WPMU: Whys and Hows

Responses to survey of WordPress Multi-User WPMU) admins, June 2006. This document describes responses to questions of why and how.
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 July 7, updated: (not yet).
All 30 respondents responded to all of the questions discussed below, with the fairly minor exception noted at the end of this document.

Why?

There are two primary aspects to this question. Why run your site? Why use WPMU to do so? Arising from these aspects is a third: how do you differentiate your WPMU site from other sites? This could also be phrased as a "why" question: why should anyone use your site, rather than another site?

Why Do You Run Your Site?

I provided eight responses (including "other") and invited respondents to choose all those that applied. The responses seem to me to fall into two main categories: the social, and the economic. The former category dominated the responses to the question: why do you run your site?

• For fun: 26.
• To help people blog: 25.
• To build a community: 23.
• I expect to make money from ads or other revenue streams: 10.
• To enhance my professional reputation: 8.
• It develops skills useful for my job: 8.
• It's part of my job. 2
• Other: 8 (varied).
  

I'd classify the first three of these as (inter)personal, and the next four as job-related.

Why Did You Choose WPMU?

I provided seven responses (including "other") and invited respondents to choose all those that applied. Of the "big three" responses, two relate to free/open source software. The "free as in speech" response drew slightly more agreement than the "free as in beer" response (21 as opposed to 19). Those who follow the free/open source name game might be interested to know that respondents favored the term "open source" in open-ended questions. I plan to say more about this game in the paper I'll be writing soon.

• I was already familiar with WordPress: 22.
• I believe that software should be free/open source, as opposed to proprietary: 21.
• It is free of charge: 19.
• I wanted to learn WPMU: 12.
• I am confident in the support for WPMU (forums, etc.): 8.
• I have colleagues or contacts familiar with WPMU: 4.
• Other: 8. Extensibility was mentioned twice here, but the main "other" reason given was the WPMU was the "best" or "only" tool available for the task at hand.

One of the things I intend to do with these responses when I write the paper is to compare them with the responses to the "What do you like most about WPMU," which I've described in a previous working document. If you make comparisons, and have comments, I'd be interested in them.

Why Should a Blogger Use Your Site?

I seem to remember making notes on the responses to this, but can't currently find them. I seem to remember that the social/economic distinction applies here as well. Some sites are aimed at a specific community, based on something like a hobby or a place. Others offer something like ad revenue sharing between host and blogger. A further category, besides social and economic, is technical. A category present in the WPMUniverse, but not in responses to this survey, is language; there are WPMU hosts in about half-a-dozen different languages.
I'll write more here when I find my notes, or give up on doing so and make another set of notes.

How?

Hosting

A narrow majority (16) of the 30 respondents provide their own hardware hosting. 10 of the WPMU sites have their own server, while a further 6 share hardware with other sites, also owned by the WPMU admin.
11 sites run on purchased server capacity. "Eyeballing the data" suggests that these sites tend to be the smaller sites, with the larger sites tending to be self-hosted. Again, I'll be more specific in the paper.
One of the other 3 sites was hosted by the admin's employer. The other two used "shared hosting" and "distributed hosting." I'm not sure what either of these terms mean. They were used in tandem with the "Other, please specify" response.

Paying

Since it is possible to fund a web site in multiple ways, I invited respondents to specify more than one means of funding their WPMU sites. the most common source of funding was the admin's own pocket (27), followed by advertising (9). The table illustrates the relationship between these two sources.

Of the two sites funded by neither admin nor ads, one was employer-funded. The second apparently has no costs, since the admin did not specify any of source of funding.
There were two other sources of funding for WPMU sites: donations (3) and sponsorship (1).