Feb 8th, 2009: Plugin updated to version 1.2. - Fixed bug where search and replace forgot to replace the sitewidecategories table.
This plugin allows you to set default categories for new blogs. It also allows you to add these categories to existing blogs. Lastly, you can do a search and replace for category names. The search works with exact match only, and is case sensitive.
To activate the plugin, add it to the wp-content/mu-plugins/ folder. Go to Site Admin -> Category Defaults to set the number of default categories as well as set the categories themselves. Then when you create a new blog, the categories are automatically added.
Download the latest version of the plugin here (1.2): defaults-categories
Send any paypal donations to deryk@bluemandala.com. Thanks.
{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks Deryk! Great plugin and great blog. Consciousness, Buddhism and websites– I’m hooked!
hey sarah, thanks for the comment. you are the first. Looks like you’re doing interesting stuff as well. Cheers.
Great plugin, I have been looking for this! Now, all you need to do is integrate it with the Sitewide Tags plugin so we can limit the posts to the default categories!
hey mike, that is not a bad idea. I might even need that functionality in our site. but for the time being we are going to strictly control categories in the sub sites, so it might not be a problem. In order to get it to work with sitewide tags, that plugin needs to be modified we could look into it.
Thanks, this was just what I needed!
This is excellent! Any chance you could add the ability to define default posts as well, so that the default “hello world” post could be replaced with one or more more helpful posts?
Thanks!
good idea, but I don’t know if i’ll have the time to do such a thing. There might even be a plugin that does it already. not sure.
Thanks! I was really searching for such one
Amazing…. we have been looking for this!
Is there any way to assign some of the categories as sub-categories while entering them in???
Thanks. (how do we contribute to your continued development?)
Jskov, I’m not sure how hard it would be to assign sub-categories. it might be tricky to code it into the admin panel without using ajax, probably a better way would be to figure out the sub category taxonomy relationship, and then code it directly into the php code of the plugin. Sending any paypal donations to deryk@bluemandala.com would allow me to continue looking into this.
great plugin, but how could I change the default category that contains the hello world post?
I.e. I would like each new blog to have 3 categories, I can use your plugin for this, but I’d love to get rid of that uncategorized category too…
@ovidiu, the uncategorized default category is added in the core code when blog is added, it might be possible to erase it, but then you’d have to set another as the default I guess.
thx, I was just trying to see if your plugin might develop into that direction, as for me it seemed logical, that now that you are able to set a couple of default categories for new blogs, one would also want to define one of them i.e. articles as the default…
for a plugin like this, I probably should have not made a front end UI, because now any modifications I want to make, are twice as hard. I wonder if I should remove the UI, and just make the code very clear with lots of comments? Then I can much easier do these kinds of mods, as can others. thoughts?
dunno, I am comfortable without a GUI too.
The plugin as is, is great.
I just thought it weird, that I can add additional categories, to give new bloggers some ideas where this is going and not being able to get rig of the uncategorized category at the same time…
I’m having trouble. Although the controls show up in my administration, the categories I create will not show up for me or my users unless I add it to yhe “plugins” folder, which I would rather not do.
I downloaded the plugin and I really like what it does. My only question/concern, is this: Short of having to delete a blog and start again, is there anyway that the plugin can update the blog’s categories?
I’m planning on using it in my classroom blog site, and would like the default categories to represent specific assignmnet types (which it does perfectly right now). If I build the blogs early in the school year, and then need to add a a category type, there doesn’t appear to be a way to do that without deleting the blog and starting fresh. Is this something that could be looked into (or can be done and I’m not aware of it??).
Great work on the plugin tho!
yes, I’ll be extending the plugin soon to accomplish exactly what you need. I’m using the plugin to help create local news sites for a global spiritual community (shambhala.org). So the sub blogs share categories that inform the central blog. So if categories change in the future I’ll need to add them globally.
The link was temporarily down while I moved to a new server. it is working again now.
Great plugin.! - Thanks for sharing
amazing plugin
thanks team
Great plugin thanks.
Question, I am trying to set 25 translation blogs, one for each languages. I am setting them each as their own category, so separate translation teams can manage. When I installed your plugin, how come I can not just select from already created categories ? I have to manually RE-enter all 25 categories again into this list.
Seems to me that it should start as a list of ALL categories already created, with radio buttons or something to select which will be sitewide listed.
What do you think ?
yes, good idea. that would be a better flow.
When enabling this plugin in Wordpress 2.6 I got:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_site_admin() in /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/defaults-categories.php on line 127
this plugin is for wordpress MU. it will not work for regular wordpress, and it has no functional use.
This is exactly what I am looking for.
I would like to
1. Have a new blog created for every new member
2. Each blog only have x number of categories (users cannot add/edit categories)
3. Each blog starts with another default category besides Uncategorized
4. Create an ‘Archive’ List such as the one in plain vanilla Wordpress with all the categories and blog posts from across the WPMU installation like a list_all_wpmu_blogs on steroids; e.g. Cat1 (49 Posts in 5 Blogs), Cat2 (65 Posts in 13 Blogs)…
Is there a way to do this in WPMU? If not, can we pool our donations together and Deryk you help us out
Abhi, you can do most of what you want using my plugin, the sitewide tags plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/) and some css to hide the category stuff.
1. covered by wpmu
2. use my plugin to start with default categories, use simple css to hide all areas where categories can be edited. There is another plugin, I cannot recall it’s name, where you can hide admin menus, because you’ll want to hide the category edit page.
3. Us my plugin to search and replace categories for ‘Uncategorized’ and replace it with your new name
4. The site wide tags plugin will combine posts from all blogs into a central blog.
hope that helps.
Great plugin. Just what we need for our current Yogacara project.
Thank you!
QFU,
Would be nice to add fileds for categorial slugs. Thus we could add also categories like विज्ञान, Mahāmudrā, etc.
Just a quick note to mention that I’ve updated this plugin. see above.
Would it be better to re-do your donation function? It just takes me to my log-in screen. Just for future passing by to your site:)
Great Plugin, I am going to use on my website http://www.bitcolors.com.
Great plugin. It is the only one of it’s kind that I have seen. With regard to your question, “I wonder if I should remove the UI, and just make the code very clear with lots of comments? ” I would say yes because it would be easier for you and others to make changes and add new features more easily such as adding sub categories. I do like the UI though, but if it is too hard to make changes, maybe remove the UI. What do you think?
thanks
Terence
First of all thanks for this great plugin… But my question is CAN I CAN DEFAULT SUBCATEGORY ALONG WITH DEFAULT CATEGORY … is there any hack to do that …So far default category is solving my perpose but It would be if I could make some defualt subcategory along with category…any help is appreciated…
I would also concur with the guy above. Having a sub-category hack would be so awesome to have. I would add some donation funds if this could happen:)
Hi,
I installed New blog default categories
in the MU plugins folder and only get this
????????????���������??�� ���� ?????????
WPMU 2.7.1
is there a fix?
OH, I have not tested the plugin with 2.7.1 yet. That might come in a little while…
It is not working with Mu 2.7.1 Plz update it…..
Rgards