Many months ago (perhaps even two years ago) I installed the WordPress multi-user package on my development host. Within minutes, I abandoned it. I can’t recall now what the issue was, but I do remember thinking to myself that if it is this broken just trying to get the thing up and running, it isn’t yet ready for prime time (or my debugging time, either).

But yesterday, imagine my surprise when after downloading, unpacking, and installing I found myself tricking out a fresh instance of WordPress Mu (the Mu is actually a symbol rather than letters on their site). I went out and found some very nice themes; one three-column setup that I am particularly enamored with, and began customizing and exploring the new features.

Why am I bothering with this? Because WordPress in an of itself is a simple but powerful content management system. It can be tailored for almost any kind of site (newspapers, universities, any kind of blog), and makes it very easy for writers and editors to publish and own their own content. It also integrates well with other open-source tools, like vBulletin. And now, having this multi-user version, we can literally host hundreds of blogs using the same WordPress instance. Imagine a company with several brands or locations that wants to have their sites all look and behave similarly but also wants each to manage their own content. This kind of flexibility (and centralization) is a huge step in providing that kind of control. I’ll be spending a lot of time with this system in the coming months.

written by Christopher Murray \\ tags: cms, multiuser, wordpress