Thank you for that massively quick reply!
I wasn’t aware MultiSite works all from the same tables? I thought it was just for having multiple defined WordPress installations on the same domain?
Will take a good look, thanks again Esmi!
I’ve had a look, it just seems like having multiple unique blogs.
As a user experience, I’m aiming for the readers to not realise they have left the original site, and when they are sent to the different sections they only have subtle changes that identify them. All the user details and post details remain unchanged.
This means that the main website will have ALL the posts, while each separate section will have their own category-specific posts (defined by editing the theme files).
If this is possible using WordPress MS, how would I go about doing that, or is it automated in the MS install?
You can use a single install and use categories but you can’t have the (sub)domain names you want.
Or subfolders? It’s irrelevant where they are, I just want effectively different installs on the same domain with the same database, user data, post information etc. They don’t have to be in subdomains, it’s just so I can customize the themes per category and effectively have a site per category all linked up to the main site which is an amalgamation of all three.
Or subfolders?
No – you cannot have true sub-folders in a single install. The best you can have is a permalink structure that resembles sub-folders.
Only WP Multisite uses sub-folders or sub-domains.
So is there any way of achieving what I’m after?
Even if it’s just a page, would I just need to create a .php template/page and add it as a link that is effectively a hub for all the posts of a category, as well as having it’s own theme by loading a separate CSS file?
So is there any way of achieving what I’m after?
I think you’re going to have to prioritise your needs first to determine which flavour of WordPress is best for you. If a sub-domain structure is important, then you’ll have to use WP Multisite. If a single theme/single dashboard approach is best for you, then drop the sub-domain idea and go for a single, =vanilla, WordPress install.
The rest of your questions really hinge on what WP flavour you opt for.
Definitely more important that they all contain the same data from the same database and tables, so I’m happy to sacrifice the subdomain restructure idea.
As it stands, going back to my original question (now slightly rephrased), if I wanted to have three new pages – “Movies”, “Gaming” and “Music”, each with their own riff on the original theme, would it be as simple as coding a new stylesheet and PHP pages linking to the database and adding them as links on the original site or is there something more complicated that I’d have to do?
would it be as simple as coding a new stylesheet and PHP pages linking to the database
Even simpler. You could create a custom template for each Page and, if necessary, turn it in a page of posts. Or you could just use category templates to display all posts in those categories.
Either way, if your theme uses the body_class() function (and most themes in the Theme Repo that have been updated in the last 14 months do), that will give you the CSS hooks to completely re-style the pages using pure CSS added to the theme’s stylesheet(s). Finally, a custom menu will you to build your own nav menus.
Thank you so much for your help esmi, I’m well on my way to getting it finished 🙂
Currently it’s up at EntertainmentCocktail.com/movies, but there’s still one thing that isn’t working for me:
As you can probably see, I’m trying to have a list of “Recent Film News” on the left underneath the recent reviews box. I’ve managed to include exclusively movie-category news, but for some reason it wont limit it to just 8 articles.
My code for that section:
<ul class="list2">
<?php global $latestnews;
$args = array(
'numberposts' => 5,
'category' => 3,
'orderby' => 'post_date',
'order' => 'DESC',
'post_type' => 'post',
'post_status' => 'publish' );
$latestnews = get_posts($args);
?>
<?php foreach ($latestnews as $post) : setup_postdata($post); { ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php } endforeach; ?> </ul>
As you can see, I’ve made sure to use the numberposts tag in the array (set to 5 so I can clearly see a difference when it’s working!) but on the website it’s showing all 9 (current) articles.
What’s going wrong?!
