WPMU plugins you ought to have

Jim Groom's face added to painting of a sleeping child. Text says "Every night, I stay up, just to watch Jim Groom sleep.

jimmy_groom

Here are a few plugins I’ve got in the WPMU install I’m running. Most, if not all, were a result of my sordid association with WPMU cult leader, Jim Groom. He’s likely posted on each multiple times but it’s hard to find them among all the old cartoons and toy posts- besides I had to make a list to send to our people so I figured I might as well post it.

These are all installed in the mu-plugins folder.

More Privacy Options
This let’s users set up additional options in the privacy page for blog admins. You can make sure the blog is visible only to those logged into your WPMU site, only visible to members of the blog, or only visible to admins.

User Themes Revisited
This plugin gives individual blog admins the ability to tweak CSS or theme templates individually- the edit theme ability in single user. It’s a little awkward at first but really a key plugin for me. Essentially, you copy the theme over to the individual blog and then can edit it without changing things for everyone on the WPMU install.

New Blog Defaults
This plugin lets you customize how the new blogs are created. You can customize a lot of key elements and do things like putting the initial “Hello World” post in draft mode so users don’t have to delete it.

Set Password on Blog Creation1
This lets people set their password initially if they sign up through the web based process. That takes one step out of the process.

Akismet
Spam killer. You’ll need a WP API key. Just sign up at wordpress.com and you’ll get one. Additional API details

Akismet Credit
Gives Akismet credit so you’re in compliance with the license. Thanks to D’Arcy.

TanTan Spam
Another simple spam filter that helps. It gives you a simple captcha. It works very nicely in conjunction with Akismet.

For the plugins folder

Unfiltered
This plugin will let you embed google docs etc. in the blog. The reason this doesn’t happen by default (as in regular WP) is because this can be a dangerous thing if people who are authors want to do you harm. That’s why I put it here and let individual blog admins activate it. Depending on who’s allowed to write, you may not want it running.

Other plugins I happen to enjoy

cForms II – an UNBELIEVABLY powerful online form creator with more abilities than you’ll ever be able to use. When Google forms doesn’t cut it, this one will.

feedwordpress – when you’re ready to start messing around with aggregating content from other sources via RSS, this is the way to go.

footnotes – Lets you make footnotes on the fly with great ease. I either stole this from Dan Meyer or was forced to find it because I couldn’t believe he hand coded in the footnotes on his site. Clearly, I am erratic and non-linear enough that I need footnotes desperately.

Tippy – Lets you create pretty sophisticated tool tips without having to know anything. Really a neat plugin.


1 This one costs money.

10 thoughts on “WPMU plugins you ought to have

  1. Nice, thanks Tom! Btw, the link for the footnotes looks like you left a bit too much in there, but it’s easy to figure out.

    I was also always envious of Dan and his snazzy footnotes…at long last I have the power too!

    1. Appreciate it Jeff. I’ll fix it when I get home.

      Sadly, I’m at work and can’t test that link because it’s blocked. I just cut and pasted it from google and hoped for the best.

  2. Wow, thanks for this list, Tom. Timing couldn’t be better – I just installed WPMU for a new and awesome project on Friday, and this gives me a great place to start. Pretty lame that the password plugin costs money though. I almost feel like I should build it myself.

  3. Awesome list, Tom, the folks at DTLT are right, you really are the best (grumble, grumble). The New Blog defaults is just what I needed, and I ma missing the create password plugin update for 2.8.x since my account with WPMU Dev premium expired, can you help a brother out? 🙂

    Finally, glad you are seeing the genius of Userthemes, that plugin is a must in my mind, and I figured it would be for you given how much you like to make things purty, hippie.

  4. Like I said, these are nothing but the post-processed leavings of Jim “WordPress” Groom. So much so, that I wasn’t even sure what I didn’t get directly from you.

    I always liked, and wanted to use, userthemes but it just wasn’t working for me until this latest update.

  5. Nice list Tom, but even better is the image…hilarious!

    p.s. You guys don’t know me, but I do a lot of WP and WPMU work and have some Google alerts setup for both so I end up catching your posts;)

  6. Another thanks for the list. I’m hoping to set something up for next semester at MSU for a couple of our ed tech courses and this is just what I need to dig in to WPMU.
    And that image is hilarious and disturbing at the same time, LOL.

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