WPMU: What Admins Like and Dislike

Responses to survey of WordPress Multi-User WPMU) admins, June 2006. This document refers to only two of the questions on the survey: what do you like most about WPMU? What do you like least?
I'll blog about this at How Do You MU? I'll blog in different posts about reponses to other questions on the survey.
You can email me: andrew dot watson at the big dot-com beginning with y.
This document first posted June 27, updated: June 28 x2.

Analysis

I looked at the comments, derived themes, then counted the number of comments relating to each theme.

Likes

Here are the themes (number of respondents) for the question: What do you like best about WPMU?

• It's WordPress (13). It's not clear which of WordPress' virtues drove these responses.
  
• Usability (9). This lumps together usability for the blogger and for the site administrator.
• Extensibility (7). This includes related terms such as "flexibility" and "plugins."
• Open source (6). Every one of the responses counted for this theme used the term "open source" rather than the term "free software."
• Community (3).
• Support (2).

Dislikes

Here are the themes (number of respondents) for the question: What do you like least about WPMU?

• Quality (12) of code and of builds.
• Support (7).
• Database (7), particularly the number of tables created by WPMU.
• Usability (2).
• Open source (1). One person disliked the openness of the code.
  

My Comments

I wasn't surprised by the responses. If I say more, I'll end up saying a lot more... and that wouldn't be a good thing right now.

Raw Data

Here are the raw responses. Note that # responses to the survey > # responses to the Like question > # responses to the Dislike question.

Like

• WordPress, straightforward support, parallel development of Wordpress.com, Open Source, Community forums
• too much things :) it's open source and the community around is great
• It's WordPress
• its flexibility
• Based on popular and familiar WordPress
• Flexibility and the ability to offer a great service to bloggers around the world.
• It's very versatile and built on a great blogging engine
• Feature-set
• It's based on WP.  It's one of the few blog community open source software out there (at least that I know of) and easy for me to understand.
• subdomains & ease of use
• powerful feature, like plugin
• fairly easy integration of wordpress themes and plugins
  
• It is ideal for people wanting to offer a hosted version of WordPress.
• the interface and ease of use makes the users love it :)   and i don't need to teach non techs how to use  it .
• wordpress-like
• it allows other authors to have a blog connected as if a community
• Simplicity (better than most; even commercial), functionality (continuing to be enhanced by the community).
• Very easy for users to administer.
• It is Wordpress
• I love WordPress, and I love that I can share that with others.
• Everything that isnt below [i.e. under dislikes]. Very easy to use and template.
• Flexible and open source.  Popular blog platform.  Many plugins to use, but it's tricky too.
• I'm a big believer in open-source and wpmu fit my needs exactly.
• The fact that it is based on Wordpress. Also, the fact that the code is a bit of a pain sometimes. It makes the whole process more challenging and rewarding in the end.
• OPEN SOURCE! Fairly easy to setup and use after the bugs of each new release are ironed out. WP is widely accepted and understood by bloggers.
  
• offers a nice look, various themes & good admin system
• Support forums and attitude of the community.
• Design
• Wordpress based
  

Dislike

• Wordpress.com - while this guarantees the development of the software it means tat the dev. group are not so focused on meeting the needs of the community... it's a double edged sword!
• it still needs working on
• Codebase is crufty in places, no stable releases, annoying people on support forums
• number of tables, separate setup for each blog instead of a common system that is designed for multiple blogs, this is a result of it being a single-blog solution being changed into a multi-blog solution, and not a multi-blog solution designed from scratch.
• Dearth of support except for the support forum which isn't as well visited as the main WP forum.
• The fact that WPMU creates 10 tables per user that signs up (or more depending on options selected) in one single MySQL database is frightening. With only about 2100 users, I already have over 20K tables which means I will have to split to a new DB in the future. Lyceum *seems* to be setup more intelligently.
• it creates a new table for each blog =(
• At outset poorly coded.  Somewhat improved now.
• Lack of support from developers. Both in documentation and in code fixes and workable nightly builds. It's gotten worse over the past couple of months, like they don't care anymore.
• MySQL Database size!!!
• free source
• this damn database layout creating 9 tables per user (or is it 10?)
  
• .htacess bug (caused soo much hairloss)
• I need a human to help me set it up securely
• Development is currently slow. Still waiting for a stable release.
• I installed a version that does not patch well... it was early on. Now, I can't patch my install to the new codebase because the DB schema has changed. ARGH! There are a bunch of bugs in the way ...
• Getting support, I know it is Alpha but it should be at least Beta given wordpress.com runs essentially on the same code base.
• I wish the code was stable, and finalized.
• Plugin management is dodgy. [Additional comment not included here because it identified the respondent.]
• Developer's support too minimal. Should get more involve and keep the MU forum alive.  No option for different space limit per blog basis.  No option for domain name for each blog (eg. blog.com).
• It definitely feels like the neglected step-child of WP.  I wish the community around it were a little bigger and the forums were a bit easier to use (or more towards the standard forum that you can navigate by page - the tags are kind of useless.)
• When you upgrade to the latest nightly, it's a bit hit and miss. You can break your site really easily.
• Lack of user configurable templates
  
• too many errors, modifying themes en mas is a pain, plugins don't always work easily
• In some places the code is really messy and not commented at all.
• Support
• The database structure.