Running two front page themes on one blog

As my blog has grown the readership has diversified, and I would like to provide an alternative “Magazine” style front page for less blog-orientated readers, using a “category based” rather than “time based” presentation. It would also allow me to draw attention to good article in the the archives (now up to 1350 articles).

It should be possible, since this is done by (e.g.,) problogger.net, with a portal frontpage, and a “traditional” blog format at the problogger.net/blog address.

I’ve considered several approaches, such as doing a multiuser setup (they all seem geared to multiple blogs in one database) and using the Domain Mirror plugin pointing to a subdirectory on the same domain (but that plugin requires separate domains).

The one thing I want to avoid is having duplicate copies of articles, which would be something of a nightmare.

The existing blog is at mattwardman.com/blog, and I would like the magazine style presentation to be at mattwardman.com. I’m looking at using a theme such as Structure for the magazine presentation.

I know that I may need to make some compromises on – e.g.,- the plugins that I run. I’ll do that if necessary.

As a last resort I’d be prepared to use a separate domain for the magazine style front page.

Thanks in advance for any help.

There isnt a single question in the post.

Fair point <g> – I’ve been thinking about it so much I thought it didn’t need them.

Two specific questions:

* How do I achieve this setup?
* Does anyone have any suggestions, or can anyone explain how it is possible?

Thanks

Matt

If it were me, here’s what I would do:

* Use WP to manage everything in /blog/.
* For the root, don’t use WP. Just use normal PHP and HTML.

So now you’re wondering how to get your posts into the magazine style root? Use magpie RSS (google it) to grab your blog’s feed. More specifically, use it to grab each category feed separately. Then, use some PHP and HTML magic to display each category’s recent headlines.

As an added benefit, Magpie will cache each feed for an hour, keeping your root’s pageloads quick.

Adam

That’s an interesting idea. I know Magpie (now FeedWordPress) well through running aggregators.

My feed is redirected to Feedburner using the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin – which redirects everything to one feed, and (unless they don’t meet their spec) disables category feeds.

I do, however, have a virtual mirror on a .co.uk domain – so I may be able to grab the feeds from there.

Matt

Sounds good. For what it’s worth, Magpie and FeedWordPress are different products.

If grabbing feeds is a problem, you could instead include wp_blog_header.php (or whatever it’s called; it’s in WP’s root) into your root and set up a loop there, but I find this method more cumbersome.

And then I can feed the posts generated by FeedWordPress back into a theme of my choice.

May be able to get that done in one Midnight Oil session.

Hmmm. That setup also gives a recovery plan.

If the whole “magazine” site gets in a tangle I can clear it out with WordPress Suicide, and rebuild by increasing all the feeds on the mirror to 100 items each – then rescan in FWP.

Since people should not be reading the feeds on the mirror, it should not cause too much distruption.

The key question is how much FWP will interfere with the theme I want to use. And it is a resource hog, so I need to be sure that there is sufficient memory etc.