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After lots of work in fact more than 3500 lines of code later I am finally glad to announce the beta release of Manage Multiple Blogs. This plugin allows you to manage your external blogs from a single central blog. Yes now you don’t need to logon to multiple blogs if you want to write a post, edit a post, manage categories and yes manage your comments including approving, disapproving, spamming it, replying to it, threaded reply and more.

Before I talk about the features let me start by telling you what does not work first.

• Uploading of images while writing a post.
• Adding a category while writing a post.
• No automatic draft saves.
• Have only tested on WordPress 2.0 and above so no support for any requests on WordPress versions below this.

Except for the few things I said above which I am working on to get out with the next release the rest of the functionality is quite matching that of your regular WordPress installation. You could say it’s a mini WordPress in itself.

Ok with my TODO list out of the way let’s get back to knowing how Manage Multiple Blogs work and its features.

• Add a post / draft to another blog from within the admin panel.
• Edit a post / draft from another blog from within the admin panel.
• Delete a post / draft from another blog from within the admin panel.
• Publish a post / draft from another blog from within the admin panel.
• Add Categories to another blog from within the admin panel.
• Delete Categories from another blog from within the admin panel.
• Manage Comments including actions like approve, disapprove, spam and delete and tasks like reply threaded and reply new on another blog within the admin panel.

You require enough permissions on the external blog to undertake any of the above tasks. Comments management will only work if you install the Manage Multiple Blog RPC for comments plugin installed on the external site (the site you want to manage). Due to security reasons the comments manager will only work if you have administrator or editor privileges.

How does Manage Multiple Blogs Work?

Manage Multiple Blogs uses WordPress RPC (Remote Procedure Call Protocol) to do everything that is listed above. Once you add your credentials MMB will take care of doing the other tasks except for comment management for which you need to have Manage Multiple Blogs Comments RPC plugin installed on your external blog.

Once MMB has verified your credentials with the external blog you will see that the blog has been added and you can start managing it. Screen shot below.

Note the Blog Name and Username will vary depending on what your blog name and username is.

Now that you have added the blog you can either edit or delete it which is pure blog management functions. If you ever change your password on your external blog then you have to use Edit option to update the information stored by MMB otherwise MMB will not work for the said blog and show you a error like shown below when you try to manage it.

Ok now that everything is setup and ready to use, you can now do one of these things, view the latest posts from your external blog, write a draft to your external blog, edit a post from your external blog, delete a post from your external blog, write a new post to your external blog and more. It’s just like a mini WordPress for your WordPress.

Well if you are a WordPress user no need of explaining this, the write post for the external blog will turn up just like your regular write post page, so you can write a post to your other blog(s). In addition to this you can also Edit a post or delete it using MMB.

Once you have started editing a blog you also get a quick menu to easily navigate between multiple blogs. Actions are determined by your roles on the external blog, so if you are a contributor you will see options to write a post and view recent posts. If you are an admin you will see options to write a post, manage categories, view latest posts, edit posts, delete posts, manage comments etc.

Managing Posts 

With MMB you can edit all the posts you have added recently, including your drafts. You can also save a draft to your external blog or simply publish it. The writing experience will be the same, only difference will be that you are writing from another blog.

What About Pages?

Well I did not add that feature because you write pages once in a while, but a post maybe 10 times a day. The next version will have an option to write pages.

And Categories?

Hmmmmm, lets see will you be able to add a category to your external blog? The answer is yes using MMB you will be able to do this using the add categories on your external blog, you will not be able to delete the categories.

Managing Comments

Just like Better Comments Manager Manage Multiple Blogs features a comments Editor which allows you to manage comments from your external blog subject to you installing the Manage Multiple Blog RPC for comments plugin on your external blog.

The default WordPress installation does not have features to allow you to manage comments remotely, so this plugin adds those missing features to it. You can approve, disapprove, spam a comment or delete it in addition to replying to a comment and editing it :-).

If you do not have the plugin installed on your external blog you will see a error like this

What about updates?

Manage Multiple Blogs will be continuously upgraded for the next few weeks, in order for you to know how and when update happens MMB plugin features a update checker. You will see your current version as well as the version available from the server on the top right hand corner of your WordPress page below the menu.

When and update is available you will be shown a message in bold red text so that you can update your MMB version, rest assured I am working on saving your efforts on updating the software and it should update itself in future versions, of course with your permissions only. 

Why the efforts?

You may be wondering why I did this even when there are so many desktop tools that does the same thing?

Well two things your desktop does not always go with you where you go, the web does. So using this plugin you can always manage all your blogs from one place. You may ask that I can always login to all my blogs and do this without your plugin, well that’s true but I am trying to save you those efforts of having to do that by just logging into a single blog.

Reason two no one till date including desktop software’s have the feature for you to manage comments on a external blog, only MMB has that feature. It is the one most unique feature on the WordPress planet for managing external blogs.

Let me add three too, I love WordPress and this is not the end of my development of plugins for it, I am coming up with more exciting stuff soon.

FAQ 

How to use it?

It’s quite easy to use, the first thing you need to do is go to options page and select Multiple Blogs option, once you are there you can add your external blog to it. 

Adding Blogs

Adding blogs is quite simple you have to go to click on the Manage link in the WordPress and select the submenu Multiple Blogs from there you can add all your external blogs to your central blog from where you want to manage it. Below is a screen shot for adding a blog.

Is it Free?

It is as FREE as it can get there is no charge whatsoever, you can always donate to me so that I can continue creating the plugins.

What does Manage Multiple Blogs plugin do?

It allows you to manage ‘n’ number of blogs from one admin panel, that is if you own or are a author or contributor in different blogs you can manage those from a single admin panel.

Where can I use it?

If you have a WordPress blog and write on multiple sites as either a WordPress admin, editor, author or contributor you can use this plugin to do everything you do from your own admin panel.

Can I manage comments and how?

You can manage comments including approving, disapproving, replying etc with the plugin. For this you just need to download and install Manage Multiple Blogs RPC on your OTHER blog, with OTHER I mean the blog that you want to manage with Manage Multiple Blogs.

Comments can only be managed by users with admin or editor privileges.

Requirements

Wordpress 2.x and above

Installation

Installation is simple. Just unzip the “manage-multiple-blogs” folder into your plugins folder and activate the plugin. To be able to manage comments on the external blog you will have to download and install the plugin Manage Multiple Blogs RPC on your external blog.

ChangeLog

• Version 0.1 released Wednesday, September 5th 2007

Donate

If you think this software is useful to you, you can make a small donation.

License

All files and their contents are licensed under the General Public License (GPL).

Download

Download Manage Multiple Blogs Plugin downloaded 1041 times

Download Manage Multiple Blogs RPC Plugin downloaded 917 times

I am looking forward to hearing your opinions on this, your requests to add features and your problems while using this plugin. Everything is appreciated even some donation which will allow me to work for free and create more plugins for the community.

I am starting to organize all support requests so it becomes easier for you to find solutions for common problems. All support questions should be posted in the Manage Multiple Blogs Support Forum like wise if you want me to add any features you can add a request under the Manage Multiple Blogs Feature Requests topic.

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Tags: WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tips and Tricks