These two plugins, when used together, will let you bring in all posts to your main site and make them featured. And that’s what wp.com does.
* http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-featured-posts/
* http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/
Hello Ipstenu
Thank you first of all – this was very helpful and exactly what i was looking for.
The missing piece for me now is to know how to create the index page for my wordpress multisite. I guess you know a simple answer to that one as well.
– corrado
That’s what the featured posts plugin is for 🙂
If you want it to be your main page on your site (i.e. domain.com shows that) then you should make a static front page and toss [ra-featured howmany=1 readmore=1 showavatar=1] (or some variation there of) in as your content 🙂
Thank you again Ipstenu. This is of very great help for me. I have one more clarifcation about the setup and your wisdom in the matters is required.
How would you do what you described above in a scenario where you have 100’s of blogs ?
Would you decide which one of those blogs is the index blog and then set a static landing page for that index blog ?
I just want to understand the basic setup of the structure.
– corrado
Hi
I have installed the plugins but have one problem that they only pull text content to my index page as they are based on feeds. How can i make the pull pictures as well ?
thank you.
If you just use this:
* http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/
there’s a setting to push ALL posts to your main page. You do not need a special template.
See: homeschooljournal.net. That’s a regular blog theme, with some recent posts widgets o the home page. that’s it. nothing fancy.
The featured posts widget above is only if you want *some* of the posts. Pick one or the other.
@ Ipstenu
Yes i have checked the comments and pictures are pulled as well i have an issue though that i have limited space in the article introduction fields on our custom made landing page you know exactly like on wordpress.com where you see just a small edit from the original picture displayed on the blog that is being featured.
@ Andrea
thank you for your input.
Can/ how would i use the plugins in this scenario :
The Landing page is a a theme which we have developed,
the theme has article/blog introduction fields exactly like WordPress.com has on its landing page,
but
Our Article/blog introduction fields are of variable width, meaning that they are not all of the same size, we designed it very much like a newspaper and you know how a newspaper looks like, there are different blocks of different sizes and at the end of which it reads continue reading on page 32, only that the continue reading then leads you to that blog that was introduced on the landing page.
Additionally to the blocks of different size we have main headlines.
Each of these article introduction fields on our Landing page has a picture (optional) a headline, the authors name, about what the article/post/blog is and a few lines of text from the article itself.
So reguarding the amount of text that has to be displayed on the landing page can we at any point define how many lines are displayed in our article introduction fields and how d we solve the issue that we have fields of variable width ?
Thank you Andrea and Ipstenu
I have just uploaded a photo that shows you how it looks right now
can i use these plugins in this scenario ?
you can check it under this link
http://www.flickr.com/photos/corradoizzo/6520358091/
Your theme will be developed as a regular WP theme. Make it as you would for a single blog with multiple posts.
The SWT plugin will handle the permalinks. Everything else you asked was theme-development questions, not multisite specific.
For the picture, you just call the thumbnails. THe SWT has a check box to pull thumbnails as well. You can look at other themes which have a similar home page to the one you want and start there.
Once again,doing a theme like this is not multisite specific. It;s just a regular WP theme.
@ Andrea
We did everything and got the two plugins workin, they pull the text part of a post but not the picture.
contrary to your comment The SWT has no checkbox anywhere for pulling a picture or maybe we are just blind.
We ave another problem as well, we have updated to wordpress 3.3 and inside our network admin the featured post plugin display’s a line that says :
“There is a new version of Featured Posts Widget available. View version 2.8.3 details or update automatically.”
We run the update but the messagge is still there.
Anyway the problem we are having is that the plugin is not pulling the picture of the post.
we also get a fatal error when we click the “poplate posts” on the Global Tags Admin page :
Fatal error: Cannot use object of type WP_Error as array in /home/xxx/yyy.com/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/sitewide-tags.php on line 195
Misremembered it – see this post:
http://wpmututorials.com/plugins/sitewide-tags-update/
Just forget the Featured Posts plugin for the moment. Concentrate on getting SWT to work.
Tho it’s pretty much drop in, make a post, see it show up.
That worked thanks to the both of you – will test over the next few days and post here if something comes up.
