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.
“ …communication is the foundation of society, business and government. When you scale up communications, you change the world….As ever more people get connected, we see an acceleration in the way the Internet is used to coordinate action and render services from human input. We are witnessing the rise of a social nervous system. „ - Joshua Michelle-Ross being quoted by Tim O’Reilly
My question is do you think what’s happening on the Web right now, with communications, is as powerful a force as Citi, CDOs, and all the other superbugs?
I mean, think about it. It’s not only SXSW the Web has going for it. It’s also Instructables, AirBnB, and guides bringing key people to unspoiled rivers.
Adidas hasn’t forgetten what cool is – or could be – and we’re starting to hack education. You can play music on the iPhone or make it through videos on YouTube. Meanwhile, people are getting together to pick up trash for an entire country.
The novelty is everywhere and goes on and on. Will the Web ever quit? Pressure from the downturn only seems to make the activity stronger.
Maybe in spite of The Great Disruption something’s happening right now that we’re not entirely aware of, call it a Great Coordination. Which one will be stronger in five years? I’m betting on The Great Coordination by a whisker.
It’s not pregiven. So, don’t stop doing what you’re doing. But if we start to become aware, as Tim says, of “moving from “sensing” to “reacting,” from “cognition” to “coordination” and group action,” we might just reseed our economy and establish a culture to match.
Paul Saffo, the Silicon Valley futurist, makes the point in this interview with Michael Krasny that we’ve entered a third type of economy. He calls it a “creator economy,” one in which the central actor consumes at the same time they create.
This was preceded by, as we’re now painfully aware, the consumer economy, which was symbolized by the credit card.
Saffo points out that the consumer economy arose after WWII, powered by workers (and savers), when companies realized that they were producing more than people could consume. What to do?
So, three economies: producer, consumer, creator.
This isn’t news to most of us, but what’s interesting, in my mind, is to realize, absorb, how central marketing (and sales) was to making the consumer economy viable. It literally shaped the world’s awareness and attention. And TV was at the center of this effort to inflame the desire for more.
What happens when a society runs out of room to make unlimited things and, simultaneously, the method of communicating what’s worth having splits into a zillion threads? Like overnight.
We are about to find out. And I think, in general, we underestimate the depth and speed of change caused by digital/social media. This is why I strongly believe that display advertising on the Web is going to get turned on its head along with so many other things . . . no matter how much we kick and scream and insist it’s not.
Display (and search and social) is telling a new organizing story, and this time we’re all talking back.
This is a great example of how an ad can act like content, can be content on the Web.
It’s an interesting mix of short-form video (15 seconds long), mini banner, and longer-than-usual text. I found it at the bottom of an RSS feed for ZDNet’s Between the Lines blog on a “White House 2.0” piece.
I never shied away from this ad; it didn’t look like an ad, smell like an ad, or talk like an ad. It was content all the way. Sure, everyone likes whales, but that is so not the point.
(See a larger image here.)
Brian Morrissey, who I think has some really interesting insights about where advertising is going, writes that maybe there’s a case for interruption on the Web.
Here’s my comment to his post:
-
Brian,
I have Troy’s (from VideoEgg) PDF open on making the Web friendlier to brands from his post that you talk about above.
Do you really think this is about interruption? I don’t, and I don’t think Troy does either.
If we’re going to make the Web friendlier to brands, it also has to be friendlier to people. The move has to be one and the same.
Sure, this doesn’t mean people won’t put up with ads that mimic what they’re used to off the Web (like TV). For example, I love the big Apple ads on the NYTimes you refer to, but I simply put up with most of the prestitial ads on ESPN because I want the content.
Every time ESPN does that to me on the Web, it’s eroding its own brand as well as the advertiser’s, just a little every time.
Why not be as committed to me as the consumer as they are to the brand? It’s not even harder to do. Then, if they showed me “a big fun ad” as Troy talks about in his PDF, not only would I accept it, I’d welcome it.
In order to have “a media currency that measures discrete engagement,” which is Troy’s fourth idea to make the Web friendlier to brands, first you have to get people to engage.
Definitely, size and let’s call it “presence” (i.e., the banner does not disappear from the page as one scrolls down) are key to being noticed, but if engaging people is the goal – the very currency it all starts to be measured on (and therefore how the industry makes money) – then an ad’s size and presence has to be an integral part of making it happen, right?
In other words, the way the ad is presented can’t work against the goal of engagement or, really, the distributed, open structure of the Web.
ESPN is welcome to put an ad in front of me in a way that it’s hard for me to ignore, they should realize, though, that winning my full attention is the game. The NYTimes and Apple win this game every time, and the size/presence of the ad helps them do it.
-
Update: Speaking of ESPN ads that insert themselves between me and my content, T. Rowe Price thought that very thing would be a good idea (larger image, here).
There has to be a better way because just as I was about to enjoy a moment of Lakers battling Suns, T. Rowe Price is literally in my face, leaving me with the distinct feeling that this company doesn’t get me and likely has an old-school approach to investing. As for ESPN . . .
Most companies who want to tell people what they’re doing, who want to advertise, a straightforward and necessary enough thing, don’t really trust the Web. It’s a big, scary place. Chaotic. . . . a place where people do and say what they want.
The advertising agencies, whose job it is to help these companies, are freaked (big time) because they don’t know how to do creative work that’s successful, by some measure everyone agrees on, out on that big wide Web.
And, more importantly, they don’t know how to do successful creative work that they can bill for at the level that sustains them. That’s stressful.
So far, this panic is leading to two natural reactions and both are overreactions. The first is go big on the technology, as in, “If this is all about technology, then we’re going to own those bits, and nets, and targeting thingies.”
The second reaction is to go back to what’s known: big ideas, design, production. It’s an impulse to reclaim and re-own what made agencies what they are. Their leadership is rallying them around the idea that they are the ones who have always known and can deliver what customers want.
The first is a push into the future, the second is a retreat into the past. Neither will work.
And not because the tech ain’t great and the creative work ain’t hot, it is. Can be.
It’s because the vision of these two things, how they need to work together, is completely off. The easiest way, I think, to explain why is simply to say we aren’t getting where the energy for the next advertising revolution is coming from. It’s not coming from us, it’s coming from them. Them, those people . . . out there.
We are knocking ourselves out building the technology and designing the creative, when we really need to take a little of the technology and a bit of the creative and give it up, give it over to them.
Isn’t the point of advertising, of marketing, to get people’s attention, then engage, then promote action? If you want to do that on the Web, you don’t need gobs of big-idea creative, what you need is the right kind of media and the creative ways to catalyze connections.
You certainly don’t need robobots tracking coffee drinkers down with cream as they traverse the Web. Not only does no one care – it’s worse – they run.
Instead, what you need is to take a bag of coffee beans and let me find it in the places I like to be, through the people I know, and let me know that each bean I consume reduces the debt by $1, at which point that digital bag of beans is going to follow me around the Web in the most timely and interesting ways.
You get what I mean (I hope). But let me say it another way: On the Web, the creative and the tech only works, adds value, when it puts me to work. It’s the only way I can use the Web and get what I need out of it. Give it to me, serve it up in all of its relevant, remixable authenticity, and I will do exactly what you want, more.
I want to write a post about social networks without talking about the biggies like Facebook and Twitter. Hard to do. But what I care about, what amazes me about these networks, is how they allow us to share relevant and irrelevant things with one another that make us smarter and more aware.
What gets me going is not what Mark Zuckerberg or Ev Williams had for breakfast this morning, but how all of the people are using these two services, using the status update, the news feed, and the “share” link, to communicate brilliance.
I’m talking about an org like Ashoka, which used the “25 Random Things” craze to tell us some details that we’d probably never get to on their website, and, knowing two social networks are better than one, dropped some seeds:
http://twitter.com/AshokaTweets/statuses/1232346019
http://twitter.com/SteveCase/status/1232364415
I’m talking about Richard Branson/Virgin (. . . one and the same brand) taking us with him on a trip around the world through his video diary. When Virgin Atlantic takes its already great service and enthusiam into social networks, it flies off the page.
You and I are able to grab a piece of their mission (. . . To grow a profitable airline… Where people love to fly… And where people love to work.) and take it with us . . . take it to others.
And I’m talking about two people who want nothing less than the best job in the world, but need other people to help them win it from 29,000 other applicants (scroll down in the comments to see this stat). Going social makes them standout, it makes the goal understandable, it draws in the right support from their network one ring, two rings . . . four rings out. The network amplifies their intention.
Social networks are most definitely not about throwing sheep. And they’re not only about friends connecting and hanging out, which is important and foundational. They’re about relevance, trust, and consensus. They’re a potent ground for our unique, personalized, and pinpoint transactions.
Hey, instead of watching the Dow deflate (down 3.4% today) why don’t we study and participate in all of the ways people, and entrepreneurs, and businesses are using social networks? There’s a ton of value there. They’ll be a big part of our next economy.
I wrote this bit for a potential client last week to help explain the value of (real) display advertising. I had Federated Media firmly in mind when writing it and will certainly use them if the client wants to use display ads:
-
Search is one primary way people find your website, display advertising is another.
A display ad is any Web ad – i.e., a banner, rich media, or text – that isn’t presented based on a search query. That is, display ads aren’t paid listings you see on Google or any other search engine.
Display ads, instead, are the ads that you see on websites and blogs based on a guess about who you are from the content you’re looking at, or where you came from, or what you’ve bought, and so on.
Clearly, display ads, mostly in the form of banners, have been the pariahs of Web advertising because of their irrelevance to people like you and me whose attention they’re supposed to be attracting but often repel.
But, fortunately, it isn’t always this way. There’s an approach to display advertising that is actually quite effective. And that is when the websites and blogs that show these ads are handpicked for their relevance to the advertiser.
For example, six or seven websites with recognizable brands and a known demographic profile can be grouped together to give an advertiser the best chance of reaching and influencing the right people.
In this type of ad network, which supports what is known as conversational marketing, the advertiser is also required to be relevant to the audience it wants to speak to.
Because of this relationship, advertisers are confident they’ll be heard, and so they make an extra effort to communicate something meaningful through their display ads.
Not surprisingly, people respond. And it’s easy to understand why: The ad becomes an extension of the company’s brand rather than an interruption. It adds value, and, in the best scenario, becomes part of the conversation.
-
As a comment to Federated Media’s post on display and conversational marketing, I wrote:
-
That makes perfect sense:
audience + content + context
produces the greatest interest and opportunity for “conversation.”
37signals and its partners have also recognized the value of this approach with their “The Deck” ad network (http://decknetwork.net).
The Deck is all about putting the right advertisers with something relevant to say in the right environments with the best audience.
So, all of the basic elements for conversational marketing are in The Deck.
What’s interesting about what Federated Media is doing, IMHO (in addition to defining this kind of advertising in general), is it works with companies to think more actively and broadly about conversational marketing, and the Dice and Comcast approaches are a great example of that.
I love this approach.
But it also raises the question that if one has satisfied all of the basic requirements of a next-gen ad network – quality advertisers, ads, publishers, and audiences – then how much more engaging are these higher order, interactive conversations?
How much more value is generated for advertiser and audience, and what does it cost? Is there a way to personalize the conversation along the lines of Dice and Comcast in a way that scales?
Below is a Cisco display ad on cnn.com.
Is this content? Would you interact with it – can you? What would catch your attention and, even more, allow you to use your attention a little bit?
By the way, this ad rolls into a view that is, well, just as exciting as what you see here. The punch line: collaboration technologies.
Okay, show me. Let me get into it right here on the spot.
Two contradictory statements about where to place your money in online advertising, one in retreat the other in motion.
The first by Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP:
(In) display, I think there are questions. Search, i think there is a clear relationship (to effectiveness). The jury’s still out on display—in times like this, people start to question the value. Link.
The second by Ted Rheingold of Dogster:
Up 30% or not [Dogster's directly booked deal flow], the upcoming year will be very difficult and it’s critical all online publishers are ready to move beyond the banner and focus on custom integrated brand campaigns that give advertisers interactive exposure to precise demographic targets. The banner is not dead, but it’s becoming increasingly insignificant. Link.
If by “display” one only means “banner,” as Martin Sorrell does, then the best choice is search. But while Ted sees the same thing as Sorrell, that banners are ineffective, his solution isn’t search but rather integrated brand campaigns that give advertisers interactive exposure to precise demographic targets.
Display advertising is only going to fulfill its potential when it can be discussed in these terms: “integrated brand campaigns,” “interactive exposure” and “precise demographic targets.”
Banners blow.
This exchange on the future of employment is worth reposting because the idea of talent-driven institutions – that exist beyond this current crash – runs contrary to what’s been happening for many years:
Tommy Landry commented:
What most business people don’t get is that the market has accelerated faster than big corporations can keep up. In the end, the internet is the great equalizer, rewarding only the smartest and most nimble of competitors. One of those two factors is not enough, and big companies will always struggle to be nimble enough.
Hence the current trend of self-employment and virtual workforces. It’s gone past the idea of telecommuting, and this new economy will force our hands. Brace yourself, because I see over half the US population self-employed, contracting, or similar within three short years. With all the economic upheaval and layoffs, we’re already working toward it.
John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison replied:
The one point with which we disagree, Tommy, has to do with self-employment. Rather than heading towards an economy of the self-employed, we think the big shift means individuals and institutions will need each other more than ever. As it continues to become more important to monetize intangible assets, companies will re-imagine themselves as places where talented individuals thrive. There will be wrenching institutional changes required to create truly talent driven firms. In the meantime, the growing gap between the aspirations of talented individuals and the needs of institutions designed for scalable efficiency will drive many of these talented individuals to strike out on their own. But we view this growth of independent contractors as largely a transitional phenomenon, reflecting the misalignment, rather than a permanent condition. Individuals over time will eagerly seek out institutional homes that can help them to accelerate the development of their talent and amplify their impact on the world around them.
If only we all knew at birth that display advertising in the world of print gets its juice from itself and where it’s displayed.
For example, you’re reading Wired, you’re flipping through a piece about what you could be doing with your workouts in 2013, and you notice an evocative ad from Nokia in those pages about a new smart phone for athletes.
The point here is that you can’t separate the overall pull of the magazine, the interestingness of the article, and the creativity of the ad. There is no clear boundary.
That’s known, that’s accepted . . . in print, but almost completely unrecognized and unrealized online.
Yes, we could use the Web to combine these same three elements – let’s call them context (magazine), content (article), and curiosity (ad) – to engage connected consumers. But, what gives display advertising value in print is still lost in translation on the Web.
Fortunately, despite our best efforts to ignore the obvious value of this approach, display advertising, real display advertising that’s connected to services and ideas and helps connect people to products, is breaking through with a certain unstoppable brilliance.
This post was inspired by ChasNote’s post on display advertising versus graphical ads.
This was a conversation in Facebook started by a person who performs dance for a living.
- Person 1: Wondering if anyone still cares about myspace anymore.
- Person 2: I don’t know anybody who uses it, really.
- Person 3: It’s good for promotion
- Person 4: I think we’re collectively dumping myspace so we can focus on our relationship with facebook, our new primary.
- Person 5: I went back to stay in tune with bands I like but that’s about it. all non-band stuff I look to facebook. It’s the best for venue promotion and events and personal connections…
- Person 6: MySpace is for children :-)
Several weeks ago a friend of mine wrote a really insightful post on Facebook. It was about when to do status updates and share other media in Facebook.
His point was: does everything I do have to be scanned in my mind as a potential update on Facebook? Let it not be so, he said.
I commented back that the way I work with this is giving myself permission to share anything, but only share what moves me. By move, I don’t necessarily mean emotionally, but at all levels.
These two rules break the tension between what I’m doing and what I may do in Facebook (or in any other app).
Yesterday, I came across this quote by D.H. Lawrence (. . . poor D.H., one of those brilliant people we only recognize after death), that captured this mode of communication, perfectly.
Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot. – D. H. Lawrence
Say it hot.
Timeless is this statement regarding communication, no doubt, but prescient for the world of social media that we find ourselves in now.