What's your take? 30 blogs, different pages, same news feed?

  • mizzmuzikluvr

    (@mizzmuzikluvr)


    13 years ago

    Hello all!

    I work for a company with 30 “stations” across the country. Each station has its own WordPress installation in order to act as its website. Each of these sites have different pages with different content on them. Now we are kicking around the idea of having one person (read: me) update the news (wp_loop) section of ALL of the sites at once.

    Now, I know this is possible, and I’m not worried about that. My concern is that it might not be smart, or good for viewer ship.

    My first instinct is to think that if I go to 3 different websites, with identical front page content, and identical themes with the only difference being the name of the site, I’m going to a) be confused and think they’re all the same site b) think they are disingenuous and a robot.

    However, if I don’t post to these news pages, chances are they won’t either. Which means outdated “news” on the front page. So… which is worse?

    I could attempt to do something like, a “my turn, your turn” where I recommended they post every 4 weeks, and I post every 4 weeks, so that there is a post every 2 weeks. That way each station would at least have half of its news content be unique.

    So, I’m looking for advice, opinions and thoughts. Thanks!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • tjobbe

    (@tjobbe)

    13 years ago

    Heh, I’m in almost exactly the same boat as you.

    I’m tasked with re-freshing the many web sites which spawn from our main site, and these sites all have 90% of the same content except for the bits which are unique to them,such as address, phone numbers..

    I’m seriously considering taking it to the enxt level with these sites,by giving these “stations” access to the news / blog section only and telling them to add news regularly.

    Currently, they’re all hosted on the same server and have the same IP, so if google doesn’t know it yet, it will soon know that these web sites need to be blocked! So moving each one to a separate web host or giving them a unique ip or something to make it look like they are independent web sites is what I’m thinking needs to be done.

    I would love my “stations” to add a new news article every week, no matter how short, but I don’t think they will do this somehow, so may have to put mechanisms in place to ensure this happens.

    Thread Starter mizzmuzikluvr

    (@mizzmuzikluvr)

    13 years ago

    tjobbe,

    Thanks for the input. I’ve actually not yet considered the ramifications of having all the different stations in terms of Google. Currently, 90% of their content is unique, because they don’t have the news feed yet. This system was in place before I was, and so I find I’m spending a lot of time trying to reason out WHY something was done, and if it can/should be undone.

    From a user experience, what do you think will go through peoples minds if they are on website x which links to website y, and they go to y to find its almost the same?

    I know in social media robot-posting is a no-no, because it turns people off. I wonder if its the same with websites?

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    13 years ago

    Kind of. But…

    Is ALL the news going to be the same all the time?

    That sort of sounds like a job for WP Multisite, you know. One install, multiple blogs. You can broadcast post via a plugin to all the sites, and then per-site update what NEEDS to be per site.

    Thread Starter mizzmuzikluvr

    (@mizzmuzikluvr)

    13 years ago

    Thats the ticket. SHOULD all of the news be the same all of the time?

    I’m not so much concerned with how to make it work, as I am with how mirroring content will affect the user experience/reputation.

    In theory, I could craft a news post and email the content to all of the stations, suggesting that they use it in their news, and also encourage them to add their own stories. The trouble is that I don’t know if they WILL update. In my experience a lot of the stations are overworked and understaffed and updating a website regularly isn’t on the top of their to-do list.

    With the sheer amount of sites, even with Multisite, it would be a full-time job for me to find content and post it to all of the relevant stations. So, while I realize I can do that, It really isn’t a feasible option.

    So, again I wonder which is more important? Constantly timely content, or uniqueness?

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    13 years ago

    Thats the ticket. SHOULD all of the news be the same all of the time?

    Yeah, that’s a weird question 😉

    If you’re just going to have the same info all the time on all the domains, then you may as well park them all on a master domain and do it that way. Don’t reinvent the wheel. There should be ways (and this is outside WP, FWIW) to say ‘If someone comes to domain1, show them branding for domain1’. I’m blanking on it right now, but it’s domain/htaccess stuff.

    You’re right, they probably won’t update a lot. But as a user, if the site isn’t being updated with info specific to MY area, then what the hell is the point? So … point THAT out. They need a website intern updating their sites, or they don’t get one.

    Thread Starter mizzmuzikluvr

    (@mizzmuzikluvr)

    13 years ago

    Thanks, Ipstenu. I agree with you. So then, I’ll plan to build each of the sites with the custom content, then email them about interesting things that relate to them, in hopes that they post.

    Thanks for the feedback!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • The topic ‘What's your take? 30 blogs, different pages, same news feed?’ is closed to new replies.