A lot of people used multiple blogs to provide “secondary” information on their main blog — think sidebars, linkblogs, guest blogs, reading lists, etc etc. Stuff that isn’t static, but also stuff that doesn’t get updated as regularly as — or perhaps doesn’t “fit” with — the main blog content.
ihad’s notion of multi-blogs is incorrect. skippy has the right idea.
use mt and then you’ll know what multi-blogs is all about.
I assumed multiple blogs as in “individual unique blogs all run from a single wp install.”
I’m hosting a number of blogs and have simply installed WP once for each blog and created a new Mysql database for each.. I thought that in the future, multiple blogs meant that WP would support a central blog install directory, which individual blogs would be able to tie into via config files. (Like how AW stats handles multiple web sites from a single install).
Not sure if I’m describing this correctly, but I don’t much care…I’m happy with how it is currently. A WordPress install takes all of 2 minutes anyway. So unless server space is a factor, I don’t think that things are fine.
I would rather argue that there are simply different “notions” of what Multiple Blogs are, instead of speaking about correct/incorrect.
skippy’s MP notion indicate the same “owner” deploying a number of blogs for different purposes/content
jim’s notion indicates “hosting” blogs for e.g. community members, so skippy’s notion of mps does not fit in here.
charle97 has it almost exactly correct. It’s not just that people want content logically seperated in storage but displayed on the same page (sidebars, guest blogs etc); they want that and they want to be able to manage both sets of posts from a single administrative login.
Yes, using multiple installations of WordPress it’s possible to have multiple blogs; but management is more cumebrsome due to seperate logins (sure, you can use the same password for both WP installs, but if you ever clear your cookies — or use a different computer — you need to log in again to both sites). Moreover, the use of seperate logical blogs for creating a single output means that authors can be logically restricted from fiddling with one another’s content. A sidebar guest blogger would not have the keys to the kingdom for the main blog content.
WordPress’s original limitation was the use of a single loop to fetch, prepare and display posts. The new implementation of multiple loops solves one of the problems that multiple blogs handles: namely targetting specific sets of data for output in a specific place (sidebar, sticky posts, etc). Robust author permissions and permission delegation is the next issue that needs to be addressed.
Thread Starter
Ozh
(@ozh)
Ok, so if I understand things, current version of WP with sub-categories is fine for multi-blogging needs : under one category “Main” could be nested your regular blog categories, another top-level category “Music” or “Reading” could gather your current readings and listenings, and so on… No ? 🙂
Butting in here…. No, it is a pain in the ass either way with WP right now. I eaither A) have to doa seperate installation of WP which means I no longer share account information or B) Use categories / subcategories but the look/feel is exactly the same. Yes, there are hackish ways to get around both/either problems.
Basically MT (which I use as a reference since I ran it for about a year) allowed as many blogs as you wanted all visible from within a unified control panel. They all shared a user database which allowed assignment of users to specific tasks.. add categories, add users, edit posts, add posts, delete posts etc. Very flexible. I’m not even sure what the 0-9 of WP user levels means.
This is WP’s roadmap specifically about the multiple-blogging issue. Pretty interesting read:
http://wordpress.org/development/archives/2004/05/28/the-road-ahead/
What Skippy said!!! “charle97 has it almost exactly correct. It’s not just that people want content logically seperated in storage but displayed on the same page (sidebars, guest blogs etc); they want that and they want to be able to manage both sets of posts from a single administrative login.” Couldn’t make the issue clearer.
