Keeping our web hosting fresh and up to date with the latest features and functionality is one of our top priorities to ensure our web hosting and reseller customers have the most advanced web hosting control panel on the market. In keeping with this ethos, we have added two brand new one click-install scripts to your eXtend web hosting control panel; WordPress MU (multi user) and BuddyPress. These are really exciting web hosting scripts, both offering a world of opportunities for your to add a new social element to your existing website or to create a brand new standalone social networking website.
WordPress MU is the mutli-user version of WordPress giving users the ability to create multiple blogs and users running off one domain name, be it “blog.domain.com” or www.domain.com/ blog. “Now with MU we’re making it as easy to create a thousand blogs as it was to create a single blog with WordPress 3 years ago. By building on the base of WordPress and syncing development, we get the benefit of the huge ecosystem in plug-ins and themes that has developed around the project.” You can find out much more about the software the possibilities at the official website: http://mu.wordpress.org/
Install it on your web hosting and use it for:
- Multiple blogs covering specific subjects related to your industry
- User generated blogs running off your brand
- Internal profile accounts for employees
- Creating a blog community
Get more ideas at the official site’s showcase http://wordpress.org/showcase/flavor/wordpress-mu/
BuddyPress allows you to use the WordPress MU platform to create your very own social networking site packed full of the features users have come to expect from their social network and more, and all for free! “BuddyPress will extend WordPress MU and bring social networking features to a new or existing installation. BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact.” Read more about all the advanced features ready to be installed in just a few clicks http://buddypress.org/
Install it on your web hosting and use it for:
- Creating a social network!
- Stand alone or fully integrated with your existing website
Both of these are ready to be installed and if you are one of our resellers they are also available to offer to your clients as part of their web hosting account as well.
Installing WordPress MU as a stand alone
To install and activate WordPress MU follow these steps:
1. Log in to your eXtend web hosting control panel
2. Click on the WordPress MU icon in ‘CGI scripts’
3. Choose the location to install the script e.g. www.home.com or www.home.com/buddypress etc
4. Click ‘install’
5. Go to that location in your web browser
6. Check you are happy with all the details (we have pre-filled the fields for you), enter your contact email and click ‘submit’
7. Make a note of the log in details and click ‘log in’
Installing BuddyPress as well as WordPress MU
To install and activate BuddyPress follow these steps:
a. Log in to your eXtend web hosting control panel
b. Click on the BuddyPress icon in ‘CGI scripts’
c. Now follow the exact same steps from step 3 to 7 as described above
Once you have done those, follow these steps:
1. Where is says “The plug in page is not visible to normal users. It must be activated first” click on ‘activate’
2. You will be taken to ‘site options’. Enable the ‘plug ins’ tick box and then ‘update options’ to save these changes
3. Go to ‘plug ins’ and activate BuddyPress
4. To activate the pre-installed BuddyPress them (not required to make it work) go to ‘site admin’, then ‘Activate BuddyPress default home theme’.
5. Go to ‘Appearance’ and activate the theme
Log in to your Heart Internet customer control panel to get started
It never ceases to amaze me, just when you think Heart could not get any better you go and do this. You guys are superb, kudos to all those at Heart for another triumph and for staying up to date with the latest software/CGI scripts.
Blogs, forums and networking. Web 2, a social nightmare, time consuming, yet fast becoming a commercial necessity.
Why?
I have long felt significant peer pressure to install a word press as a blog to run along my websites. Here it is!
Whoo Hoo!
That said, I already have a forum which is quite popular. Yet I have never understood what a blog brings to the mix that a forum does not? Plus what ever it does bring why is it so vital. I have seen sites with blogs, forums and links to other blogs. Blogs that look like websites and used as such.
In a nutshell……Where does a blog end and a website begin?
I know the official definition is:-
The word blog is short for web log, and is strictly a record of the changing content of your website. People who were interested in the content of your site would register to receive your blog, and would be informed whenever a page on your site was updated.
But why is there a need for a website with a forum to add a blog, why do I get this powerful need and itch to add a blog?
I can see the pain so what is the gain please?
smiles
Paul
Paul
WordPress is moving towards being more than just blogging software and has many of the traits you would associate with a CMS, and many webmasters use WordPress for this purpose. There are countless high quality (and free) templates, plug-ins and widgets to install as well. It is a massive time and cost saver.
With regards to why have a blog? A blog allows for much more detailed and in-depth posts than you would expect on a forum, and allows you to express ideas in a more appropriate format than a forum.
Cheers
Matt
Just out of interest how does wordpress mu and buddypress cope on shared servers? How long before it would need to be moved?
We often use WordPress as a CMS. Throw in a few plugins and not only can the back end be branded but you can also hide some of the more dangerous options, leaving a simple to use CMS for your client. Install another plugin and suddenly you have e-commerce, add another and you have a gallery. Now WordPress MU and BuddyPress is available on one click install then anyone can start their own social network website! What if something goes wrong? Not very often, but it can! We just reach for the web browser and we have 24/7 online help to boot!
So what is a blog? I would begin by describing it as a website which allows (or can allow) feedback from visitors about it’s content and also allow responses to that feedback. I bit like a group of people sitting round a table talking about a newspaper article. Of course, it can be so much more, such as a tool to help generate traffic. We are in the process of putting together a blog for just such a purpose. Integrate it with Twitter and Facebook and every new article can be instantly published for thousands to see!
Simply too big an opportunity to turn down.
Paul.
Stuart
There are no set limits on how many users you can create, as with anything to do with web hosting (webpace, bandwidth, databases etc), it all depends on how data intensive a users is. For example, one user may use up the majority of the resources quicker than 10 depending on how it was used.
Matt
Stuart. I have a several wordpress installs on a shared heart internet server. One of them is a million+ visitors per month site and I would say the shared server handles the site very well (0.3s average download time in google webmaster tools crawl stats). The trick with a high traffic wordpress site is to user the super cache plug in. If you don’t that the site will slow massively under heavy traffic.
Hope that answers your question.
Matt,
I have an uncanny knack of asking stupid questions, but one question I would like answered is this…
If we were to create a BuddyPress website and leave it open for anyone to register, then would I be be in breach of conditions as we would effectively be giving away websites (blogs) and hosting in the form of web space? If so, then how do we operate a website such as this, charge per account?
Perhaps we could do with a tutorial on getting a website such as this marketed and off the ground?
Paul.
Hi Paul,
Yes, we would expect you to run it as a commercial business. However you can of course give blogs to your friends or family for free. If you wanted to give blogs free to anyone then I would reccomend getting a dedicated server.
Jonathan
Hello!, i recently upgraded buddypress to version 1.1 however during this time the update script failed. i wondered if heart would upgrade the script? many thanks
Hi Oliver,
Yes we are looking at it. I’m not sure when it will be out but we will update the blog when it is.
Jonathan
Will you ever allow multiple databases with the same username and password? Larger WPMU sites can benefit from a plugin which splits the data over multiple databases for both speed of accessing the data, and to minimise data loss if one database were to become corrupted. I enquired about the feasability of this when manually setting up a WPMU installaton just prior to Heart offering the one-click installation, and was told it wasn’t possible.