Multiple WP installs on one domain: Stupid or notsoStupid?

I’m caught in the same quandary. I had invested quite a bit of time going down the path of multiple installs on one domain, then learned about MU.

I can’t really see that MU does what I want it to do – but I am totally a novice at this. It appears that MU is great for letting users create their own blog that is administered centrally. That isn’t quite what I’m looking for. I want to directly administer blogs on related topics where the Authors can publish only to certain sites (but read all of them.)

I hope someone can come along and answer this…

Well, WPMU is more for collections of independent blogs, like a community of blogs. And as far as I know they aren’t shared amongst themselves the way that you want.

I don’t know that multiple installs are a system drain necessarily. I have many many WP installs on one domain, in subdomains, all with separate databases. But this is because I develop WP sites for pay and each WP client gets a subdomain and a WP install.

I’ve only dabbled a bit in WPMU and that, not recently. So maybe a visit to the WPMU support forum would be a next step?

hm. im also wondering if i can have users cross post among the different sections under a wordpress MU site (both posters and commenters using the same login for all blogs) which doesn’t appear to be possible under my current “new install for each section” setup.

greglins posts interesting questions as well. hope we get a know-it-all passing through this thread to set us straight.

I have six installs on one domain and have never had a peek at MU. But of course you can post a few questions at the Mu forums to the experienced people there to find out what would be best for you.

I’m pretty new with WordPress, but I think you can have as many WP installations in one domain as you like.

To access them you just use sub domains or /blog_a / blog_b and so on.

From the CMS world (Content Management System) you have to have the sites using the same instance of the CMS to be able to cross publish between solutions / websites.

If I do 2 separate installations of the same CMS, they will not share DB and it will be more difficult to cross publish. I would assume it’s the same for WordPress.

However I have no clue how – or if it’s possible to have several blogs using the same WordPress installtion / database. It WordPress built for that?

WP is a blog and not a full CMS. So until WP gets there, use RSS feeds to “cross publish”.

Yes you can. And the last tip is a good one.

spstieng: great response – actually, a little too great for me. could i get you to explain more of what you said, but in novice terms? im sniffing around search engines for some of the terms you used, but i need just a little more lead to set sail in the right direction i think.
you rock.

and thanks for the link Gangleri. im checking it out now, though it seems its posing the same problem to me.

And here comes the conclution ??

You can select to pay for aditional hosting (new DB and new site) or you can use an existing hosting. The last one is offcourse the cheapest ??

Now – I don’t remember so much from my installation – it was a while ago. But in theory it goes something like this:

The database
————–
When installing a new WordPress, you will have to decide which DB you want to install it on. You can either select a new DB or an existing DB.

If you select an existing database, you wil have to change the prefix for the tables. By default it is ‘wp_’. A good thumb of rule is to have the (web)site name as the prefix.

If you do not change the prefix, you will overwrite the existing DB and then you are f*** ??

And that’s it. You now have the database in place.

The site
————
To save money on hosting, you can do as I have done. Install a new wordpress on an existing website. In the filestructure it will look like this:

My site / WordPress 1
My site / WordPress 2
My site / WordPress n

To acess them you just type in:
https://www.mysite.com/wordpress1
https://www.mysite.com/wordpress2
https://www.mysite.com/wordpressn

But you probably would like your own domain names. Buy a domain name and have it point to the site you wish. Then instead of typing https://www.mysite.com/wordpress2, you can now access the site typing https://www.my_new_site.com.

Hope this is helpfull.
For more advanced support – brows the web ??

I am not sure that what I am wanting to do is the same as what is being mentioned above – but this seems like the best place to ask.

I would like to have a family website (famweb -dot- com – for instance) and have that serve as the main portal – all fully family related stuff will be there. I would hope to have some sort of gallery plug-in here.

I would like to have another install at “famweb -dot- com / dad” , “famweb -dot- com / mom” , “famweb -dot- com / son” , etc., so that each person can customize their own page to their own liking. Ideally, a link to the photo gallery could be on each page?

I would like to have all pages, including the gallery, be password protected with one, universal un/pw set for each user. Grandma can go to any of the sites, log in, and then continue unhindered to the next site, gallery, etc.

Is this possible? I have not yet read Gangleri’s link.

Thank you in advance for any and all help.

I have the following setup:

4 WP installs under one domain
They are all under a specific sub directory within the same domain
All usernames and passwords are shared among the installs, so if I change it in one the change is reflected in the other installs.

To achieve the whole username and password sharing there are two ways and the easy way, the one I took, is installing the “Shared Users” plugin (https://www.kruse-net.dk/wordpress-plugins/shared-users/) and the difficult way involves changing some PHP code.

What I want to do now is find a way to make publishing or switching between the WP installs easily and even sharing some information among them which I’m finding quite hard to actually achieve.