 | newtonsongbird on Suggestions |
 | Kim Parsell on Core Contributor Handbook |
 | Lance Willett on We’re getting very close… |
 | Muhammad Abdi on Core Contributor Handbook |
 | Maor Chasen on We’re getting very close… |
I worked some more on the patch we had for #19810. The original patch had features that exceeded our original scope (namely: the ability to bulk-add users). I removed that, cleaned up the JS a bit, and we now have a patch that can probably go in and be iterated.
http://core.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/19810/19810.5.patch
Next up is making it work in the add-user-to-blog interface in the Network Admin.
These are the notes from a breakout discussion on multisite at the core meetup with me, @markjaquith, and @nacin. As with all of these discussion summaries, please remember that they’re just discussions. I’m posting the notes for transparency purposes, not to say that these are the only things discussed or decided. I’m working from notes, and sometimes you don’t get everything down when you’re taking notes (next year I’ll record these things instead).
Who can lead this joint? Since the merge and Donncha moving on to other things, we had Ron for a cycle, Pete for a cycle, then no one. It would be good to have someone act as component owner.
Multisite needs parity with the single site experience. Includes UI, UX, copy/strings, install flexibility (subdomain etc), installation ease (add a site).
First we need to improve the manage/use experience, then fix install stuff and get it into the dashboard to turn on multisite.
We need a useful global dashboard.
We need to have flexibility in where sites and networks live — should be able to live wherever you want on one network. Subdomains/subdirectories/mapping/whatever you want, mixed subdomain/subdirectory, custom domains, global permalink consumer/router.
Need to fix different workflows: adding users to network, adding users to site, invitations. User signup, creation, assignment, invitation all need new flow
We need parity between plugins and themes. Enable vs activation is confusing, need to improve language, indicators. Need ability to network enable but disable for individual sites. Need to standardize network enable/activate etc for plugins/themes. Network activated plugins don’t show in individual site’s plugin list, which is confusing.
UX ACTION ITEM — Include network activated plugins in the plugins menu and give message that it is automatically on for the whole network (if admin/have rights to see plugins screen).
UX ACTION ITEM — Autocomplete usernames or site names for network admin and for superadmin everywhere.
UX ACTION ITEM — Get multisite tag/indicator on plugins in directory, add multisite specific/required indicator.
ACTION ITEM — Get rid of MS-FILES.
ACTION ITEM — Enable install in subdirectory so you can use externals.
Great; i love solutions with mutlisite and i wait now for an global dashboard; current i use the root blog (1) for this job. Great news
I wish the team mery christmas and really nice new year. Best regards
Good.
These are items that interest me.
An updated website (multisite), to version 3.3, and found some difficulty in managing permissions and what is accessible by users. It may not have found the right plugin. It aims to improve this item?
+1 Happy to help as time allows. I’ve been involved with and rolling out more and more Multisite installs… there’s definitely a lot of space for improvement.
The wordpress.org infrastructure work has reminded me how much I dislike having the Super Admin/Network Admin pages appearing alongside the regular per-blog admin pages. I think the Super Admin menu should go away, away to a separate network admin area. Ticket 14435 is where I’m scratching this itch. The patches there move the network admin pages to wp-admin/network/. It is a completely separate admin area just for network management. It is available only from the main site url. Visiting wp-admin/network from other blogs in the network will redirect to the one true place. If you have multiple networks, they each will have a network admin area.
While I was in there I added a network plugins.php. Network activations and deactivations happen here and only here. Network activate/deactivate is no longer available from the blog admins.
Thoughts?
Agreed. We can brush up the UI for these screens in 3.1.
Sounds good to me and will make it less confusing.
This bugs me too, and is especially confusing when you’re on the network admin page but everything else is telling you you’re in the admin area for a member blog. +1
Off-topic: Why is this post tagged with ‘multisite’ and ‘network’ yet only the ‘multisite’ tag is clickable? (Underneath Ryan’s name at the top.)
I think because this is the only post in that tag.
It’s only clickable if there are other posts with that tag. Note the “(3)” following “multisite” — that’s how many posts there are with that tag.
EDIT: Bah, too slow! 
I like this.
I’m a little hesitant of “It is available only from the main site url.” Super/Network admin being able to be in the context of the current blog is very handy. It saves a lot of extra text entry and clicks having to look up a blog.
I think there are benefits of making it blatant that one is logged in as a super admin. It’s a good reminder not to be 
There are definitely some work flow advantages to allowing network admin to be in the context of the current blog. Things like being able to “Add user to current blog” from network/users.php would be nice. We need to document some common work flows and see how best to accommodate them.
Other things to consider. Make the Network Admin link sensitive to context. Link to network/themes.php if on themes page. Link to site editor if on other pages. Or, add an action to Favorite Actions for super admins.
From a workflow perspective, I agree with Lloyd. I was going to suggest using context variables, but I see Ryan beat me to it 
I added some code to save the blog ID for the last blog admin area visited. This allows linking back to that blog from the network admin. Just an experiment. I really like having a canonical network admin and this is an attempt to have it both ways.
Justin has a nice theme developer oriented review of the nav menus.
Ron talks about upgrading from MU to 3.0.
WP_ENABLE_MULTISITE is now WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE. This is the constant that turns on the Tools > Network menu. I think the new name will prevent confusion with actually enabling multisite itself, versus just allowing network creation to occur.
And just for context, if you don’t know what Andrew is talking about, this is the constant that you set in your wp-config.php to turn on the menu so that you can configure multi-site functionality, e.g.
define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );
Well thought move.
Beau are discussing. 
Pete Mall 7:19 pm on February 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I’m working on the patch for the add-user-to-blog screen in the Network Admin. Patch should be up on the ticket in the morning.