back one directory
into the wp-content folder.
| | 01:43 | Inside of wp-content that's where I
have to put sunrise.php, so I'll find it on
| | 01:49 | my desktop, drag it and drop it
over. It should upload automatically.
| | 01:54 | Once I have the sunrise.php document
placed into my wp-content folder, I need to
| | 01:58 | go back one directory and
find my wp-config.php file.
| | 02:03 | Inside of the wp-config.php file, I
need to scroll down to where I defined the
| | 02:10 | multisite installation.
| | 02:11 | On my wp-config file, if I turn on line
numbers that should be somewhere around
| | 02:18 | line 85. I'll click right underneath
define WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE and create
| | 02:24 | a new line. I'm going type out
define open parenthesis, open quote, sunrise,
| | 02:34 | close single quote comma, single quote,
on, single quote. Then go outside the
| | 02:42 | parentheses and type a semicolon.
| | 02:44 | Basically ensuring that that function
is ready to go. Then I'll go ahead and
| | 02:49 | click Save, and that re-
uploads that to my server.
| | 02:52 | Now let's go back into my dashboard.
| | 02:55 | Once I'm back into the dashboard, I
can go into Settings, and I'll go down to
| | 03:00 | Domain Mapping. You'll notice it tells
me the domain mapping database table has
| | 03:05 | been created. That means
everything is working good.
| | 03:07 | Now I have the domain mapping plug-in
successfully installed and configured.
| | 03:11 | I'm ready now to start mapping a
domain to a specific site inside of my
| | 03:15 | WordPress Multisite installation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mapping a domain to a specific site| 00:00 | It's been a long road thus far.
| | 00:02 | But now we are actually ready to start
mapping a specific domain to one of our
| | 00:06 | child sites inside of our
WordPress Multisite installation.
| | 00:09 | In this movie, I will be showing you
how to put it all together by mapping an
| | 00:12 | external domain to one of your
child's sites here inside of your Multisite.
| | 00:16 | The first thing I need to do is, in the
Network Admin Dashboard, go to Settings.
| | 00:21 | And underneath Domain Mapping I need to
make sure that my Server IP Address has
| | 00:26 | been entered in correctly.
| | 00:27 | If you need to obtain the Server IP
Address for your web server, you can contact
| | 00:31 | your web host, or you can go to a web site like
| | 00:33 | networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp.
| | 00:40 | This web site, once you enter in your
domain, will return the IP address of your site.
| | 00:45 | You can then input that right here
into the Server IP Address and click Save.
| | 00:49 | Once that's saved, you are
ready to start Domain Mapping.
| | 00:52 | I am going to go up to My Sites and choose
my Tutorial Blog and go to the Dashboard.
| | 00:58 | Once I am in the Dashboard, I can go
down the tools and choose Domain Mapping.
| | 01:04 | In the Domain Mapping section, I enter in
the domain that I want to map to this blog.
| | 01:11 | In this case, I'm mapping the domain
name gnawledge.co to my Tutorial Blog.
| | 01:17 | I'm going to make it so this is
the primary domain for this blog.
| | 01:21 | It tells me at the bottom, if your
domain name contains a hostname like "www",
| | 01:26 | "blog" or some other prefix before the
actual domain, you'll need to add a CNAME
| | 01:30 | for that hostname in your
DNS pointing to this blog URL.
| | 01:34 | If you want to redirect a domain you'll
need to add a DNS "A" record pointing to
| | 01:38 | that IP address of this server.
| | 01:41 | Once I hit Add, it tells me that
the new domain is added and that
| | 01:46 | gnawledge.co is now the
primary domain of this site.
| | 01:50 | Now if I happen to open up gnawledge.co,
you'll notice that gnawledge.co now
| | 01:56 | points to the PhotoBlog Tutorials page
as I see right up here in the address
| | 02:00 | bar, meaning that I have successfully
mapped this domain to that site inside
| | 02:04 | of my WordPress installation,
and that means my work is done.
| | 02:07 | I have successfully mapped a
single domain to one of my WordPress
| | 02:12 | Multisite installations.
| | 02:13 | It took a while to get here.
| | 02:14 | But as you can see, it's pretty cool
because it now looks like I have two
| | 02:18 | independent sites, gnawledge.co and
the shutterclick URL I have been using
| | 02:21 | throughout the series.
| | 02:23 | However, they're both running on
the same installation of WordPress.
| | 02:26 | That means I've one point of update and
one point of maintenance for both sites.
| | 02:31 | And you could do this for client web
sites or any of your web sites that you have.
| | 02:35 | As a matter fact, I'm in the process
of rolling all of my sites into one big
| | 02:39 | multisite installation and going through
one by one and mapping them to their domain.
| | 02:44 | That way I have one place to update,
one place to install plug-ins, and one
| | 02:47 | place to install themes.
| | 02:49 | But it looks like I have
several different web sites.
| | 02:52 | It's pretty awesome.
| | 02:53 | I know it takes a little bit, but
once you get the hang of it, it's well
| | 02:56 | worth it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Hiding the original domain name| 00:00 | Once you have successfully mapped a
domain here inside of WordPress Multisite,
| | 00:03 | you may want to hide the original URL
of the blog that you map that domain to.
| | 00:08 | This could be the case if
you had a really long URL
| | 00:11 | and you just don't want the links to
the post or the files that are associated
| | 00:14 | with that blog to continue
utilizing that long Subdomain URL.
| | 00:18 | So here is what we are going to do.
| | 00:20 | I'm going to be logged in as a Network
Administrator, and I want to go over to
| | 00:23 | Sites, and I'll choose All Sites.
| | 00:26 | Currently I have one domain mapped
to one site inside of my WordPress
| | 00:30 | Multisite installation.
| | 00:31 | I've mapped my gnawledge.co domain to
the tutorial.shutterclick.com domain name.
| | 00:38 | So what am I going to do?
| | 00:39 | I am going to go and find the
tutorial subdomain and click Edit.
| | 00:45 | Inside of these screens, you can
actually hide the original URL.
| | 00:49 | And it's very simple.
| | 00:50 | Just come in and the Domain name here,
change that to gnawledge.co or whatever
| | 00:58 | your domain name happens to be.
| | 00:59 | Then click Save Changes.
| | 01:04 | You also want to make sure that
there are no instances of that on any of
| | 01:07 | these other screens.
| | 01:08 | The user screen is pretty
safe. So is the Themes.
| | 01:12 | The only other one you
need to check out is Settings.
| | 01:15 | In this case, the site url carries over.
| | 01:17 | I will scroll down and you notice that it's
propagated to here and towards the bottom.
| | 01:27 | I need to make sure that the
Fileupload Url has been changed as well.
| | 01:38 | Once I have changed over every
instance of that domain, I click Save Changes.
| | 01:43 | Now everything, including links, files,
et cetera will be linked to that primary
| | 01:48 | domain that I specified.
| | 01:50 | You will no longer be able to access
this site through that subdomain URL.
| | 01:54 | So it's a pretty nifty way of
cloaking the URL once you have already mapped it.
| | 01:58 | As you can see, if I go into the
gnawledge.co, everything is good to go.
| | 02:03 | If I click on one of the posts, it
opens up knowledge.co and everything
| | 02:09 | after it, it's all good.
| | 02:11 | Once you have got your domain fully
mapped inside of WordPress Multisite, you
| | 02:15 | may want to throw on a redirect inside
of your cPanel in order to make sure
| | 02:19 | that every time someone types in that
old URL, they are automatically redirected
| | 02:23 | to that new URL that you
spent so much time domain mapping.
| | 02:26 | In order to do that, log in to your
hosting account and access the cPanel.
| | 02:30 | Inside of the cPanel, you are
going to look for the Domain section.
| | 02:34 | And inside of the Domain section,
there's a Redirects area right here.
| | 02:38 | Once you click on the Redirect area, you
can come down here and specify the Type.
| | 02:42 | In this case, you want to do
a Permanent (301) redirection.
| | 02:45 | Then you are going to choose
the domain you wish to redirect.
| | 02:48 | Once you have picked that domain, you
can also specify where it redirects to.
| | 02:53 | You can select whether or not it only
redirects when somebody types www or if it does both.
| | 02:58 | I would suggest both.
| | 02:59 | You can also say Not to Redirect with www.
| | 03:02 | That's totally up to you.
| | 03:04 | Once you're finished with that, click Add.
| | 03:05 | It will automatically Add the
redirect and you are ready to go.
| | 03:09 | It could take up to 24 hours for this
redirect to populate through DNS, so just
| | 03:13 | be patient if it doesn't work right away.
| | 03:14 | But now you have got the complete
picture on how to make sure you've completely
| | 03:18 | hidden that original domain and
successfully mapped your new domain inside of
| | 03:23 | your WordPress Multisite installation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Backing Up Your Multisite InstallationUnderstanding the importance of backing up your web site| 00:00 | One of the most important things you can
do as a network administrator is create
| | 00:04 | a backup of your web site.
| | 00:06 | Take it from somebody who's been there.
| | 00:07 | If you don't create backups of your web site,
you are going to be hurting down the road.
| | 00:12 | It's unbelievable how important
backing up your web site can be.
| | 00:16 | Number one, it gives you peace of mind.
| | 00:18 | That way you know your site is always
backed up, and you can always get back to a
| | 00:22 | normal state if anything happens to it.
| | 00:26 | It's the easiest way to help you get
yourself back online in the case of a crash
| | 00:29 | or even a malware attack.
| | 00:31 | In the past couple of years, as my blogs
have become more popular, my sites have
| | 00:35 | been under constant attack.
| | 00:37 | And if it wasn't for the backups that I
have created, I wouldn't have been able
| | 00:40 | to get those sites back up
within a day or even a week.
| | 00:43 | Backing up your site also allows you
to quickly move your site from server to
| | 00:47 | server, especially if you use a plug-in
that specializes in WordPress backups.
| | 00:51 | This is also a great way
to archive your content.
| | 00:55 | You have spent a lot of time into
cultivating this awesome blog network of yours.
| | 00:59 | You have got photos, posts, maybe
videos, all kinds of things that you
| | 01:03 | don't want to lose.
| | 01:04 | Therefore why wouldn't you back it up?
| | 01:06 | We back up our photos on a hard drive,
we back up our hard drives, why don't we
| | 01:10 | back up our web sites?
| | 01:12 | It's great for archival purposes
and great for security as well.
| | 01:16 | If you want to ensure your WordPress
site is secure and always in a safe place,
| | 01:21 | you need to use a backup system.
| | 01:23 | Now, there are ton of backup systems
out there, and you can use any one of the
| | 01:27 | automated backup systems you want.
| | 01:28 | There are also several great WordPress
plug-ins that provide backup solutions.
| | 01:33 | In future movies, I'll discuss exactly
which plug-ins I use personally and tell
| | 01:37 | you how to use them and why
they are the best at what they do.
| | 01:40 | But for now just know, it's so
important to backup your web site and if you
| | 01:44 | don't already have a solution in place,
you should really think about mapping
| | 01:48 | that out, because once you have that
backup system in place, you are going to
| | 01:51 | have peace of mind and a secure awesome
web site that you can enjoy for months,
| | 01:57 | years, or 10 years to come.
| | 01:59 | It will be the most important step
you ever take to managing your web site.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring backup plug-ins| 00:00 | I have already stated that backing up
your web site is probably one of the most
| | 00:03 | important things you will ever
do as a network administrator.
| | 00:06 | And in order to create good backups of your
web site, you'll probably need to use a plug-in.
| | 00:11 | Lucky for you, there are ton of
options out there on the Internet, but there
| | 00:15 | are two that shine above all of the rest,
especially when it comes to WordPress backups.
| | 00:20 | The first one that I will
talk about is VaultPress.
| | 00:23 | VaultPress is built by Automatic,
the same people who run wordpress.com.
| | 00:28 | It's one of the most popular plug-ins out there.
| | 00:30 | As you can see, they have got some big numbers.
| | 00:33 | VaultPress runs on a subscription model,
meaning you'll pay a subscription to
| | 00:37 | back up your web site for each
and every site that you have.
| | 00:40 | If you are running a WordPress
Multisite installation, you will pay a
| | 00:43 | subscription fee for each
individual Multisite as well.
| | 00:46 | The plans and pricing aren't that bad
and if you want to use a solution made by
| | 00:50 | the people who built the software,
this is the solution for you.
| | 00:53 | BackupBuddy is my personal favorite,
and it was the first solution to offer
| | 00:57 | complete WordPress backups.
| | 00:59 | That means BackupBuddy does Backups,
Restorations, and Migrations of all types of
| | 01:05 | WordPress installations,
including WordPress Multisite.
| | 01:08 | BackupBuddy is just one single plug-in.
| | 01:10 | You install it and it's ready to go.
| | 01:12 | The cool part about BackupBuddy is you
are able to schedule backups, as well as
| | 01:16 | deliver backups to remote destinations
like URLs, FTP, Amazon S3, or any other
| | 01:22 | type of CDN you might have.
| | 01:24 | The BackupBuddy pricing is a one off.
| | 01:27 | You only pay one fee, and then you get
access to the plug-in forever. It's pretty good.
| | 01:31 | Since BackupBuddy is the plug-in that I
prefer personally, I will be using that
| | 01:35 | for the remainder of the series.
| | 01:36 | However, VaultPress functions much the
same way the BackupBuddy does and comes
| | 01:40 | with significant documentation.
| | 01:42 | No matter which backup solution you
try, you should always live by my rule.
| | 01:46 | If it doesn't exist in three
places, it simply doesn't exist.
| | 01:50 | So I have a copy of my backups stored
locally inside of my WordPress install, I
| | 01:55 | keep one remotely stored inside of
Amazon S3, and I also keep one stored on a
| | 02:01 | hard drive or a Thumb
Drive somewhere in my office.
| | 02:04 | Those are the three
safest locations, in my opinion.
| | 02:06 | So if anything happens to one of those,
I've got two backups to go from, or if
| | 02:10 | anything happens to two of
those backups, I've got one more.
| | 02:13 | Hopefully nothing happens to your third
backup, but you can always create four.
| | 02:18 | Be safe and take care of your web site.
| | 02:20 | It's the most important thing you can ever do.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Installing and configuring BackupBuddy| 00:00 | Now it's time to install and configure
the BackupBuddy plug-in so that we can
| | 00:04 | create a backup of our
WordPress Multisite installation.
| | 00:07 | Now, as I said in the previous movie,
you'll have to purchase BackupBuddy by
| | 00:11 | going to www.pluginbuddy.com.
| | 00:15 | Once you get the pluginbuddy.com,
just look for the BackupBuddy link and
| | 00:18 | click the Purchase icon.
| | 00:20 | Once you've purchased BackupBuddy, you
can then download it and it should be
| | 00:24 | somewhere on your hard drive.
| | 00:25 | Now let's walk through actually
installing and configuring the plug-in.
| | 00:28 | I will go here to my Plugins
section and choose Add New.
| | 00:32 | And, by the way, I'm logged in
as the Network Administrator.
| | 00:34 | So I will click Upload, Choose my File,
and I will find the backupbuddy.zip file.
| | 00:42 | Once I get backupbuddy there, I'll
install it, WordPress unpacks it and installs
| | 00:48 | it, and now I can Network Activate it.
| | 00:51 | Once I have activated BackupBuddy, you
will notice that I have to Manage my Licenses.
| | 00:55 | When you go into
BackupBuddy to Manage your License,
| | 00:58 | you'll have to enter the Username and
Password that were given to you when you
| | 01:02 | signed up at the BackupBuddy site.
| | 01:04 | You can also Manually Enter in a
License Key if you've already generated one.
| | 01:08 | In this case, I'm not going to worry
about it. I'll just close this for now.
| | 01:11 | And let's take a look at
how to set BackupBuddy up.
| | 01:14 | I will go to BackupBuddy. The first thing
you need to do is go to Getting Started.
| | 01:19 | Inside of the Getting Started page,
they give you detailed information about
| | 01:23 | Backing up your site, Restoring
and Migrating your site using the
| | 01:26 | importbuddy.php file.
| | 01:28 | They have also got a link to their
Knowledge Base, which takes you to in-depth
| | 01:32 | documentation about the plug-in.
| | 01:36 | If you want to go ahead and configure
your backup and restore, you can go into
| | 01:39 | the Backup & Restore section of BackupBuddy.
| | 01:41 | Once you are inside of the Back &
Restore section, you can choose to do a
| | 01:46 | Database Only backup, a Full
Backup, or a Restore/Migration.
| | 01:53 | You will also see a link here that
says, you can get the non-beta version
| | 01:57 | of ImportBuddy here.
| | 01:59 | ImportBuddy is currently in beta because
they are adding some really cool new features.
| | 02:03 | If you want the old version,
you can click right there.
| | 02:06 | It tells you here to use Multisite
backup and restore, you have to use the
| | 02:10 | new ImportBuddy beta.
| | 02:12 | If you want to create a
backup, it's really quite easy.
| | 02:15 | Let's say I want to do just a database backup.
| | 02:17 | I will click on Database Only,
BackupBuddy goes through, exports my settings, my
| | 02:22 | databases and my files and
there you go, in mere seconds.
| | 02:27 | It tells me I can Download the backup ZIP
archive, or I can go back to the backup page.
| | 02:32 | If I download this ZIP archive, it
goes to my hard drive and I can store that
| | 02:35 | somewhere, either in a remote FTP
destination, upload it to Amazon S3, or put
| | 02:40 | it on a Thumb Drive.
| | 02:41 | You notice here it tells
me how big the Archive was.
| | 02:43 | In this case, my installation is
relatively new, so the file size is low, 257K.
| | 02:47 | Let's go Back to the backup page.
| | 02:50 | Now let's do a Full Backup.
| | 02:54 | What's the difference between a
Full Backup and Database Backup?
| | 02:56 | Well, in a Full Backup, it goes
through and grabs everything: posts, pages,
| | 03:01 | users, themes, plug-ins. You name it,
BackupBuddy grabs it and it throws it into
| | 03:06 | this one big zip file.
| | 03:08 | As you can see here, I can Download the package.
| | 03:11 | It's now 8.74 MB. That's because it's
got everything included in it--my themes,
| | 03:16 | my plug-ins, not to mention all of my settings.
| | 03:20 | I can go back to Backup page from here as well.
| | 03:23 | Once I go back to the backup page,
you'll notice here that I have a section
| | 03:26 | of Backup Archives.
| | 03:28 | These are the backups
that are available to me now.
| | 03:30 | So I have a backup here and a backup here.
| | 03:33 | The first one is the latest
one that I chose. It's 8.74 MB.
| | 03:38 | The Status is Good and the Type is Full.
| | 03:41 | It tells me when I Last Modified these
backups and if I click on them, I can
| | 03:45 | actually download that archive as well.
| | 03:47 | If I wanted to send these to an
offsite location, I hover over them and
| | 03:51 | choose Send file offsite.
| | 03:54 | When I do that, I'm
prompted with this window here.
| | 03:56 | We will cover all of these
options in a future movie.
| | 03:59 | I just wanted to make you aware of them now.
| | 04:01 | One of the other great features
of BackupBuddy is the Malware Scan.
| | 04:05 | Once you click Malware Scan over on
the left, BackupBuddy automatically scans
| | 04:09 | your site for Malware.
| | 04:10 | This could be JavaScript Malware, PHP, anything.
| | 04:14 | If it finds anything, it will tell you.
| | 04:16 | In this case, my site is clean.
| | 04:18 | But this is a great way to
know if your site's been hacked.
| | 04:22 | You can also go in and
see your Server Information.
| | 04:25 | In the Server Information, it tells
you exactly what WordPress version you're
| | 04:28 | running, what version of MySQL, PHP, et cetera.
| | 04:32 | If any of these don't match up to the
recommended requirements for BackupBbuddy,
| | 04:35 | it will tell you over here on the right.
| | 04:37 | Looks like I'm all good.
| | 04:40 | Scheduling--inside of Scheduling, you
can actually create Scheduled Backups.
| | 04:45 | That way you never have to
worry about doing backups yourself.
| | 04:49 | I'll cover how to utilize the
Scheduled Backups in a future movie.
| | 04:52 | It's a really handy feature
that's going to save you a ton of time.
| | 04:55 | Also in BackupBbuddy is the Multisite Import.
| | 04:59 | When you click on Multisite Import,
you'll notice it takes you to Step 1 of 8.
| | 05:02 | And if you want the Full BackupBuddy
Multisite documentation experience, you can
| | 05:06 | click this link right up here.
| | 05:08 | It takes you really in-depth into
working with Multisite and BackupBuddy.
| | 05:12 | You can see here that this Import
tool allows you to import a site from a
| | 05:16 | BackupBbuddy Archive as a new site within
your Multisite environment, with a new URL.
| | 05:22 | So basically what you need to do is go
find a stand-alone site, back it up with
| | 05:26 | BackupBuddy, then take that
backup and upload it here.
| | 05:30 | I'll cover that in a future movie as well.
| | 05:31 | Let's go down to something new in BackupBuddy.
| | 05:34 | It's called RepairBuddy.
| | 05:36 | As you can see here, it's in Beta, so
you've got to be careful with this one.
| | 05:39 | However, RepairBuddy is a
tool for diagnosing and repairing
| | 05:42 | WordPress Installations.
| | 05:43 | So let's say theoretically you change
something in your wp-config file and you
| | 05:48 | break it, or you lock yourself out
of the admin area by forgetting your
| | 05:51 | password, or for some
other reason get locked out.
| | 05:54 | RepairBuddy actually allows you to set
up a password for this site, and then you
| | 05:59 | can enable RepairBuddy.
| | 06:00 | Once you enable RepairBuddy, you can
actually upload that to your site and
| | 06:03 | access it, and RepairBuddy should
automatically go in and let you log in to to
| | 06:07 | your site, no matter how
you have been locked out.
| | 06:09 | It's a really cool feature.
| | 06:11 | Last but not least are
the BackupBuddy Settings.
| | 06:13 | Inside of the Settings, you can
configure things like Email Notifications.
| | 06:18 | You can have an email sent to you when
a Scheduled backup is completed, when a
| | 06:21 | Manual backup is completed, or
even if you have a Backup failure.
| | 06:25 | You also have the ability to
change General Options here.
| | 06:28 | The General Options include an Import Password.
| | 06:31 | That means each time you create a backup,
you can add a password to that backup
| | 06:34 | file so that if anybody tries to
import it, they have to know that password
| | 06:38 | before they can restore your site.
| | 06:39 | Backup reminders--if you want
BackupBuddy to remind you to back up your web site,
| | 06:44 | leave that box checked.
| | 06:45 | If you want BackupBuddy to back up all
of your database tables and you can see
| | 06:49 | here it says to Enable backing up of
all the tables in your database, not just
| | 06:53 | the WordPress tables, then
you need to check this box.
| | 06:56 | If you have plug-ins that create
their own custom database tables inside
| | 07:00 | your MySQL database, this is a must.
| | 07:02 | Compatibility/Troubleshooting option--
do you want to Enable ZIP Compression?
| | 07:07 | Yeah, you bet you do.
| | 07:08 | Your site is huge and you need to compress it
as much as possible to lower that file size.
| | 07:13 | Do you want to Perform an integrity
check on the backup files? Sure you do.
| | 07:16 | You want to make sure
nothing is wrong with them, right?
| | 07:18 | If they are not in good shape,
you need to generate another one.
| | 07:22 | You can also configure the various
Logging, Manual backup mode, and Multisite
| | 07:26 | options from here as well.
| | 07:28 | The Multisite Option here will allow
individual sites to be exported out of BackupBuddy.
| | 07:33 | This means if I have one site inside of
my WordPress Multisite environment that
| | 07:37 | I want to break out and be its own
site, I can do that using BackupBuddy.
| | 07:42 | You can also set Archive Storage Limits.
| | 07:44 | If you don't want BackupBuddy to keep
cluttering up your internal file system
| | 07:48 | here inside of WordPress, set a limit on this.
| | 07:50 | Finally, you can manage your Remote
Destinations and Archives from here, stuff
| | 07:54 | like Amazon S3, Rackspace, Email and
FTP destinations, and then you can also
| | 07:59 | tell BackupBuddy to exclude
certain directories or files.
| | 08:03 | Once you have finished setting
this up, click Save Settings.
| | 08:06 | All of those Settings are
applied and BackupBuddy is ready to go.
| | 08:10 | So as you can see, BackupBuddy is a
really good solution when it comes to
| | 08:13 | backing up your web site.
| | 08:14 | And we all know how important
backing up our web site is, right?
| | 08:18 | But no matter which backup solution you
choose, take the time to go through each
| | 08:22 | individual setting and
make sure you get it right.
| | 08:24 | That way you have the peace of mind
of knowing that your site is safe and
| | 08:27 | secure, all the time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Migrating a standalone site into your network| 00:00 | There may come a time as you're
working in a WordPress Multisite environment
| | 00:03 | that you feel the need to bring
another site under the umbrella of your
| | 00:06 | WordPress Multisite that exists somewhere else.
| | 00:09 | In this case, I have a Travel Blog
and this Travel Blog lives on its
| | 00:13 | own separate domain.
| | 00:14 | But I want that to be brought into my
WordPress Multisite environment so that
| | 00:18 | it shares the other plug-ins and the
one single point of update that all the
| | 00:21 | rest of my domains do.
| | 00:23 | So what am I going to do?
| | 00:24 | Well, I could just copy and paste
the content into blog posts and pages
| | 00:28 | and things like that. But that's no fun.
| | 00:30 | I want to go ahead and
do this in one fell swoop.
| | 00:33 | So what am I going to do?
| | 00:34 | I'm going to use a plug-in.
| | 00:35 | I'll close this up and go back into my
Network Administration Dashboard for my Photo Blog.
| | 00:41 | For this particular action,
I'm going to use BackupBuddy.
| | 00:45 | So I find the BackupBuddy link on the left,
and we'll go down to Multisite Import.
| | 00:50 | It should be noted here that this
feature is still in BETA and therefore
| | 00:53 | it's not 100% reliable.
| | 00:55 | However, in my experience, it's pretty good.
| | 00:58 | As you can see, the BackupBuddy
Multisite Import allows you to import a site
| | 01:02 | from a BackupBuddy archive, and that
new site can then be migrated into an
| | 01:06 | existing multisite installation.
| | 01:07 | Here in the options, it's telling me
the backup file that it's going to import.
| | 01:11 | It's going to import the backup of
that domain that was created on this day.
| | 01:15 | I've got that backup file sitting
in the root directory of my WordPress
| | 01:19 | Multisite Installation.
| | 01:20 | So once I downloaded it from the
previous site, I simply uploaded it to
| | 01:24 | that root directory.
| | 01:25 | BackupBuddy automatically
recognizes that backup file.
| | 01:28 | My new site address is
simply going to be Travel.
| | 01:32 | You can choose the Advanced
Configuration Options if you want to, but chances
| | 01:36 | are, if you don't know what you're doing in
here, you're going to do more harm than good.
| | 01:39 | So just collapse those up and
don't worry about them for now.
| | 01:42 | Go ahead and click Next Step.
| | 01:45 | Once I finish that next step, it
tells me the site has been created.
| | 01:48 | It tells me also that I can verify that
I'm sure that I want to import this site.
| | 01:53 | It cannot be undone and that's okay.
| | 01:55 | I'll just click Next Step.
| | 01:58 | Once I click Next Step, it tells me
that the files have been extracted to a
| | 02:01 | temporary directory.
| | 02:02 | So I'll click Next again.
| | 02:04 | It goes through here and it tells me
that files such as media plug-ins and
| | 02:08 | themes have all been successfully migrated.
| | 02:10 | It goes through now and imports the database.
| | 02:15 | It says database imported.
| | 02:17 | I'm all good so far. Step six--
| | 02:21 | my database has been migrated, so
everything is now in the same place. Step seven--
| | 02:27 | my users from that previous site,
if I had any, were all migrated into
| | 02:31 | this existing site.
| | 02:33 | You can see here, it tells me
the last step is the Final Cleanup.
| | 02:36 | This will delete the BackupBuddy
zip archive and also delete the
| | 02:40 | temporary import files.
| | 02:41 | If you don't want to remove
those, you can uncheck those boxes.
| | 02:44 | I don't necessarily need them,
so I'll leave it checked.
| | 02:47 | Now, I'll click Next.
| | 02:49 | Now, it tells me my site has been
successfully created and imported into
| | 02:52 | the Multisite network.
| | 02:53 | So let's open this up in a new tab.
| | 02:57 | As you can see, it imports in my Travel Blog.
| | 02:59 | There is my I love Travel,
Another Cool Trip, and My Trip to Spain.
| | 03:06 | Everything from that stand-alone site
has now been migrated into my WordPress
| | 03:10 | Multisite Installation.
| | 03:12 | So hopefully, now you understand
exactly what it means to bring in a site from
| | 03:16 | an external location and put it
underneath your WordPress Multisite umbrella,
| | 03:20 | and using the BackupBuddy plug-in makes
that extremely easy to accomplish that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Migrating an entire network| 00:00 | There may come a time as you're
working with the WordPress Multisite
| | 00:02 | Installation that you feel the need to move
your entire network from one place to another.
| | 00:07 | This could be if you're working in a
development environment locally on your
| | 00:10 | home machine and you want to take that
environment live on the web or if you
| | 00:14 | simply need to switch from a
testing server to a live server.
| | 00:18 | In this case, I'm going to be utilizing
one of my testing domains to move a site
| | 00:22 | to a live domain, and I'm going to
do that using the BackupBuddy plug-in.
| | 00:26 | So I'm able to take an entire Multisite
installation and move it from one domain
| | 00:31 | to another. Pretty cool.
| | 00:33 | I'll go down here first to the
BackupBuddy section of my Dashboard, and notice
| | 00:37 | I'm logged in as the Network
Administrator while I do this.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to go down to Backup & Restore.
| | 00:42 | If you haven't already done so, go ahead
and generate a full backup of your site.
| | 00:46 | I've already generated one for
myself and downloaded it to my Desktop.
| | 00:50 | Now what you'll need to do is
download the Beta version of
| | 00:54 | BackupBuddy's ImportBuddy script.
| | 00:57 | This will then allow you to import your
Multisite installation into your other domain.
| | 01:02 | In order to access the ImportBuddy
Beta, you must click on this link here.
| | 01:07 | It's a little misleading because you would
think that you'd click down here, the
| | 01:10 | same place you'd download the non-beta
version, but in this case, you click right here.
| | 01:15 | Once you click that, it
downloads the file automatically for you.
| | 01:20 | Once you have the ImportBuddy and
your Full Backup downloaded to your hard
| | 01:24 | drive, it's time to get to work.
| | 01:26 | Let's move over to my code editing window.
Once I'm inside my code editor I want
| | 01:31 | to navigate to the domain where I want
to stick my new Multisite installation.
| | 01:35 | I have to do two things here.
| | 01:36 | I have to first upload the
ImportBuddy script and then also upload the
| | 01:41 | BackupBuddy backup file.
| | 01:43 | I'll navigate to my desktop and drag
the backup file into the destination
| | 01:49 | folder. Then I'll grab the ImportBuddy
script and throw it in there as well.
| | 01:55 | Once I've got those pieces in
place, I'm ready to keep going.
| | 01:57 | Let's move back to the web. For this next
portion I'm going to be using the cPanel,
| | 02:02 | which most hosting companies provide for you.
| | 02:04 | Inside of my cPanel I need to make
sure that I create a database for this
| | 02:09 | WordPress Installation to live on.
| | 02:11 | So in the Home section of my cPanel
I'll navigate down and in this case I can
| | 02:17 | just use the MySQL database wizard.
| | 02:21 | I can create a database, in this case
I'll call it wpms for Multisite, click Next.
| | 02:28 | It asks me to create a user I'll call it
Justin. My password, just do something quick.
| | 02:39 | Once I do that, I'll create my user.
| | 02:42 | It may come up and give you an error
saying your passwords don't match. If they
| | 02:45 | do, go back and try it again.
| | 02:53 | Once you've got your passwords
matched, it automatically creates the
| | 02:55 | database and your user.
| | 02:57 | I'll give myself all the privileges, Next Step.
| | 03:01 | Now my database has been created.
| | 03:03 | I'll leave this up so that I have the
names for reference in case I need them later.
| | 03:06 | Now I'm ready to start the migration.
| | 03:08 | I'll go back over to my gnawledge code domain.
| | 03:12 | At the end of the domain in the Address
Bar I'll append a slash and then I'll
| | 03:16 | type out importbuddy.php.
| | 03:22 | Once I get here, you'll notice it takes me to
the BackupBuddy Restoration & Migration tool.
| | 03:26 | I'm on Step 1 of 6, and right now
it's telling me that I need to select the
| | 03:30 | BackupBuddy file that I
want to import or migrate.
| | 03:33 | In this case it finds automatically the
backup file that's located inside of my
| | 03:37 | root directory, and that's okay.
| | 03:39 | I'll hit Next Step.
| | 03:40 | It's going to go through
and extract all of the files.
| | 03:44 | If the files are successfully
extracted, it will tell you that here.
| | 03:48 | If there are any problems
BackupBuddy will let you know.
| | 03:51 | Once I've clicked Next, it
takes me here to Step 3 of 6.
| | 03:55 | In this case I'm going to enter in all
of the settings that correspond to my
| | 03:58 | WordPress Multisite.
| | 03:59 | Stuff like my WordPress
Address; that's just the domain name.
| | 04:03 | Your Multisite Domain--this is the base
domain that's going to be used to add on
| | 04:06 | all of your subdomains.
| | 04:08 | Your Database Settings--most of these
are going to be provided by your hosting
| | 04:12 | company, the first of
which is your MySQL Server.
| | 04:15 | The great thing about BackupBuddy is it
puts in the recommended value and also
| | 04:19 | tells you what it was previously.
| | 04:20 | If you happen to be moving from one
domain to another on the same server,
| | 04:24 | chances are that's the same thing.
| | 04:26 | However, if you want to check with
your host to make sure you know the exact
| | 04:29 | MySQL Server address, that would be good
as well. But 99% of the time, the local
| | 04:34 | host is what you're going to use here.
| | 04:36 | Your Database Name--this is the
name of the database that you created.
| | 04:39 | If you remember correctly in my
Control panel, I created the database earlier.
| | 04:43 | Let's go back down to that.
| | 04:45 | I'm on MySQL Databases and I created
seeley_wpms, so I'll call that wpms.
| | 04:59 | Database User, that was Justin, and then the
Database Password, and then a Database Prefix.
| | 05:10 | It's just going to be wp_.
| | 05:13 | I can test my database settings.
Everything looks to be successful.
| | 05:17 | If you get any errors here, it's probably
because you misspelled something in the list above.
| | 05:22 | Go back and check those settings
one more time and try it again.
| | 05:25 | If everything looks successful, hit Next Step.
| | 05:28 | It goes through and imports everything
into the database, and it tells me here
| | 05:32 | that the initial database
import has been completed.
| | 05:34 | I'll click Next Step.
| | 05:36 | This time it's going through and
it's bringing in all of my WordPress files.
| | 05:40 | It's telling me here that I can verify
the site functionality and then delete my
| | 05:43 | backup file and ImportBuddy
script from my site if I want to.
| | 05:47 | It's also telling me that I can run
a File Cleanup here at the bottom.
| | 05:49 | The first thing I'm going to do is
open up my site and make sure it's okay.
| | 05:54 | When I open it up you can see now the
Migrate Me Please site is now live on gnawledge.co.
| | 06:00 | I've successfully migrated to an entire
Multisite installation from one place to another.
| | 06:05 | Don't believe me? Let's login to the backend.
| | 06:16 | Once I'm logged in to the backend,
you'll see here that I get My Sites and
| | 06:19 | there's Migrate Me Please,
Site 2, Site 3, and Site 4.
| | 06:24 | I can visit any of these sites that I
want to in the browser and they're all
| | 06:27 | exactly as they were inside that
other WordPress Multisite Installation.
| | 06:31 | That's pretty quick and painless.
| | 06:33 | Let's close these up and finish up
with the BackupBuddy Restoration tool.
| | 06:38 | I'll clean up and remove the temporary files.
| | 06:41 | Once the BackupBuddy has finished, it
tells me the import is complete and I
| | 06:44 | can now visit my site.
| | 06:45 | Let's close these up and
I'll go back to the domain.
| | 06:52 | Once I get back into the domain, I can
now work with this as if it was still
| | 06:56 | that same WordPress Multisite
Installation, because basically it is.
| | 06:59 | You've just moved it from one place to another.
| | 07:02 | All of your files, all of your themes,
all your plug-ins, and hopefully all of
| | 07:05 | your settings have all been
transferred over to this new installation.
| | 07:09 | So you took an entire network from one end to
the other in just about five or ten minutes.
| | 07:14 | That's going to save you a ton of time and
alleviate a lot of headaches in the future.
| | 07:18 | So if you're a developer and you're
not using tools like this, you're really
| | 07:22 | doing yourself a disservice.
| | 07:23 | So take some time and practice as a few
times, going from a local host to some
| | 07:28 | dummy domains or something like that.
| | 07:30 | Once you get the process down pat, you
will be ready to move any site at any
| | 07:34 | time from local to remote or from
a live environment to another live
| | 07:38 | environment. Possibilities are endless.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Scheduling backups with BackupBuddy| 00:00 | Another great way to give yourself
peace of mind when you're working with
| | 00:03 | WordPress Multisite is to schedule
backups of your site to run daily, weekly,
| | 00:09 | monthly, or whatever interval that you choose.
| | 00:11 | The BackupBuddy plug-in allows for such
scheduling and even allows you to store
| | 00:15 | those backups in a remote destination.
| | 00:17 | We will cover the remote
destination storage in a later movie.
| | 00:21 | But in this movie, I'll be taking you
step-by-step through configuring your
| | 00:24 | scheduled backups here
inside of WordPress Multisite.
| | 00:27 | The first step is you need to be
logged in as the Network Administrator.
| | 00:30 | Once you're logged in as the Network
Administrator, find the BackupBuddy
| | 00:33 | menu item on the left.
| | 00:35 | Once you hover over that, you'll go
down to the Scheduling section.
| | 00:39 | Inside of the Scheduling section, you
can schedule either database backups or
| | 00:43 | full backups depending on your needs.
| | 00:45 | In my experience, it's best to create a
backup for databases and for full backups.
| | 00:50 | For instance, on my personal site,
I run a daily database backup.
| | 00:54 | But I only run a weekly full backup.
| | 00:57 | This is less taxing on my server and
it also helps me keep a clutter-free
| | 01:00 | environment in my remote storage destination.
| | 01:03 | Let's start off by creating a new schedule.
| | 01:05 | The name for this backup
schedule is going to be DailyDB.
| | 01:10 | The Backup type is going to be Database Only,
the Backup interval is going to be Daily.
| | 01:15 | If I want to specify a time,
I can type that in here.
| | 01:19 | Right now, I'm just going
to leave it on the default.
| | 01:21 | If you want to add a remote
destination, you can click here to add your
| | 01:24 | remote destination.
| | 01:26 | Remote Destinations include Amazon S3,
Rackspace, or even using an FTP server.
| | 01:32 | But again, we will cover Remote
Destination in a future movie.
| | 01:35 | Once I'm finished setting up these
settings, I will hit Add Schedule.
| | 01:39 | As you can see here, I get a new
schedule item saying DailyDB, which is a
| | 01:44 | Database Only backup. It will run daily.
| | 01:47 | There's no destination, so it's all
going to be stored locally within my
| | 01:50 | WordPress installation.
| | 01:51 | It's not exactly the safest way to
go, but it's better than nothing.
| | 01:54 | It's going to tell me here that my
First Run is at this time and that it's
| | 01:58 | never been run before.
| | 01:59 | Now let's go create our weekly full backup.
| | 02:02 | The name of this backup, WeeklyFull.
Backup type, Full (database+files).
| | 02:10 | That's everything inside of WordPress.
| | 02:12 | Backup Interval, I want to do this Weekly.
| | 02:16 | You can specify date and time if you want.
| | 02:18 | You can also specify remote
destinations again, and then you hit Add Schedule.
| | 02:23 | As you can see, WeeklyFull
has been added to my schedule.
| | 02:26 | It's telling me here it's a full
backup, to run weekly, and that's when
| | 02:30 | it's going to start.
| | 02:30 | It has never run as of yet.
| | 02:32 | At any time, you can edit your schedules.
| | 02:35 | So if I choose WeeklyFull and edit this
schedule, it takes me here and I can make changes.
| | 02:41 | So if I wanted to tell it to run at 3:00 A.M.
instead of P.M., that will adopt that
| | 02:50 | new time, and I will hit Save Changes.
| | 02:52 | Once I do that, you'll notice it
updates here to be run at 3 A.M.
| | 02:56 | Basically, what that's going to do is
run at an off-peak time for my web site,
| | 03:00 | making it a little less taxing on my server.
| | 03:02 | If you ever feel the need to get rid of
a backup, all you have to do is find it,
| | 03:07 | click on it, and choose Delete.
| | 03:09 | Once you have deleted it, it's gone.
| | 03:11 | You will need to set it up again.
| | 03:13 | If at any time you get confused in
this screen, you'll notice several little
| | 03:16 | question marks out to the right-hand
side of each one of these settings.
| | 03:20 | If you hover over the question mark,
a tooltip will appear to give you an
| | 03:23 | indication of exactly what you
should put in each one of these fields.
| | 03:27 | There's no question that backing
up your web site is very important.
| | 03:31 | Adding scheduled backups to the mix
just gives you that added layer of security
| | 03:35 | and gives you a lot of peace of mind.
| | 03:37 | I recommend doing this for any
WordPress installation, but especially for a
| | 03:41 | WordPress Multisite.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Remotely storing your backups| 00:00 | If you've been following along with
these series, you know that my personal
| | 00:03 | philosophy, when it comes to backing up
web sites, is that if it doesn't exist
| | 00:06 | in three places, it simply doesn't exist.
| | 00:09 | And therefore, when I use backups
here inside of WordPress Multisite, I'm
| | 00:13 | constantly sending my backups to remote
destinations and I'm doing that with the
| | 00:17 | BackupBuddy plug-in.
| | 00:19 | In this movie, I'll be covering how to
send your WordPress backups to a remote
| | 00:22 | destination using the BackupBuddy plug-in.
| | 00:25 | Over on the left-hand side of your
navigation when you're logged in as the
| | 00:27 | Network Administrator, you
should see the BackupBuddy menu item.
| | 00:31 | Underneath the BackupBuddy menu item, you
will need to go down and choose Settings.
| | 00:36 | Once you get inside of the settings
of BackupBuddy, scroll down and you'll
| | 00:40 | notice here, Remote Offsite Storage/Destinations.
| | 00:43 | If you want to manage those
Remote Destinations, click here.
| | 00:47 | Once you get inside this window, you
will notice that BackupBuddy has support
| | 00:50 | for Amazon S3, Dropbox, Rackspace
Cloudfiles, FTP, and Email destinations.
| | 00:57 | All you have to do is go through these
individual pieces and fill them out and
| | 01:01 | those will be available to you as
remote destinations when you're creating
| | 01:04 | your WordPress backups.
| | 01:06 | So for instance, if you wanted to add
your Amazon S3 account, for instance, you
| | 01:10 | would go through an add a Destination Name.
| | 01:12 | If you are not sure what that is,
hover over that and it will tell you.
| | 01:15 | It's just the name of the new
destination that you want to create.
| | 01:18 | In this case, you can just call it Amazon.
| | 01:20 | Then you have to go through and get
your AWS Access Key and Secret Key.
| | 01:25 | If you're not sure what these are,
you can hover over this and it will
| | 01:29 | explain exactly what it is.
| | 01:31 | If you go to your Amazon S3 account,
you'll notice in the Access Credentials
| | 01:35 | section of your account that you get your
Access Keys here and your Secret Keys here.
| | 01:40 | Your Secret Keys simply hover
over the Show button to show those.
| | 01:45 | Once you have that stuff copied down,
you can come back into BackupBuddy and put
| | 01:49 | that stuff right here into the AWS
Access Key and Secret Key fields.
| | 01:54 | You'll also have to specify a Bucket Name.
| | 01:57 | Then you can select a Directory if you
choose to and you can also set the Archive Limit.
| | 02:01 | How many archives do you
keep inside this bucket?
| | 02:04 | If you want to use SSL
Encryption, you can enable that.
| | 02:07 | It's turned on by default.
| | 02:09 | If you want to test your
settings, click Test these settings.
| | 02:11 | It will go out and authenticate all of
the settings against your Amazon S3 account.
| | 02:15 | If everything is okay, it will let you know.
| | 02:17 | If there's something wrong, just simply fix it.
| | 02:19 | It's probably your AWS Access Key or
Secret Key. Just re-plug that information
| | 02:24 | in and you are good to go.
| | 02:26 | Once you finish with that, hit Add Destination.
| | 02:29 | Then your new Amazon S3 destination
is now added to your system. Dropbox--
| | 02:35 | Dropbox is probably the coolest thing that's
ever come up when it comes to cloud storage.
| | 02:40 | Number one, you can get a free account and
that gives you a pretty decent amount of space.
| | 02:44 | You can utilize your free Dropbox
account as a place to store all of
| | 02:47 | your WordPress files.
| | 02:49 | Chances are you are not going to go over
two gigs with just a standard WordPress blog.
| | 02:53 | All you have to do to connect the
Dropbox is click this button here.
| | 02:57 | Once you click that, it
takes you over to Dropbox.
| | 03:00 | You simply enter in your Email and
Password and then authorize BackupBuddy to
| | 03:04 | utilize Dropbox's credentials.
| | 03:06 | Once you've done that, you come back
in here and click Yes I've authorized
| | 03:09 | BackupBuddy with Dropbox, and you're ready to go.
| | 03:12 | You'll notice here that it tells you
that backup files must be loaded into the
| | 03:17 | memory to transfer to Dropbox.
| | 03:19 | And BackupBuddy estimates that I'll be able
to transfer backups of up to 95MB in size.
| | 03:24 | That's because there is
a current limit of 128MB.
| | 03:28 | It tells me this is simply a
limitation of the PHP's oAuth implementation
| | 03:32 | which Dropbox requires.
| | 03:33 | It's how you authenticate
against Dropbox's servers.
| | 03:36 | You can increase the PHP memory
limit or reduce the backup file size.
| | 03:41 | Rackspace Cloudfiles--this is
something new that came in BackupBuddy 2.2.
| | 03:46 | Hopefully they're going to continue
improving on the destinations they provide.
| | 03:49 | They have already added Amazon S3,
Dropbox, and Rackspace. Who knows what they
| | 03:53 | are going to add next.
| | 03:54 | In this case, you simply enter in your
Destination Name, your Username, your API
| | 03:59 | key, which Container you're putting it in.
| | 04:02 | You can specify an Archive Limit and
specify what Cloud Network you are working on.
| | 04:07 | Much like the Amazon S3 account, you get
to test these settings before you commit.
| | 04:12 | Then you add the Destination.
| | 04:16 | You can also specify FTP.
| | 04:18 | This is probably the
easiest of any of them to use.
| | 04:21 | You simply enter in the information
that's given to you by your web host in
| | 04:23 | these information fields here.
| | 04:25 | Once you have got that done, you can test at
the bottom or simply just Add the Destination.
| | 04:30 | This is the exact same way that you
connect via FTP to any other site. Pretty easy.
| | 04:36 | Finally, there is Email.
| | 04:38 | I know I said that FTP was the
easiest way to add a remote destination.
| | 04:42 | But honestly, email is
probably a little bit easier.
| | 04:45 | The problem with email s that if
your backups are larger than 10MB,
| | 04:48 | you're probably going to encounter some
failures when you're sending the email to yourself.
| | 04:53 | So if your WordPress site is any bigger than
10MB, and let's be honest, it probably is,
| | 04:58 | you are not going to be able to
utilize email for a full backup.
| | 05:00 | You may, however, be able to send your
daily database backups through email, and
| | 05:04 | if that is something you want to do, go for it.
| | 05:06 | All you have to do is type
out the Destination Name,
| | 05:09 | that's just the name of whatever you're
calling this, so my email, and then the Email address.
| | 05:13 | Once you click Add
Destination, you're ready to go.
| | 05:17 | All of these options give you a way of
putting your backups somewhere else other
| | 05:21 | than inside of the local
installation of WordPress.
| | 05:24 | My recommendation is to set up at
least two of these, maybe even three.
| | 05:28 | And that way, each and every time a
backup is created, you can send it to one
| | 05:33 | of these locations, because remember, if it
doesn't exist in three places, it doesn't exist.
| | 05:38 | Backing up your web site is so important
and I hope by now, you understand that.
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ConclusionFinal thoughts| 00:00 | We've come to the end of our
WordPress Multisite journey.
| | 00:02 | I hope you had as much fun as I did.
| | 00:04 | Be sure to check out the wpmudev.org
site for all of those great plug-ins we
| | 00:09 | used throughout the course.
| | 00:11 | If you'd like more information on
WordPress or how to use it, be sure to check
| | 00:14 | out the other great training
titles here in the lynda.com library.
| | 00:17 | For more information about WordPress,
be sure to visit the wordpress.org site.
| | 00:21 | Thanks for joining me for
creating a blog network with WordPress.
| | 00:24 | Again, my name is Justin Seeley
and I hope to see you again soon.
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