Fantastiblog

Of these plugins to Manage Wordpress users and Google apps, the most promising sounding is of course WP Google Apps – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-google-apps/.

That’s the one I tested first (WP Google Apps 1.0 on Wordpress 2.8.5), with no real success. The first issue is that the plugin is nested an extra folder deep, so the automatic install won’t recognise the plugin. Once you move the files up one directory-level (from /wp-google-apps/wp-google-apps/* to /wp-google-apps/*) then Wordpress can ’see’ it.

After entering my Google apps domain on the configuration page, I logged out to test. The initial result is a server timeout when attempting to login to my blog with an account from the Google Apps domain. I tried both with the full email address and just the user name, only to have the same effect – a timeout. Checking the plugin’s sparse documentation I did note that the Google Apps account must be set to allow POP or IMAP access for this to work. A quick check showed that I did already have POP enabled. Slightly more disturbing is that the timeout persisted even when using my original credentials for the blog.

The only solution was to remove the plugin from the filesystem (I used webshell as I’m hosted on an H-Sphere control panel) – you could as easily use FTP or SSH in if you have access. Once removed (or simply compressed to save time for more attempts) I could log back in with my original administrator account.

The FAQ does note that “Unfortunately, the only way to get the plugin to work on 2.0.x is to completely wipe the dashboard.” I’m not really sure what ‘wiping the dashboard’ is though – any suggestions?