WebGuru’s Blog about Digital Life

As my previous post indicated, I installed WordPress MU 1.2.5 to replace my 3 individual weblogs powered by WordPress 2.2.1. Although the wordpress-mu is based all core features from wordpress, I still had some technical difficulties to get all things right as I wanted from the beginning. Finally I figured some issues out and am sharing here to hope they will be helpful for you too.

Upper Cases user name caused problems for WP-MU 1.2.5.

After the default blog installed, I registered another user name like “WebGuru” since I used it for all my old blogs. But when I tried to log into the blog with this username above and the password I received after the activation, I got an Incorrect User Name or Password error message.

I went ahead to double check the password which was correct. And I then added this new user to my default blog as the administrator, and changed the password. But I still could not logon with all right credentials.

I knew I had similar problem with username in UpperCase in pre-2.0 version of WordPress, but they resolved this issue with latest version. Does it still exist in WP-MU? To verify, I registered another user name with all lower cases, and succeed.

So the conclusion is not to use Upper Cases in user name to void such problems.

Best Security Practices: Change the default administrator logon name

This is just my personal preference, since in my previous individual WordPress blogs I immediately added another user as administrator and deleted the “admin” User ID after the installation.

I wanted to do the same on WordPress Mu. But the process is less straightforward as I did in WordPress.

I still needed to add the new users first. But then I had to put the new user into the default blog as blog administrator. And most important part is to make the new user as SITE ADMINISTRATOR before I delete the default ‘admin’.

How-To:

1. Log into the top level of blog using “admin” as the user ID.
2. Click Site Admin and select Options from the sub menu (see the figure below)
   
3. Scroll down to Administration Setting on the Options page, and put the new user ID after the default one (admin) with a space to separate.
   
4. Log off and log on with your new user ID.
5. But do not try to delete “admin” from the system. I do not know why WordPress Mu does not allow you to delete “admin” completely. What I did was to remove admin from all my blogs.
6. Another additional security is to create another user id only to post articles and keep your new administrator ID from the public review. (otherwise, there is no use to hide “admin” anyway).