Xpost
The Xpost (speak it: crosspost) plugin allows you to crosspost your posts to other WordPress blogs or Community Server blogs via XML-RPC. Features include:
- The plugin keeps track of which post has been crossposted to which blog and can update the crossposted posts when changing the original posts.
- If you save a draft this will be crossposted as draft. If you publish the draft you can publish it also on the crossposted blogs.
- If protect a post with a password the crossposted posts will also be protected by a password.
- You can select the categories which should be used for the crosspost whereby this categories will be fetched from the blog you crosspost to.
- Crossposting will crosspost of course the title and text of the post, but also the excerpt, tags, the scheduled date for publishing and whether to allow comments and ping backs.
- Crossposting of comments (since version 1.1.0).
Please note that you have to install Xpost on all blogs you want to crosspost comments to. You have also to activate posting via XML-RPC in all these blogs.
Once you approve a comment in any of the blogs which are selected for crossposting comments it will be posted to all of these blogs. It will be immediatly approved in all these blogs.
Please note that the support for crossposting to Community Server blogs is untested and may not include all of the features.
Installation
Make sure your webserver runs PHP version 5.2 or later. This plugin may not work with earlier versions.
- Upload the “xpost” folder to the “/wp-content/plugins/” directory
- Activate the plugin through the “Plugins” menu in WordPress
- Goto “Settings”, then “Xpost” and add your WordPress blogs.
- That’s it! When editing or creating a post you will find a Xpost widget in the sidebar where you can select the blogs to crosspost to and the categories.
Please note that you have to activate posting via XML-RPC for the blogs you want to crosspost to. You can activate XML-RPC if you goto ‘Settings’ and then ‘Writing’ in the admin interface of each of those blogs.
If you upgrade from an earlier version, make sure you deactivate the plugin first and reactivate it afterwards. This is needed, because the database format may change and this will only be updated on reactivation.
If you want to crosspost comments you have to install the Xpost plugin on all WordPress installation the comments should get crossposted to and you have to activate posting via XML-RPC for all theses installations.
Frequently Asked Questions
How exactly does the crossposting of the comments work?
There are two different cases: 1. A comment is posted and approved in the blog with the original post. In this case it is stored in the database to which blogs the post was crossposted. The Xpost plugin will then transmit the comment via XML-RPC to these blogs. 2. A comment is posted and approved in a blog as response to a crosspost. In this case the Xpost plugin has stored the address of the blog containing the orginal post together with the crosspost. The comment will then be transmitted via XML-RPC to the original blog. The Xpost plugin in the original blog know to which other blogs the comment has to be posted and does so via XML-RPC.
I want to contribute. How can I do this?
The plugin is hosted on gitorious.org. You may create a clone of the repository, make your changes and request a merge afterwards.
Changelog
Version 1.2.1
- Added a small plugin for the target blogs to display whether a post was crossposted from somewhere else. (This will only be displayed for newly crossposted posts. For posts crossposted with earlier version it will always say the post has not been crossposted.)
- Fixed duplication of meta data of crossposted posts on an update.
- Fixed error message which occured when deleting blogs.
Version 1.2.0
- Adding (untested) support for crossposting to Community Server blogs. Thanks to Daniel Cohen!
- Ability to backdate posts when crossposting.
- Hopefully the timezone confusion is fixed. Finally.
- Fixed version number in admin panel.
- Minor issues.
Version 1.1.1
- Hopefully fixed bug with posts showing “missed schedule” instead of getting published.
- WordPress multi-user compatibility, but untested. Included just a patch suggestion by Norbert Mayer-Wittmann (see comments below).
Version 1.1.0
- New feature: Crossposting of comments.
- Fixed version number which was still wrongly displayed as 1.0.
Version 1.0.4
- Fixed bug: Backslashes were added in front of quotes in crossposts.
- Fixed bug: Media uploaded with the WordPress mediauploader was not shown in crossposts.
Version 1.0.3
- Plugin is now compatible to PHP version older than PHP 5.3.0.
- Fixed bug: Categories did not get loaded when creating a new post.
Version 1.0.2
- Improved installation instructions.
Version 1.0.1
- Added domain to gettext calls allowing translation.
- Added pot file for translation.
- Added German translation.
- Added additional license information.
Version 1.0
- Initial release.
Information
| WordPress Version: | 2.9–3.0.1 |
| License: | GNU General Public License 2 |
| git repository on gitorious.org: | http://www.gitorious.org/xpost |
| Developed with: | Eclipse, XAMPP and Firefox under Mac OS X Leopard in PHP, HTML and JavaScript |
Downloads
| Package Information | Version | Download | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xpost plugin | 1.2.1 | xpost.1.2.1.zip | 36 KiB |
| Xpost plugin | 1.2.0 | xpost.1.2.0.zip | 34 KiB |
| Xpost plugin | 1.1.1 | xpost.1.1.1.zip | 32 KiB |
| Xpost plugin | 1.1.0 | xpost.1.1.0.zip | 31 KiB |
| Xpost plugin | 1.0.4 | xpost.1.0.4.zip | 26 KiB |
| Xpost plugin | 1.0.3 | xpost.1.0.3.zip | 26 KiB |
| Xpost plugin | 1.0.2 | xpost.1.0.2.zip | 25 KiB |
| Xpost plugin | 1.0.1 | xpost.1.0.1.zip | 25 KiB |
| Xpost plugin | 1.0 | xpost.1.0.zip | 12 KiB |
Last modification: August 20th, 2010 at 12:14
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October 18th, 2009 at 15:47
I keep getting this error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined method DateTime::getTimestamp() in /home/patclev6/public_html/justice/wp-content/plugins/xpost/xpost_post.php on line 95
October 18th, 2009 at 22:12
Can you tell me which version of PHP you are using?
October 19th, 2009 at 14:27
PHP version 5.2.9
October 19th, 2009 at 16:36
I checked this: The Xpost plugin needs PHP in the version 5.3.0 or higher (but 5.3.0 is the latest version at the moment).
The easiest way to solve the problem would be probably to update your PHP installation.
If that is not possible there is a entry in the PHP manual concerning the newly introduced function in PHP 5.3.0 needed by Xpost. At this page is comment proposing an alternative function for PHP version older than 5.3.0. You could hack Xpost to use this license (but this would require some minor programming skills).
Last option would be, that I replace that function by myself. But I do not need the compatibility for the older PHP version. Therefore I do not have that much motivation to do this. Especially because my free time is very limited at the moment and it could take several weeks if I do it.
October 20th, 2009 at 15:57
Hi – this is a really useful extension for WordPress – many thanks!
The fix you need is in xpost_post.php
/* Fixed the call to getTimestamp as no available in php getTimestamp() ); */
$postData['dateCreated'] = new IXR_Date( mktime($date->hour, $date->minute, $date->second, $date->month, $date->day, $date->year) );
There is one other small error I would appreciate help on.
When creating a new post to a single other blog, the XPost widget does not display the categories from the other blog. After posting and doing a post update, the categories are displayed fine.
October 24th, 2009 at 20:14
I might include the proposed fix with the next version of the plugin (whenever it will come).
The problem with the categories could be reproduced by me, however it occured not while testing. I do not know what causes this problem, yet. As said before I have not much free time at the moment, but I will try my best to fix this soon.
October 26th, 2009 at 15:55
Sometimes things happen sooner as you think: I’ve released today a new Xpost version. It introduces compatibility with PHP versions older than 5.3.0 (however the proposed fix did not work, but I found another fix).
The categories get know also loaded if you create a new post.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:56
[...] WordPress Xpost (cross Post) Plugin [...]
November 10th, 2009 at 23:53
Hi,
I tried testing the xpost plugin and the image reference in my post broke. Image was loaded into the source wordpress blog through the media uploader. Was translated into an empty src in the cross post. Other than that it appears to do everything I need.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:54
I do not use the WordPress media uploader and completely forgot about it. However I do not really know if it is even possible to make it compatible to crossposting. I think there is no possibility to transfer the uploaded media to another WordPress blog (but I have to check this in the documentation). Maybe it is possible to change the links to the media in a way that they are pointing to the original blog.
November 11th, 2009 at 15:33
I’m finding that both single and double quotes in markup in my posts are being escaped breaking links and img tags. for example a href=” becomes a href=\”a
Any advice.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:12
I just made another bugfix release. The quotes shouldn’t be escaped any longer and images uploaded through the media uploader should be also shown in the crosspost.
If find more bugs, please post them to!
November 25th, 2009 at 20:52
I have MU and wanted to crosspost inside my own MU site. But when I activate the plugin, it comes up with a blank screen. Is there something that I am doing wrong?
November 25th, 2009 at 21:51
What exactly did you do? Just copied the plugin to the plugin folder and clicked “activate” at the WordPress plugin page? And then you got a totally empty page? Or were the WordPress menus still visible?
November 26th, 2009 at 00:22
Entire blog ( frontend and backend ) has the white screen of death. When I activate it, this is the link I get:
mysite.com/wp-admin/plugins.php?action=activate&plugin=xpost%2Fxpost.php&plugin_status=inactive&paged=1&_wpnonce=1b97e3ada1
I added the plugin with Filezilla, went to the plugins page, found it, the second I clicked onto it I got the link above and just a white screen. Could this be an MU compatibility issue? Should I check other plugins?
November 26th, 2009 at 00:33
Tried with another MU that was 2.8.5 I believe and got this message when I tried to activate it:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_get_current_user() in /home/juuble/public_html/webtechads/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 920
For the blog I talked about in the last comment, it was MU 2.8.6. Just some information to help out. The 2.8.5 version had no plugins added other than wp-sifr and wp-contact.
November 26th, 2009 at 09:08
Thanks for the further information. That might be helpful tracking down the problem.
It might be a MU compatibility issue. The error message in the second try also suggests that it has to do something with users. But I am not sure at the moment.
I will investigate this problem soon.
November 30th, 2009 at 16:00
It is definitely a problem with MU. Therefore Xpost is not compatible to MU and I am not planning to change this in the near future. To me it seems not trivial to add MU support.
December 7th, 2009 at 16:36
I assume this plugin won’t cross-post comments from the various locations of a cross-posted blog post right? So you’d get different threads of conversation on each of the copies of the blog post. Is copying the comments between copies a feature you plan to add?
December 7th, 2009 at 17:32
You are right. You will get different threads of conversation.
But it is a nice idea. I might try to implement this in the future. However I cannot tell when. It will definitely not before next February.
December 11th, 2009 at 18:47
Hi,
I’ve encountered another issue. The xpost doesn’t appear to handle time offsets from UTC correctly for knowing when to publish the post unless both the source and target blogs are set to UTC-0.
Our source blog was set to UTC-5 and the source UTC-0 and the posts appeared to be shifted 5 hours. I changed the source to UTC-5 and the posts still appeared to be shifted by 5 hours. I set both blogs to UTC-0 and the posts publish as soon as they are x-posted rather than being scheduled for 5 hours.
Anyone else experienced this?
December 14th, 2009 at 13:47
Are you sure that you are using the newest Xpost version 1.0.4? From version 1.0.2 to 1.0.3 some code responsible for the publishing date has changed to make it compatible to older PHP versions.
I tested the problem described myself, but could not reproduce the problem. If I create a post in a blog set to UTC-5 scheduled for let’s say 7:00 and crosspost it to a blog set to UTC-0 it will be scheduled for 12:00 in this blog. Therefore they will published at the same time and that is the behavior I expect.
Also post get scheduled for the same time when crossposting.
December 16th, 2009 at 21:46
I am using Xpost version 1.0.4 with WordPress version 2.8.6 with PHP version 5.2.8. I’ve activated the plugin with no problem but when I try to put in the settings for the blog, I get “XML-RPC request returned no blogs”. I have the XML-RPC enabled in the “Writing” settings, so I’m not sure what’s wrong. Any ideas?
December 21st, 2009 at 14:45
I’m sorry for the late answer. However, I do not have good ideas what the problem could be. Did you enable the XML-RPC in the blog you want to post to? (or in the blog you are posting from which would be wrong?)
Probably you have already double checked the URL you entered, haven’t you?
January 11th, 2010 at 14:44
Hi, just like to say what an excellent plugin…something I’ve been wanting for ages so thanks! My question is, how do I xpost a sticky post? I know xmlrpc now supports it but I’m not sure of the code I’d need to put in the xpost_post.php file. Any ideas would be gratefully received. Thanks again.
January 12th, 2010 at 07:01
I think, at the moment it is not possible to xpost a sticky post. I didn’t even know that WordPress supports sticky posts. If xmlrpc supports it, it should be not big deal to implement. Could you point me to some documentation of that xmlrpc support?
January 12th, 2010 at 13:46
In response to your questions on Dec 21st, yes I have enabled xml-rpc on both blogs and have double-checked the URL that was entered. I’m not really sure why it’s not working. Could it be a setting in the install of PHP itself?
January 13th, 2010 at 13:43
I do not think that it is a setting in the install of PHP. But I have really no idea what the problem is at the moment. Some debug information like the data transmitted from the and to the blogs would be helpful. But it is not that easy to provide this data.
January 14th, 2010 at 16:30
Hi,
We’re finding that posts initially cross posted as draft sometimes don’t switch to published in the cross post when the original is published. We’re using 1.0.4. Updating the original invariably clears this up but we’re publishing posts in advance so sometimes don’t catch this until after the date.
January 14th, 2010 at 18:03
I did some research on this and it might be a bug in wordpress itself. When I tried to schedule crossposts in my testing environment they also did not get published. In the article overview WordPress said then “missed schedule”. I do not really know why this only occured with the crosspost itself, but not the original post (and I had both blogs at the same server with WordPress 2.8). However this seems to be a known problem and a workaround (which worked for me) is described at http://www.newbloghelp.com/wordpress/wordpress-missed-schedule-future-posts-fix
There exists also a plugin fixing this problem which I have not tried: http://blog.5ubliminal.com/posts/missed-schedule-future-posts-scheduled-mias-wordpress-plugin/
Afterwards I tried it also with WordPress 2.9.1 and had no problems with this version.
Therefore you might want to check your WordPress version and whether it says “missed schedule” for the unpublished post.
February 10th, 2010 at 03:44
I just installed Xpost by using the installer within WordPress. However, when I look at your site here, you say you’re on version 1.04. Which version is the right one?
February 10th, 2010 at 22:04
Oops, I just noticed that I always forgot to change the version number in xpost.php which is the version number displayed in the admin interface. However, readme.txt will contain the correct version number.
Thank you for the notice, I hope I remember to fix this in the next version.
February 18th, 2010 at 17:42
hello, I have xpost installed on two WPs and it worked for awhile then i started getting this message – Now I did update the user info for the contributing blog so it seems something happened in the process.
XML-RPC connection to the blog failed: Sorry, you are not allowed to publish posts on this blog.
February 18th, 2010 at 21:38
Have you checked the username and password you entered in the Xpost settings for the blogs you are crossposting to? The error messages suggests that these are wrong and therefore the plugin cannot login.
Other reasons for the error, I can think of, are:
1. The user set in the Xpost settings for the blog you are crossposting to does not have the permissions to create posts.
2. Posting via XML-RPC has been disabled.
You should check these things. If that does not help some more information would be useful. At the moment I do not fully understand what you did. Did you update the user info of the contributing blog after the plugin stopped working? Or have you updated the user info and then it stopped working? If the later, was it immediatly oder after a while?
When do you get the error message? When creating a new post? Or when updating an existing post?
btw: I am now working on a new version which is also able to crosspost comments. (However, there might be some limitations to this feature.)
February 19th, 2010 at 00:41
hey thanks for the quick response.. this plugin rocks!!
Yes you were right, I had the two contributers set as “contributers” when I changed their role to author it worked! thanks again
February 22nd, 2010 at 13:39
@Chris (comment 19): Good news for you. I added a feature to crosspost comments in version 1.1.0 of the plugin. Have fun with it!
March 10th, 2010 at 19:07
Is there any kind of error indication when an xml-rpc cross post fails? We’re running into examples where a cross post doesn’t update and we can’t tell that that happened.
March 10th, 2010 at 20:05
There should be either a message at the top of the edit page or in the Xpost-Widget. I won’t have time to take a look into this for the next one and half weeks. But then I will see if I can locate a problem with the error messages.
It could help if you provide more information: WordPress and plugin version? Did the problem only occur when updating a post or also when cross posting it the first time? Do you use Quick Edit? (That might be a problem, in fact.)
March 30th, 2010 at 17:24
The option to add a comment to cross-posts doesn’t seem to be working. When I add a comment and save, it still shows a ’0′.
March 31st, 2010 at 15:12
Sorry, but that is not enough information to let me reproduce the problems. All variants of adding comments I have tried are working in my testing environment.
What WordPress version do you use? How are you adding the comment? Where exactly does it show a ’0′? Does the comment appear at least in the blog the comment is created in or is it in both blogs missing? Are you creating the comment in the original blog or in the blog you crossposted the comment to? That are some questions to which answers might be helpful.
April 10th, 2010 at 00:25
Hi, I am trying to test out Xpost for use on two blogs, but every time i schedule a post the primary account, where i wrote the post, works fine, but the other account, where i’m crossposting to, doesn’t publish. It doesn’t say “missed schedule” or anything. It says it’s scheduled for a time in the past. It works fine when I manually publish it on that account, but I don’t think I should have to do that every time i schedule a post.
Thanks!
April 11th, 2010 at 10:22
@Jeff: When do a scheduled crosspost, what says WordPress about the post in the blog you crossposted to? Does it then already say that it is scheduled for a time in the past? Does it show a wrong time?
Or seems everything to be ok and scheduled for the correct time and does not say it is scheduled for a time in the past until the scheduled time passed?
If the later is the case, I would assume, that it is not a bug in Xpost (because all data about the scheduling would be passed correctly), but a bug in WordPress (which somehow fails to publish the post at the given time).
Are you using the latest WordPress versions?
April 12th, 2010 at 21:31
The problem is actually more universal than just when scheduling a post. When I click publish on the primary blog, the secondary blog says it’s “Scheduled” for exactly the same time, but doesn’t publish. The same problem happens if I schedule a post. It misses the schedule, but doesn’t tell me. It simply says “scheduled” and a date that’s in the past.
I am using 2.9.2 on both wordpress blogs.
The reason that I am troubled is that I can schedule posts normally on both accounts.
Thanks for the reply!
April 13th, 2010 at 06:07
Pardon the double post, but I thought this might help.
I have tried to use the plugin on a different server and receive this error:
Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: datetime in …/plugins/xpost/xpost_post.php on line 100
Thanks.
April 13th, 2010 at 17:23
Ok, I will have a look into those problems, but I am not sure whether I can do something about them. Moreover, it may take some time, because the semester just began again and my workload the next months will be very high.
May 8th, 2010 at 16:03
This is definitely cool — I just tested it out with WP 3 multi-user / network enabled + with PHP 5.0
The only problem I got was this here error message:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_get_current_user() in …/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 1058
and so I patched that up with
require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . ‘/pluggable.php’);
(found it by searching the error message text)
You might want to talk w/ the 3.0 dev team about that issue (is it common problem for plugins?) or basically code around it(?)
Haven’t yet tried the schedule stuff etc. — but I like it already … So long twitter!
;D nmw
May 30th, 2010 at 13:23
Finally! Today I released a new Xpost version. I hope this will fix problems with scheduled crossposts which miss the scheduled date and do not get published. Nevertheless, if the problem is still not solved I will probably not be able to do anything about it, because it seems to be a WordPress error in that case.
I also included the change suggested in the last comment to make the plugin compatible to WP 3 multi-user. However, I have not tested whether it really works, because I am not really interested in compatibility with WP multiuser if it takes much effort.
@Jeff: The problem you described with “cannot instantiate non-existent class”. It seems that the PHP version on that server is to old. Xpost needs at least PHP 5.2.
June 17th, 2010 at 09:36
Hi blubb!
I’m using current versions of wp – I’m finding that my images are being stripped and I’m left with:
img src=http://skysoclear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/skysoclear.jpg alt= title=skysoclear width=560 height=460 class=alignnone size-full wp-image-721 /
No opening or closing brackets. Is there a fix?
Other than that- works awesome!
thanks, Ross
June 17th, 2010 at 09:38
oh, and no commas – img src=”http
Any help mucho appreciated!
June 21st, 2010 at 01:07
Hey there – having an interesting problem with Xpost. Though I’d post here to see if there might be any ideas.
As far as I can tell, Xpost is bombing when it tries to cross-post to other blogs (leaves me with a blank, white screen, instead of going back to the edit post page). It will not post in the mirrored blogs, but will post fine in the host blog. What really has me scratching my head is that I use Xpost in the other blogs which run the same versions of WordPress, Xpost, and all other plugins (but not the same PhP version) and they work fine, and can post into the Main Blog, just not visa verse.
WordPress v. 3.0
Xpost v. 1.1.1
Main Blog PhP v.4.3.9
Mirrored Blogs PhP v.5.?
The only thing I can think of that is different is that the Main Blog site is not sitting on the top level dir. of the server, where the other blogs are (had this issue with another plugin). But I freely admit, that’s a long shot.
Thanks!
July 17th, 2010 at 19:41
The last four weeks were very stressful for me, but it’s slowly getting better. Hopefully, I will find time to take a look into the issue with the stripped images before there will be another six week period in which I will not have the time to do this.
@Smudge: In fact, the PHP version of the Main Blog might be the problem. You stated that it is only 4.3, but you might need version 5.x. I do not know whether I use any function calls which are not supported by PHP 4.x.
July 17th, 2010 at 20:45
Thanks Blubb!
I kind of suspected that to be the case but wanted to get a second, more knowledgeable opinion before I wrote it off as a PhP thing. Alas, my current host on the PhP4 site has already stated he will not upgrade to PhP5 unless he has to change hardware so that’s kind of a dead end for me. But I will continue to use Xpost on the other blogs. There they seem to be working fine.
Thanks for the great plugin!
July 21st, 2010 at 20:53
Hi and thanks for a GREAT plugin
I am using my blog as a “What happens in my family” kind a blog…. – But I use Xpost to publish to my kids website, so the posts related to them checks in at their site too.
But the date does not match, when i publish a backdated post on the mainsite, the publish date (now) appears as publish date on the xposted site.
When i want postdate to be the 1. July on a post on mainsite I am writing 21. july, it changes to publishdate as 21. july when I “xpost” the post to the other site
Can I do anything about that? Could you tell me where and what i need to change in the code to be able to have the same postdate on both sites?
Kind regards
July 23rd, 2010 at 07:35
Per default the plugin always uses the current date (now) as publish date, except the entered publish date is a couple of minutes in the future. This implies that backdated posts will also use the current date as publish date. The corresponding if-condition should be in the xpost_post.php file.
I think I will integrate the ability to backdate posts in the next version of the plugin. However, it might take some months until I am able to release that version.
As stated above the publish date will only be set to the entered value if it is a few minutes in the future. That is because some had problems that the crossposted posts did not appear and showed a “missed schedule” status and I am hoping that this is a workaround for that problem (but I am not sure). My thought was, that WordPress might have a problem with posts scheduled too close to the current time.
August 2nd, 2010 at 14:31
I’m having the same problem as Smudge. When I click “publish”, a white screen appears. The post has been published, but not cross-posted.
WordPress 3.0.1 on both blogs.
Xpost 1.1.1 on both blogs
PHP 5.1.6 on both blogs.
(Both blogs are on the same machine, but each with their own instance of wordpress running.)
Many thanks -
Joel.
August 4th, 2010 at 16:03
Thank you!!!
is just what I needed!
JSR
August 19th, 2010 at 18:57
@Ross: I am not able to reproduce your problem. For me Images and other HTML tags are left intact. WordPress, PHP and plugin version might help with this. But it seems to me that the problem is not caused by the Xpost plugin alone.
@Mette: With the new version 1.2.0 it is possible crosspost to backdated posts.
@Joel: Probably the problem is the PHP version. I am using version 5.3 for testing, but it should work also with PHP version 5.2. However, version 5.1.x seems to be too old. Sorry for that.
September 1st, 2010 at 23:43
Hey blubb – Thanks so much for the great plugin! I use it on a lot of setups for my clients.
I’m having an issue, though, when trying to connect blogs that are WordPress MultiSite (aka WP 3.0+) it’s returning zero blogs. I’m not sure if this is a result of the member site lookup not working on the WordPress side, or what… I’m poking in your code, hoping to find an answer, but if you’ve got an idea, I would love to hear it
Also, if I figure out a code fix to make it work, I’ll let you know!
September 2nd, 2010 at 04:25
I’m travelling until October and will not be able to take a look into this for the time being. To debug this problem it would be really helpful to get the raw answer sent by the WordPress MultiSite blog. You are saying you are poking into my code which lets me suppose that you have some programming skill. I don’t know whether they are enough to write this raw answer to a file and send to me.
(if not I will try to reproduce this problem myself as soon as I find the time.)