wpmu dev premium – Behind the Scenes

Big News for Tripawds Bloggers!

Basic Tripawds Blogs will always be free. Jerry wouldn’t have it any other way.

In order to do this, however, we have updated our Supporter framework to offer three levels of support with even more enhanced features to those who wish to help keep this community online with an ongoing PayPal subscription. Please review the updated Tripawds Supporter account feature comparison for complete details or consider upgrading your blog now.

Act Now to Save on Supporter Upgrades

We are offering a discount to the first five lucky Tripawds Bloggers who upgrade their account! Use coupon code TRISUPP25OFF to receive 25% off your first payment of any Tripawds Supporter level! This coupon code can only be used five times so upgrade your blog now and save!

A Few Things All Tripawd Bloggers Should Know

If you have not yet upgraded your blog, you may notice some new content being inserted into your posts and pages. (See links at the top and bottom of this post.) Consider upgrading your blog to immediately remove these ads and Support links.

Supporters can remove ads from other favorite Tripawds blogs from their Dashboard -> Supporter Status -> Disable Ads.

There are now three Supporter levels to choose from for showing your appreciation of this community and enabling enhanced features on your blog.

Certain plugins are now only available for Supporter II blogs. If you are a current Supporter, do not deactivate these plugins or you may need to upgrade to get them back.

Premium Themes are now only activated for Supporter III blogs. If you had previously activated a premium theme, do not change it or you will need to upgrade to switch back.

If you are a subscriber and had the Supporter Badge displaying in your blog, you will need to replace it with your current level badge by dragging the Supporter Widget back to your sidebar from the Appearance -> Widgets tab in your dashboard.

You can upgrade, modify or view the current status of your Tripawds subscription anytime from the Supporter tab in your dashboard.

What do you get for your money?

Most importantly, Tripawds Supporters gain the satisfaction of knowing that they help us maintain the largest online community for three legged dogs and their people. Below is a comparison of all account features. Please visit the Supporter Upgrade page and select your site to see additional monthly or quarterly payment options and pricing.

Tripawds Blogs	Free	Supporter	Supporter II	Supporter III
Banner Ads on Blog
Disable Ads on Other Tripawds Blogs		(5)	(10)	(25)
Basic Comment Spam Protection
Subscriptions to Blog Comments
Enhanced Spam Protection
Simple Contact Form Creation
Enhanced Video Embedding
Search Engine Optimization
Blog Statistics & Shortlinks
Premium Blog Theme Selection
Personal Tech Support
Upload Space	25 MB	100 MB	250 MB	1 GB
Cost	FREE	$25 / year	$49 / year	$129 / year
–

Did we mention the coupon? Act now to save 25% off your first payment of any Tripawds Supporter level with code: TRISUPP25OFF (Only 5 coupons available!)

How did we do it?

The Tripawds Supporter framework is powered by the simple to use yet massively configurable Pro Sites plugin from WPMU Dev. After network-activating this multisite plugin, we were able to easily create the Supporter options and associated account features above by enabling different modules and assigning certain plugins and themes to each Pro Site level.

We created these Supporter levels to automatically remove ads and enable enhanced blogging features for sites with recurring PayPal subscription plans. Many other payment gateways are also available. A few options we chose not to apply include the ability to:

Prohibit or limit publishing of posts and/or pages for selected Pro Site levels.
Provide “unfiltered_html” permission to specific user types for selected levels.
Restrict XML-RPC and Atom Publishing to selected Pro Sites.
Only allow blog access for paid sites.
Limit BuddyPress group creation and messaging to users of a Pro Site.

Pro Sites includes far too many features for me to list here. The multiple Supporter levels, ease of use, coupon codes and robust statistics were reason enough for us to upgrade. Check out the Pro Sites plugin in action to see how you might use it for your multisite network!

New Custom Admin Bar Menu Improves Navigation

Within minutes of announcing the new Tripawds admin bar menu in the tech support forum, one member replied…

Very nice…much easier to navigate!

wordpress multisite custom admin bar menu Thanks Meghan! That was our goal with implementing this new custom admin bar menu – to help users navigate the site, whether they are searching the forums, watching videos, chatting or browsing blogs.

The WordPress Admin Bar is the grey stripe visible to logged in members which includes menus with links to various user account and blog administrative tools. Now users will notice a new menu to the far left of the bar, no matter which blog they’re viewing.

Hover your mouse over “tripawds” at far left to expand the menu for easy access to some of the most popular resources this community have to offer. Don’t see the Admin Bar? Register today to take full advantage of this network!

How To Add Custom WordPress Admin Bar Menu

For WordPress multisite network administrators interested in how we did this, it’s simple with the free Custom Admin Bar Menu plugin from WPMU Dev. Sure, you could hack functions to remove or add links to the admin bar, but why bother? If you’re looking to add a whole new menu, this plugin makes it easy.

As usual, the team at WPMU Dev has created a sleek interface which allows for easy set-up and configuration. The plugin works with single WordPress sites and any multisite network.

configure wordpress multisite custom admin bar menu

Adding and sorting links is easy sort with the drag and drop interface. And you can even use a small image for the menu title (no more than 28px high). Make it transparent for best results.

TIP: Select the “External Page” URL type and include the whole address if you want to link to a certain page on a specific blog within your multisite network.

Select “Administrative Page” if you want to direct users to one of their admin tabs. And select “Site Page” if you want to include the domain.tld of the site being viewed.

Looking for more awesome WordPress multisite plugins? Checkout our list of all the plugins we use to power the Tripawds community or check out everything WPMU Dev has to offer!

And don’t miss my recent guest posts on ProBlogger about building an online community:

Best Multisite Plugins Build Tripawds Community

My recent ProBlogger guest post about building a successful online community received such positive feedback that I followed it up with more details about tactics we use to keep the Tripawds network feature rich and running smoothly.

For those who asked – and for any WordPress multisite admins interested in making the most of their network – the following is an overview of the specific plugins we use to create the Tripawds Community. I’ve included brief descriptions about what each plugin does with links for download info and to see the plugin in use.

Best WordPress Multisite Plugins to Build Online Community

Simple:Press Forums – This community simply would not be what it has become without the Tripawds Discussion Forums, powered by SimplePress, and we have nothing but good things to say about this easy to use yet robust plugin. While SPF can be network activated, we choose to host one main group of forums on the main News blog only.

Anti-Splog – A must have for any multisite admin! Prior to installing this robust plugin, stopping spam blog registrations was a terribly frustrating time-consuming task. Now they are easily and automatically blocked, with various methods and many configuration options.

Stop Spam! – We use Akismet and TypePad Anti-Spam to stop comment spam on all Tripawds blogs. Supporter Blogs get enhanced spam protection and a spam-free contact form with WP SpamFree.

phpFreeChat – I implemented the Tripawds Live Chat using this code long before PHP Free Chat became available as a plugin for WordPress. Recently, I’ve been testing the sleek new chat plugin from WPMU Dev and may be migrating to that soon.

Avatars – This plugin enables global avatars for all users and blogs, allowing members to upload an avatar and have it displayed wherever they comment, and in the recent posts widgets throughout the main site.

Supporter – This premium account framework allows us to automatically remove ads from Supporter Blogs, increase their upload space and enable enhanced features with an easily implemented PayPal subscription model.

Members Directory – This plugin allows us to easily create a searchable directory of all Tripawds members.

Blogs Directory – Like the above, this plugin creates a searchable directory of all Tripawds blogs.

Global Site Search – With the WordPress admin bar only providing a search field for the blog being viewed, we use this plugin to create a page for searching all blogs across the Tripawds network.

Personal Welcomes – We personally welcome all new members and send Supporters thank yous for upgrading their account with the email functionality and message templates this plugin provides.

Global Header & Footer – I used some legacy code I found long ago and wrote about how to create the blog ring style header and footer that appears on all Tripawds blogs. Now I’m considering using the WPMS Global Content plugin.

Recent Global Posts Widget – We show the most recent posts from all Tripawds blogs in this widget displayed throughout the News blog. We’re able to hard code this widget into our Chat and Forums page templates using the Recent Posts plugin. We use another widget plugin to show Recent Global Comments.

Recent Global Posts Feed – This plugin generates an RSS feed for all blog posts across the network and comes complete with a widget for displaying the feed link.

Blogs Widget – Using this plugin a widget showing recent (or random) blogs can be seen throughout the Tripawds News blog.

New Blog Templates – I recently activated this plugin to easily create a template for all new Tripawds blogs so they use the specific theme, widgets, blogroll links and settings that I specify.

Multisite Dashboard Feed – I wrote in detail about how we now show recent posts from all blogs in every user dashboard using the Multisite Dashboard Feed Widget.

WordPress CMS Theme – The Tripawds News blog uses the WPMU Nelo Custom CMS Homepage Theme which supports a custom navigation menu so we can facilitate network navigation.

133+ Theme Pack – We offer Tripawds bloggers more than 140 themes to choose from with this pack of thoroughly tested templates including custom headers, threaded comments, and more features guaranteed to work by WPMU Dev. Supporter blogs have access to additional premium themes.

Friends – With this plugin network-activated, Tripawds bloggers can “friend” each other and display widgets with all their friends on their blogs.

Invites – This simple plugin lets members send friends, family and colleagues invitations to register for their blog directly from an admin tab.

Simple Sitemaps – In addition to activating the All In One SEO plugin on Supporter blogs, we automatically generate Google-friendly sitemaps for all blogs with this plugin.

Admin Ads– Instead of using this plugin to show ads, we created a list of “quick links” to helpful content in all user dashboards. It is also helpful for announcing special events and site maintenance.

Admin Help Content – This plugin changes the WordPress help content that slides down when users click on the “Help” drop-down in their dashboard. We use it to direct members to our own Tech Support Forum and Help videos.

Subscribe to Comments – We auto-activate this plugin on Tripawds Supporter blogs so readers can subscribe to receive notification of comments on individual posts.

Viper’s Video QuickTags – This plugin also gets auto-activated for Tripawds Supporters to allow easy embedding of movies in their blogs from various video sharing sites. I wrote more details here.

Terms of Service – This plugin places your usage terms in a box on the signup form with the option of forcing new users to check a box stating they read it in order to continue

Support System – I use this comprehensive tech support ticket and FAQ system over at RVblogz.com, where we don’t have any discussion forums.

WordPress Pop Up! – Thanks to this plugin, visitors to the Tripawds News blog (who come from an external domain and have never seen the ad) will be shown a discreet pop-up directing them to the best advice the site has to offer. It is massively configurable and easy to use.

Help Videos – We provide numerous WordPress dashboard tutorial videos to help members make the most of their blogs.

BlogTalkRadio – We use these free internet radio broadcasting tools to produce Tripawd Talk Radio.

More Plugins Make Tripawds Blogs Even Better

Phew! As if that’s not enough, we also make various importer plugins available to all Tripawds bloggers so they can easily migrate their existing posts from Blogger, LiveJournal, Moveable Type and other platforms to our free blogs network. NextGen Gallery is the powerful plugin we use to manage the Tripawds Photo Galleries. And cformsII is the comprehensive contact form plugin we use on our primary contact page and for our two-part 2010 Tripawds survey. Finally, we have used the WPAudio MP3 Player plugin to stream mp3 files in the Tripawds Downloads blog.

Readers may notice that many of the plugins I describe above come from the fine folks at WPMU Dev. Lots of them are free, but some cost will cost you.

Like all good things, you get what you pay for. That’s why I recommend registering for a premium account to access all their plugins, every theme, and the awesome support they have to offer.

I hope this has been helpful. If you manage a multisite network, what plugins do you use to help build your community?

How Tripawds Got Their Feed Back

Tripawds bloggers may have wondered where their dashboard notice announcing the most recent Tripawds News blog post went a few weeks ago. If not, they’re certain to notice the new announcement listing the five most recent posts from all the Tripawds Featured Blogs.

With the WordPress 3.1.2 update, the “Dashboard Feed” option mysteriously disappeared, leaving site administrators no way to show recent posts in the dashboard of all blogs across the network. It left me wondering what the heck happened! I posted in the WordPress forums about our Missing Recent Posts Feed in User Dashboard, asking if anyone else noticed or had an answer as to why it was gone. Silence.

About a week later, one member finally confirmed the issue and came up with a fix. The solution, however, required hacking the functions.php file which would not work for this community since Tripawds members can choose from more than 130 blog themes. Thanks to our Supporter plugin from WPMU Dev, Tripawds Supporters have access to even more premium themes.

How to Show Recent Posts from RSS Feed in User Dashboard

Piet from WordPress Tips quickly developed this plugin to show the latest posts from the main site of a multisite install in the user dashboard of all sub-sites across the network. By default the widget displays the three most recent posts from the main site. While no configuration is required for those happy with these settings, the plugin can easily be modified.

Multisite Dashboard Feed Widget Configuration Options:

Edit msrss.php to add the feed of your choice. (Default: blog_id=1)
Edit msrss.php to change the number of posts displayed (Default: 3).
Edit msdbfeed.php to change the widget’s title. (Default: Recent Updates)
See installation instructions for complete details.

We took things a step further by adding the extra information and links shown below the recent posts, as shown in our screenshot above. We also created a created a custom feed for multiple blogs to use in the widget.

How to Create a Recent Featured Posts Feed

Tripawds uses the Recent Global Posts Feed plugin from WPMU Dev to generate our feed for recent posts from all member blogs. This convenient plugin includes a Recent Global Posts Feed Widget for showing our global posts feed as a sidebar widget.

Tripawds Recent Featured Posts

When we wanted to only show posts from certain blogs in Piet’s Dashboard Feed Widget, however, I turned to the WPMU Dev Forums for support. As usual, masonjames had a quick answer for creating our Featured Blogs feed. Following his suggestions, here’s how I did it:

Download the Recent Global Posts Feed plugin.
Save a copy and rename the file “recent-featured-posts-feed.php”
Edit line 3 to change the plugin name (Plugin Name: Recent Featured Posts Feed)

Next, I added the specific blogs we wanted to include in the feed by editing line 58 as follows:

$query = $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT * FROM " . $wpdb->base_prefix . "site_posts WHERE blog_id IN (1, 167, 500, 138, 113, 262, 3) AND site_id = %d AND blog_public = '1' AND post_type = %s ORDER BY post_published_gmt DESC LIMIT %d", $current_site->id, $posttype, $number);

This is the key part where you will need to replace the blog IDs for sites you want included in the feed:

WHERE blog_id IN (1, 167, 500, 138, 113, 262, 3) AND

Upload the file to wp-content/ and check your new feed. It’s that simple. All thanks to our WPMU Dev Premium subscription!

Download WordPress Guide To Easy Blogging

We considered posting this in the Tripawds Downloads blog, but it has much more to do with blogs than it is about three legged dogs.

Download Free WordPress Editors Guide

While we provide Tripawds bloggers with helpful WordPress tutorial videos, and do our best to answer any technical questions about blogging in the Tech Support forum, we want to provide more information for those who want it. That’s why we’re making this comprehensive guide detailing How To Publish a WordPress Blog available as a free PDF download.

This comprehensive WordPress How To Guide covers everything you need to know about writing posts and pages, customizing your blog layout, moderating comments and much, much more. And did we mention it is absolutely free? This is just another value added service we are able to offer thanks to our WPMU Dev Membership.