I tried the following HTACCESS and it fixed all these problems with broken or missing images:

#Wordpress Multi site
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
 
# uploaded files
RewriteRule ^files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$1 [L]
 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
#END WordPress Multi Site

If you are using The Donncha Domain mapping plugin to allow users to use domain names, make sure to update to the latest version that is compatible with WordPress 3.0.x. Otherwise you could see this message when a blog user tries to login:

“You don’t have permission to view this site. Please contact the system administrator.”

To update to the latest version of Donncha’s domain mapping plugin:

WordPress 3.0 Domain Mapping 0.5.2

If you notice any other issues after updating to WordPress Multisite, let me know and I will see if there is any fix.

Start activating the multi-site features of WordPress 3.0 by adding this line of code to your wp-config.php file:

/** Enable or disable Worpress Multi-site features **/
define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

Refresh your Dashboard and got to ”Tools -> Network”. You will see a screen that looks similar to the one in the picture below:

If you want to install your additional blogs on virtual sub-domains instead of sub-directories you will need to create a wildcard DNS record on your server to enable the sub-domain (blog1.yourdomain.com, blog2.yourdomain.com, blog3.yourdomain.com) functionality of WordPress 3.0.

Your server must support wildcard DNS records for you to do this. As an example I will explain how to configure it with Hostgator. It’s very easy to do with the Hostgator Baby Plan allows them. When you are in your Hostgator Control Panel, follow these instructions to create a wildcard DNS record for a domain.

Select “sub-domains” under”Domains” in CPanel
Enter an asterisk “*” in the sub-domain’s name field
Select the TLD the wildcard DNS is to be set up on
Enter the server location address for the wildcard folder, e.g. /public_html/bigbuz
Click “Create”
Back to your WordPress admin panel, you need to install the now activated WordPress 3.0 Network settings, viz

Find the Network settings page in your WordPress admin panel (Tools>Network)
Choose whether you want to use sub-domains or sub-folders for the additional blogs
Type a name for your network of sites
Set your admin email address
Click “Install”

After a minute or two you will be presented with a configuration screen. Back up your .htaccess and wp-config.php files before you proceed to follow the instructions provided on that configuration screen.

As a precautionary measure to prevent visitors of non-existent sites from being greeted by 404 error messages, redirect them to a URL of your choice by adding the below code to the bottom your wp-config.php file:

 /* Send visitors to non-existent blogs here */
define( 'NOBLOGREDIRECT', 'http://yourdomain.com/' );

Change http://yourdomain.com to the URL of your choice

Log out then log back in.
You will now need to go through your settings to enable or disable the new options provided by WordPress Multi Site.

Upgrading from WPMU to WordPress Multisite 3.0

If you are upgrading from WPMU to WordPress Multisite 3.0, you can do it automatically from the dashboard, but some manual configuration is also needed. After you upgrade and you login again into the dashboard, this message will be displayed:

Warning! WordPress encrypts user cookies, but you must add the following lines to wp-config.php for it to be more secure.

Follow the steps listed there and then you could see something like this:

“Thank you for Updating! Please visit the Update Network page to update all your sites.”

Follow the link and update all the blogs. (If you have any). Update Network.

Also you could see the following message:

“The wp-content/blogs.php file is deprecated. Please remove it and update your server rewrite rules to use wp-includes/ms-files.php instead.”

So, just remove the blogs.php file from the server and edit your .htaccess file. The .htaccess file can be found in the root folder, where the wp-config.php file is.

Open with notepad and change:

RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+) wp-content/blogs.php?file=$2 [L]

to

RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2 [L]

Done! Your new Multiuser 3.0 installation is ready to use.

Enjoy!

New features in this WordPress release include a new default theme called “Twenty Ten”. Let me add that it really looks like “Patagonia” Theme, so I guess less people are going to use my theme, time to “adapt and change” I guess. But in the other hand I can feel proud to work as inspiration to whoever designed Twenty Ten.

Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies. Developers and network admins will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation. Also, I really don’t understand why would they merge WpMu into WordPress, since most people are going to use normal WordPress anyways.

You can download the RC and test it out if you want, directly from wordpress.org

Some things to take in mind:

_Custom menus are finished! Yay!
_Multi-site is all set.
_There are a ton of changes, so plugin authors, please test your plugins now, so that if there is a compatibility issue, we can figure it out before the final release.
_Plugin and theme users are also encouraged to test things out. If you find problems, let your plugin/theme authors know so they can figure out the cause.
_The look of the WordPress admin has been lightened up a little bit, so you can focus more on your content.

Enjoy!

Download Theme

Preview Theme

Download Theme

Preview Theme

You can either install or update Patagonia and Tandil theme automatically from your dashboard. This is recommended if you didn’t change anything in the css or php files manually. Otherwise, make you sure to save your customization before upgrading.

Happy WordPressing everyone!

A list for all seasons: WordPress developers have the wp-hackers mailing list to discuss core and plugin code. Sometimes UI/UX stuff comes up and gets discussed there, but there is a whole universe of discussion around navigation labels, gradients, button styling, templates, alignment, design in general and more. Designers need a list to call their own, and now we have one. You can sign up for the wp-ui list to discuss ways to improve the interface or user experience of WordPress, and to discuss progress on design-related projects for the open source project, like the design challenges we’re going to have.

Design Challenges: We learned a lot from the icon design in the past, and we want to do these kind of open design challenges on a regular basis. If we could do one contest per month, that would be ideal. As each challenge is posted, people can use the list to bounce ideas off each other and work toward optimal solutions. I’m hoping the design challenges will evolve to be less contest and more collaboration. We’ll announce the first one before the end of January, so if you’re interested, please sign up for the list!

Distributed Usability Testing: We started to try this out last year, and several dozen usability professionals volunteered to help get the program going, but a combination of scheduling and infrastructure issues combined to stall the progress. Having the “UI/UX contributor team” infrastructure in place, starting with the mailing list, will make it much easier to get this project going again.

Chit-chat: The weekly developer chats in IRC at #wordpress-dev have been very productive. We’ve created an IRC room at #wordpress-ui on irc.freenode.net so that we can have the same kind of “water cooler” for UI/UX contributors as for core code contributors. In addition to being a place where you can drop in and discuss core UI/UX (note: this room will not be a place to discuss the design of blog themes, it’s to discuss the design of the WordPress application itself), we’ll set up a weekly chat. Choosing a day and time for the chats will probably be the first discussion on the mailing list.

A blog of our own: Once again, taking a page from the code contributor infrastructure, we’ll set up a blog for UI/UX updates, announcements, progress reports and more. This will be located on WordPress.org, and will be announced to the mailing list when it is live.

So, if you want to become a contributor to core WordPress by using your design skills and talent, join the wp-ui mailing list and get ready for a fun year!

Happy WordPressing!

This release addresses a handful of minor bugs as well as a rather annoying problem where scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly due to incompatibilities with some hosting services. If any of these issues is affecting you, I suggest to give 2.9.1 a try. Download this release directly from their site or upgrade automatically from your dashboard (Tools -> Upgrade menu).