[Plugin: Yet Another Multi-Site Manager] Multi-Network & Mult-Site… Interresting Situation/Lim

Hello there!

I was hoping someone (hopefully the developer) could possibly help me out with something as it seems you have some experience here. Although I am not an expert I feel the 13 hours I have spent trying to resolve my issues have gotten me very familiar with the structure and logic of the plugins available to resolve my situation. I am however still having problem so I figured I would ask in hopes that I can save some time or at least head in the correct direction from the start.

Let me get right to it by briefly providing a summary of my environment. My situation is as follows:

* I currently have the latest wordpress 3.0 installed and running on a linux machine
* I have the default WordPress Multsite Features enabled and new sites are created as subdomains such as “subdomain.main-domain.com”
* All of the above including the default wordpress multi-site (network) capabilities, htaccess and config changes have been put in place and seem to be working correctly.

What that said… It seem what I am looking to accomplish as a whole is creating some issues for me and I am becoming more concerned that my current approach towards achieving my goals might be either wrong or won’t allow for a large scale multi-site/multi-network/multi-domain deployment.

As such I could really use some expert advice to whatever extent you might be able to provide some guidance. My goals are as follows:

1) I need the ability of giving users the option of selecting which domain name (owned by us) they want their subdomain-site located on.
2) I need the ability of giving users the additional ability of pointing their own domain (or subdomain) NOT controled by us (through an A or CNAME record on the users end) to our pull all content from their previously selected domain (subdomain account from one of the domains controled by us). The key here is that both (their domain and our assigned subdomain) would be accessible at the same time and where the URL’s would be relative to the original domain entered by the user.
3) I need the ability of being able to upload or enable custom themes and/or plugins for specific users/sites.
4) (NOT SURE IF YOU CAN ANSWER THIS ONE): On top of all of the above I am looking for a way to additionally allow individual users to assign INDIVIDUAL POSTS to a custom domain (or subdomain not control by us).

This essentially means that if every option would be in place then any internet users would be able to view an individual post on users site in three ways SIMULTANEOUSLY:

A) By visiting the Posts URL which would be relative to the subdomain the user select when he created his site which in turn would be located under a specific primary domain name (owned by us) which the user select when he created his site.
B) By visiting the Post URL, relative domain/subdomain OWNED BY THEM where such a domain/subdomain has been associated with their subdomain on our system by means of them adding a CNAME record (I think this is the only way but if possible also through an A name record).
C) By visiting a specific domain/subdomain OWNED BY THEM where such a domain/subdomain has been DIRECTLY associated with a SPECIFIC POST on our system. Meaning that when the user visits their associated domain name ONLY that one single post would show up as the homepage.

I have gone through many plugins more specifically these two:

* WP Multi Network: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-multi-network/
* Yet Another Multi-site Manager: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-multi-site-manager/

It seems to me that a combination of these two plugins may resolve my needs however it seems these are not working well together as I seem to be unable to get a users own domain name to map correctly to the applicable users subdomain. It does seem that the multi-network plugin is working in that it seems to allow for the switching of the main domain the user wants his subdomain to be located under.

Without going into a crazy set of questions as I know your busy I would just like to ask you these questions currently:
a) are you familiar with how I might be able to achieve what I am looking for?
b) it seems the Multi-Network Plugin is excellent in that it provides more customization for individual networks and their associating sites (beyond what the default wordpress multisite capabilities are)… is this a correct assumption?
c) If I am correct with the assumption above, do you know of any limitation of the Multi-network plugin specifically regarding preformance if one is dealing with a great deal of sites?
d) In your expert opinion, what is the best way to be able to enable specific plugins/themes for some users (if you were looking to provide different defaults for different “account types”) while still being able to enable specific themes and plugins for individual users/sites?

I read a bit about the “mu-plugins” and the “ms-themes” directories as well as “child themes” however there is surprisingly little information about how these are actually supposed to work and how I could use them to achieve my goals? Do you have any links or information you could share with me on this stuff?

I greatly appreciate any advice, assistance or comments you might have,

Chris