Global Page Navigation Accross Wordpress Mu Blogs: Dusty Reagan

4/7/2014 Global page navigation accross WordPress MU blogs | Dusty Reagan
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Global page navigation accross WordPress MU blogs
Posted on January 29, 2009 by Dusty Reagan
Heres the scenario. You have a WordPress MU site with multiple blogs, but for whatever reason, you want
every blog to have the same main navigation and pages. Your main site/blog hosts all of your pages. So how do
you go about creating a WordPress MU Theme that will use the navigation and pages from your main site/blog
accross all of your blogs? Well, Im here to tell you how I did it.
The WordPress Codex has a function called wp_list_pages. What I wanted to do is create a new function
called wp_list_main_pages. So I simply searched my WordPress install and copied the get_pages and
wp_list_pages functions and pasted them into my themes functions.php file. From here I made a few edits
to these functions. To start with, I renamed them wp_list_main_pages and get_main_pages.
Below is the final code Im using to display the main navigation accross blogs. I made notes in bold to help.
Hope this is helpful to you Googling coders.
// You can use this function instead of 'wp_list_pages' in your theme
function wp_list_main_pages($args = '') {
$defaults = array(
'depth' => 0, 'show_date' => '',
'date_format' => get_option('date_format'),
'child_of' => 0, 'exclude' => '',
'title_li' => __('Pages'), 'echo' => 1,
'authors' => '', 'sort_column' => 'menu_order, post_title'
);
$r = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );
extract( $r, EXTR_SKIP );
$output = '';
$current_page = 0;
// sanitize, mostly to keep spaces out
$r['exclude'] = preg_replace('[^0-9,]', '', $r['exclude']);
// Allow plugins to filter an array of excluded pages
$r['exclude'] = implode(',', apply_filters('wp_list_pages_excludes', explode(',', $r['exclude'])));
// Query pages.
$r['hierarchical'] = 0;
// Right here we call our new 'get_main_pages' function
$pages = get_main_pages($r);
if ( !empty($pages) ) {
if ( $r['title_li'] )
$output .= '<li class="pagenav">' . $r['title_li'] . '<ul>';
global $wp_query;
if ( is_page() || $wp_query->is_posts_page )
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$current_page = $wp_query->get_queried_object_id();
$output .= walk_page_tree($pages, $r['depth'], $current_page, $r);
if ( $r['title_li'] )
$output .= '</ul></li>';
}
$output = apply_filters('wp_list_pages', $output);
// This line is sloppy and needs improvement.
// You have to remove the name of the blog your currently on from you global navigation.
// I'm doing this the simplest but least scalable way here.
$output = str_replace("pressroom/", "", $output);
if ( $r['echo'] )
echo $output;
else
return $output;
}
// This is essentially a private function
function &get_main_pages($args = '') {
global $wpdb;
// This is the magic line.
// Now when the SQL runs to pull your navigation pages, it'll use your main blogs ID.
$wpdb->set_blog_id(1);
// Notice here I call the original get_pages function and return the results
$pages = get_pages($args);
return $pages;
}
This entry was posted in Web & Software Development and tagged Wordpress, WordPress MU. Bookmark the permalink.
20 Responses to Global page navigation accross WordPress MU blogs
Brian Roberts says:
February 3, 2009 at 4:19 pm
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I have been looking for this for the past few days. Didnt think any one else would want or need this, but I do!!!! again thank
you!
Reply
Brian Roberts says:
btw can I limint which pages are shown like normal?
<?php wp_list_pages(include=7,13,26,35&title_li= . __(Pages) . ); ?>
would be
<?php wp_list_main_pages(include=7,13,26,35&title_li= . __(Pages) . ); ?>
???
I tried that and the menu didnt show up at all.
Next step if to get them horizontal.
Reply
Brian Roberts says:
ok I got all that in order now, but here is another brain twister for ya, and if you can make it happen I got $30 for ya. Now
that each blog is pulling linking structure of the main blog, and we have those links pull the data for those links from the main
blog as well. Example, I have 20 blogs all in the same niche, and I wish them all to use the same pages from one master blog,
so if I want to make a change, I can do it on that one instead of all 20.
What ya think? Would really enjoy hearing back from you.
Reply
Dusty says:
Hey Brian! Im really glad this was helpful to you!
Im not sure I understand your last problem though. Do you have an example link, or could you elaborate further?
Are you talking about the link structure being:
http://yoursite.com/blog2/page1
http://yoursite.com/blog3/page1
Where you want them all to be:
http://yoursite.com/page1
Also, are you using sub domains or folders for your blogs?
Reply
Brian Roberts says:
101ramennoodlerecipes.com is an example and if you hit the recipes link you will see a list, all the sites on the rigth hand side
are WP.
Ok, so as you look through the sites, you will see the all look the same, have the same links and even pages.
What I would like, is for each blog, no matter what URL
101ramennoodlerecipes.com/recipes
or
3beansaladrecipe.com/recipes
that page should pull from one DB table, so if I change it on 101ramennoodlerecipes it will change on
3beansaladrecipe.
I know this is not something the average person running a blog community would want, but Im not running a blog
community
Reply
Robert says:
March 13, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Dusty,
I cant believe you actually wrote up this solution just before I had the same problem. Your work is going to save me hours.
Were using folders in a single domain for our blogs. I assume this will work?
A lot of people can probably use this. We need it for all kinds of standardized terms & conditions, privacy policy, contact pages,
and stuff like that.
Reply
Robert says:
March 13, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Well, I was able to get something working. The proper menu items (pages) are listed. But when I click on them I jump to the
main blog. And at that point things like the home page link are wrong, so people appear to be on the wrong blog. I think this is
the same problem Brian was describing in an earlier comment.
Heres an example using folders:
http://example.com = main blog where I defined the pages that have to appear on all blogs.
http://example.com/veggies/ = sub-blog1
http://example.com/seafood/ = sub-blog2
There are no pages defined in the sub-blogs.
So using your code when I go to the seafood blog I see the pages from the main blog listed. But when I go to one of those pages
the URLs look like:
http://example.com/a-page/
And at that point, my links like the following dont get me back to the seafood blog:
<a href=/>Home
How do those pages know which blog they are on so they display the proper sidebars and other navigation links to get back to
the proper place?
I hope this question is making sense. Thanks much for any help.
Reply
veeco says:
March 17, 2009 at 7:51 am
Dusty,
Thanks for the work so far. I too am looking for a solution similar to what Brian and Robert are working on.
I have a site that has multiple locations as blogs (including the main blog that isnt a location) so:
http://www.site.com/
http://www.site.com/philadelphia/
http://www.site.com/new-york/
etc
The main site has pages such as about, team, etc that will be the same for all of the locations. Right now I have to clone a
location every time they open a new location and there is information that is always the same across all locations. This means
that every time someone wants to change their bio in the about section, 5+ pages of the same information has to be edited.
Would it be possible to create a custom page template where you just put in the location of the information to clone? So for
example my http://www.site.com/philadelphia/about/team page would just have some text /about/team and the custom
page template would grab the page info from there.
Reply
Nick says:
March 20, 2009 at 8:26 am
Hi Dusty! Great job!
I am also looking for this same solution. What Im trying to do is a have a main blog (1) that I add pages to. Those page links
are then displayed in the individual blogs along with the bog owners pages. When you are on, say blog 2, it will display blog 2s
navigation then display the main blog navigation as well.
Now once thats displayed a user reading blog2 will click the link but rather than taking them to blog1 it simply takes them to a
blog2 page that pulls the blog1 page info from the database and displays it.
For example if I create a new about us page on blog1. that adds that page to all the blogs. when I edit that page on blog1 all
the blogs are updated.
If anyone knows of a solutions it would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks to everyone!
Reply
Benjamin Allison says:
March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Great plugin!
My installation uses sub-folders. Is there an easy way to have this work with subfolders (because currently, the links are
down a level).
Thanks!
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Reply
SQL Tutorials says:
April 30, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Does anyone know if there is another language or set of commands beside SQL for talking with databases?
Im working on a project and am doing some research thanks
Reply
scott bothel says:
May 22, 2009 at 9:19 am
Great work. It inspired a solution (hack) to my problem of wanting to display a global menu controlled by the bookmarks list
of the main blog.
Problem: once defining the current site as ID 1, I cant get it to go back to the actual current site to display the users own
bookmarks list. How do I get the real ID back?
global $wpdb;
Reply
Tyrael says:
May 26, 2009 at 11:36 am
Just what I was looking for! However, I have the problem that my WPMU install uses subdirectories instead of subdomains,
and I need the page link to point to the page on the main site. Currently, it links to the page of the current sub-site (which
doesnt exist).
The link I want: domain.com/page
The link I am getting: domain.com/subsite/page
Reply
Ecenica says:
August 1, 2009 at 6:53 am
Great bit of code. Searched WPMU Forum without success and came across your code. Thanks for sharing!
Reply
Ecenica says:
August 1, 2009 at 7:29 am
Maybe I spoke too soon? This doesnt seem to work for subdomain WPMUs does it? Am I missing something?
Reply
CK says:
May 17, 2010 at 3:47 pm
For all above who where having problems with the sub directories. I added an array of all my sub blogs and then removed
them all with the string replace. See $blogs = array below
// This line is sloppy and needs improvement.
// You have to remove the name of the blog your currently on from you global navigation.
// Im doing this the simplest but least scalable way here.
$blogs = array(music/, action-sports/, new-releases/,stuff-we-like/);
$output = str_replace($blogs, , $output);
if ( $r['echo'] )
echo $output;
else
return $output;
}
Reply
Felipe Navarro V. says:
May 19, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Thanks, was very useful. Perhaps you better use:
switch_to_blog(1);
$pages = get_pages($args);
restore_current_blog();
instead of
Reply
Samuel Sirois says:
July 29, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Thank you very much for this code. Works great in WP3.
Ive slightly updated the code since CKs version of URL replacement was still hard-coded stuff, (see CKs array solution to
URL replacement problem) and wont work fluently when an administrator can add sites that were not there at first release.
Here is a little trick that worked for me:
switch_to_blog(1);
$mainSiteURL = get_bloginfo('url');
restore_current_blog();
$output = str_replace(get_bloginfo('url'), $mainSiteURL, $output);
Of course, you dont want to switch blog twice, but thats basically what would work in a generic way.
Dusty Reagan
Thanks to Felipe Navarro V. comment for pointing out the switch_to_blog function.
Reply
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