Recently I blogged about a new Matt Goss fan site I created gossy.us. Since then I have completely overhauled the site and ventured for the first time into the world of Wordpressmu (wmpu).
My main reason for moving to wmpu was because I discovered the buddypress plugin which turns your wmpu site into a social network similiar to Facebook. Installation however turned out to be a real challenge and I was surprised at the complete lack of advice on my issue on the web. My current host is a Windows server. Technically speaking wpmu should install on a Windows server but despite following every piece thrown at me from Twitter to the support forums nothing worked. My host did their best and even though isapi_rewrite was installed I was stuck in an endless loop installing, getting stuck at an IISPassword error, back to installation again…
So I finally gave in and opened an account with HostGator and sure enough my problems were solved. Next nightmare was figuring out themes and wpmu. Again the documentation was either poor or I was being completely thick, the latter is often unheard of 
In Wordpress a theme is simple, install it and your site skin changes. In wpmu/buddypress themes are very different and I will blog this as I’m sure I won’t be the first or last to be baffled. Buddypress basically needs 3 themes. One theme for your home page and any new pages you create, one theme for your member/group pages and another theme for any new users who wish to create their own blog.
So when you install a buddypress theme this should come in two parts, home and members. They’re installed in two separate folders which is a problem for maintenance as you have two sets of images, php and css files to work with. But of course these themes are not much use to a new member who wants to create a blog on your wpmu domain. They aren’t running a buddypress site so they need your standard Wordpress themes installed, enabled and available for selection.
In any case I eventually got there and have enjoyed playing with new widgets and getting to grips with this exciting multi user platform. I’ve now ventured into installing bbpress which is a message board with its own set of themes and plugins! Again this has been fraught with problems. It seems the latest stable install doesn’t play ball with some of the basic plugins/features you’d expect with any decent forum. I’ve uninstalled it and rolled back to version 0.9 but still these plugins aren’t work. Most bizarrely icons aren’t being displayed despite the absolute paths being correct.
It remains to be seen if the site will be a success as most users prefer to hang out at the Matt Goss Forum but while they post reviews and photos I wish they’d make the jump to using gossy.us to setup their own blogs and have their efforts perpetually available to view and be commented on.
