Last week I wanted to create a website with multiple profiles under one domain. After looking around a bit, WordPress MU seemed like a smart way to go, so I installed it.

It’s great, potentially disruptive software, and everyone should have it who wants it. I thought I’d share what I learned during my install to make it even easier than it was for me on the next person.

WordPress MU

First, what is it? WordPress MU is the WordPress blogging software we all know and love except you can create as many blogs as you need to from one installation.

Do you have a team or network of people where everyone needs an individual blog (5, 10, 1000 blogs)? You can use WordPress MU. This is how WordPress, the organization, describes it:

WordPress MU, or WordPressµ, is the multi-user version of the WordPress blogging application, that allows you to run hundreds of thousands of blogs with a single install of WordPress, and is most famously used for WordPress.com.

Once you install WordPress MU, it’s all self-serve. Your folks surf to your domain (e.g., change.gov), sign-up just like any other website, a blog is generated for them, and away they go. Obviously, as the administrator of this blog network, you can set some permissions (by clicking or unclicking a few check boxes) so that users have more or less control over their blog.

Giving Back

Why am I posting about this?

• I got off track installing WordPress MU but wouldn’t have if a few things had been clearer
• The Web giveth, and I’m giving back
• If Dave Winer can explain EC2 to poets, the same can be done for WordPress MU
• The revolution will not be televised

Installing Basic WordPress

If you don’t know, WordPress for a single blog is super simple to install. In fact, it’s so simple WordPress calls it the “famous 5-minute install.” And that’s true.

You can read their six steps for doing the 5-minute install by clicking the link just above, but the condensed version can be said in a single (run-on) sentence:

Find a Web host and create a database within your account, then download WordPress and type the name of your database and your login/password into one file (called “wp-config.php”), upload all of the WordPress files to your hosted account, and then point your browser to a url (http:://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php) so a WordPress script can do a little alignment magic behind the scenes.

That’s it.

I’m not saying that anyone could install a WordPress blog guided by my sentence (better to use the WordPress instructions), but the point is there’s not a lot to it.

Installing WordPress MU In Six Easy Steps

So, that’s WordPress. How is WordPress MU different to install?

Seriously, not much. The biggest difference is that you don’t type the name and login/password of your database into the configuration file (wp-config.php), instead you type that information into a setup page in your browser after you’ve uploaded the WordPress MU files to your hosted account.

In my cae, I knew the WordPress files needed to talk to the database in my hosted account . . . just like a WordPress (single blog) installation, so my impulse was to give the configuration file the information to do that. But with WordPress MU this step is done last, in the browser, via a form.

What I’m saying is that once you’ve downloaded the WordPress MU packet of files, you never touch them. You just upload them to your hosted account.

After you upload the files, you point your browser to your domain (e.g., example.com/index.php), which causes a Web form to appear. Then you enter the name and id/pass of your database. You also have to enter a “hostname,” which in my case was “mysql.example.com,” but what your hostname is called will be obvious once you setup your database.

So, installing WordPress MU is a six-step process:

1. Create an account with a Web host (I used DreamHost)

2. Create a database (and get the hostname, the database name, and the id/password)

3. Download WordPress MU

4. Upload WordPress MU to your hosted account from your desktop with an FTP client

5. Point your browser at your domain (“example.com/index.php”) and fill-in the Web form with the database information

6. Log-in as the administrator and choose your settings

You should follow the WordPress MU documentation on how to do this, but, again, the point is there’s really not much to it. The biggest obstacle isn’t technical it’s, in a word, the unknown. But take my word for it, installing WordPress MU is completely doable for the technical and non-techical alike.

Plus Two Easy Prep Steps

What’s left? In addition to the six steps above you have to do a couple of prep steps to make the install work correctly, and since some of the words are unfamiliar, it can make the whole thing seem like a big deal.

But it’s not. Here’s why.

The first prep step after you’ve created your account (and purchased a domain, of course) is to ask your host to enable “wildcard subdomains” for your domain. What is this? This wildcard configuration allows WordPress MU to generate the url for a new blog on your network (e.g., example.com/mynewblog).

But, the nice part is your host’s support team does this for you (or it may be possible to do it manually, if you wish). Send them an email, done.

Second, after you’ve uploaded your WordPress MU files from your desktop to your hosted account through your FTP client, you need to change what are called permissions on two folders: the primary folder that all of your files are in and the content folder (i.e., “wp-content”).

You change the permissions on the folders so that your hosted account can interact with, or write to, your files during installation. But, you change them back after you’ve filled in and submitted the Web form in your browser and the installation is complete so they can’t be written to, which makes intuitive sense, right?

Without getting into too much detail, permissions on your folders correspond to numbers. The numbers “777″ mean your hosted account has permission to “write” to the files in your folders and “755″ means they don’t. So, change the permission numbers from 755 to 777 on your two folders right after you’ve uploaded your WordPress MU packet – do the install – and then change them back to 755.

How do you change permissions on a folder? Your FTP client will explain exactly how to do it. Go to the help section and search for “change permissions” or “setting permissions.” If your FTP client doesn’t, get a new one. Again, it is easy, easy once you understand the purpose and the goal.

Okay, here are the six steps for installing WordPress MU again, this time with the two prep steps:

1. Create an account with a Web host

1a. Prep: Enable wild-card subdomains (have your host’s support team do it for you)

2. Create a database (and get the hostname, the database name, and the id/password)

3. Download WordPress MU

4. Upload WordPress MU to your hosted account

4a. Prep: Change the permissions on your main folder and content folder from 755 to 777 with your FTP client (use the instructions in your FTP client)

5. Point your browser at your domain (“example.com/index.php”) and fill-in the Web form with the database information and click submit (then change your folder permissions back to 755)

6. Log-in as the administrator and choose your settings

Your Situation May Be Different But Not Very

In the end, this is all it took for me to install WordPress MU, and if you gain anything from this post I hope it’s that nothing in the install process should deter you from using this blogging platform for multiple users. Yes, there are a couple of things that might be different about your host, or your FTP client, or your errors, but the above is at the core of any install, 95% there.

It was @andrea_r who got me out of my particular dead end with her free e-book on “Installing WordPress MU” and made me realize it can be done almost as quickly as the original WordPress install. This is where I’d go for help if I got stuck.

Rock the MU.

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