I personally manage between 5-15 WordPress sites depending on clients needs at the time.
One of the biggest issues for me is keeping track of each site. Stuff like:
- Is each site updated to the latest WordPress version?
- Is each plugin on each site updated the latest version?
- What plugins are installed on each site?
- What configurations are on each site?
In addition, updating each site to the latest versions of first WordPress and then each plugin is a huge time eater.
What multiple site Admins such as myself need is a single, simple management interface that remotely retrieves information from each site and displays it in a dashboard style interface. In addition, the ability to push out changes, such as updates would really be the peak of multiple site management.
After some thought, I believe wordpress.org would be the best place to host this utility. Admins could login to wordpress.org with their wordpress login, and immediately see aggregate information of their wordpress hosted blogs. In addition, they would be able to add non-hosted blogs, and includes those in the aggregate.
Each blog information could be collected via a password protected RSS style feed. This feed could be turned on or off (default as off) in the options section of each blog.
The simpler the better. Eg. It could be as simple as a table such as:
| Blog | Address | Version | Status |
You could click on each blog to drill down or update, etc.
Rather than actually write the update module, the application could be set to simply “trigger” backups, updates, that were included in plugins, or if wordpress release official modules.
This idea could be extended to no end. Features such as the ability to write a single post and have it published to each of your sites would be good. Perhaps for events such as server maintenance.
Any thoughts? Please comment!
Luke
MSP (UWA)
You should then consider using WPmu, since it does exactly that, no worries on updating blogs, just update the install, turn on or off plugins on all blogs at the same time, global comment moderation and posting is still not an issue with WPmu, but I am sure in the future there might be a way to do it!
mu.wordpress.org
That is what I do, I have about 8 sites running on the same install.
As far as I understand, WordPress MU only supports WordPress installs on the same server, ie. Each site is an instance of the install.
Please correct me if I am wrong about this.
What I want to do, is manage sites across multiple servers, hosts and configs. I want a client to come up to me and say, “Hey, I am hosting this WordPress site on my home server, can you manage it for me?” And I can just install say a plugin on his install that gives me a remote call access from my dashboard.
Interesting idea even when you are maintaining multiple blog on just one installation (I’m using the Virtual Multiblog plugin).
Something that I’ve been looking for too. I hear the comments from others regarding MU, but I did move down this road to find several problems with plugins and MU playing nice together. So, I add my voice to Luke’s, I’m looking for the ‘none to be found’ central management console for wordpress installs.
Frank
This is *exactly* what I’m looking for too. I just saw your [Luke] post on WP. Please let me know if any of you find something like this. I would much appreciate it;)
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