That’s not what multisite is for. Each site is *separate*. you’re setting up your own version of wordpress.com that you manage.
mobile has noting to do with multisite either.
you need something completely different,. like an A/B testing plguin.
I know it’s not meant for that, but it would be really nice if it could do it none the less 🙂
Looking in the database I see all content is simply seperated by a prefix, blog 1 uses wp_1_ blog 2 uses wp_2 etc.
Wouldn’t it be possible to write a plugin that get content from tables with prefix wp_1 instead of wp_2?
Yes, that would be possible, but then you wouldn’t be using multisite. that is my point. 🙂
There would be no need to set up multiple sites if you’re constantly referring to the MAIN site. See?
It’s not just the content separated by the prefix, it’s the entire backend as well.
you need to use something other than multisite. Forcing multisite to do what you want would take more coding that it would to use a single install to show three variations of the same site.
Well the thing is, I want different backends, each version of the site uses different plugins. The only thing that’s supposed to be the same is the content. So while I don’t want to use all of multisite, I would like to use most of it 🙂
And I’ve looked into other ways of achieving this but there’s no easy way of doing it using plugins or a shared database, because of the different plugins used and the caching. If you have any ideas on how to do this more efficiently I’d love to hear them!
The thing is, while I’m pretty comfortable around wordpress and themes and even simple plugins I don’t really know where to start with writing a plugin for something like this. I don’t suppose there’s plugin hook like, hey!-Im-looking-for-content where I can just insert a new prefix and get it working in a jiffy huh? 🙂
Actually, up above you said you wanted each version to use a different theme. 😉
What plugins are different?
I don’t suppose there’s plugin hook like, hey!-Im-looking-for-content where I can just insert a new prefix and get it working in a jiffy huh? 🙂
um, no. 😛
Oh, srry ’bout that. I tend to think in themes, it’s actually a different theme, different plugins, same content. Just to be clear.
Yeah, I was afraid rolling a plugin wouldn’t be that easy. But it is doable you think? Like I said, I’m a relative newbie at plugins, what hooks should I be looking at?
As for the plugins,well, we want to start using disqus or intense debate. The idea is to have one of them active on the current blog and using the normal wp comments on the old version of the blog and see what user response is. We now use a couple of plugins for the comments, a karma type plugin which wouldn’t be needed on the current version since disqus or id takes care of stuff like that. We also use yet-another-post-rating-plugin which we won’t be using on the new version of the site anymore. But the favorite posts are integral to the old layout so it does need to exist. And I used a pagination plugin which I’ve replaced with some functions in functions.php on the new version of the site. Stuff like that.
BTW, thanks for your patience and answers so far, it’s much appreciated!
And how are you going to decide who sees what version?
And what about post permalinks? Where do (or where would) search engines get pointed to? Which one would be primary?
Well, I’ve thought about that offcourse.
We’ll have 3 versions, the current, the old one and a beta versions.
The current layout will be the default (in practice 90% of our visitors will be going to this site).
Some browsers will be redirected to the old version (ie6,ps3 browser etc.) through javascript and there will be links in the header for people who simply prefer the older version.
The current layout will use permalinks and search engines will be pointed to the current version of the site.
