WPMUDev Premium - good idea?
Recently a couple of the people who run the biggest WPMU based sites out there have put together a premium member’s area for those wishing to run serious MU based sites.
Seeing as Boz and I have been recently putting together an MU site for a group of friends this is an interesting development, I can immediately see the need for this for those working singly or in small departments who don’t have the direct WPMU expertise but want to quickly reach a large user base on a stable, scalable software base. A reasonable proportion of the freely available MU plugins out there look like they may present scaling difficulties down the line - something you definitely don’t want if you’re providing a service you have to support. Hitting a wall once you’re a few thousand users in is probably extremely unpleasant as it’s harder to redevelop something that is running 24/7.
If we do get around to building another site with WPMU (I have to say I’ve enjoyed working with it) I’ll probably subscribe to this as much out of interest as out of need.
The only real downside I can see is that they may well get an influx of subscriptions from people who really want everything done for them, from consultation to installation and ongoing support which may well clog up the premium forums and their time to support on there with inappropriate questions. However the entry fee will hopefully discourage this kind of behaviour.
There may well be a snotty counter argument to doing this sort of thing off the back of GPL style software, but in all honestly, WPMU is a fair way short of what wordpress.com is so it’s difficult to make an argument whereby these people shouldn’t get rewarded for their expertise and time. Essentially I can see dev premium saving me time in working out answers other people have already arrived at and life is too short for the alternative.
Rowan :: Jul.20.2007 :: Web Apps, Wordpress MU :: No Comments »