Question about multiple blogs in Wordpress

I'm about to start my first blog and updated to WP 3.3 yesterday. As far as I understand it's now possible to run multiple sites from one WP installation, but my question is if this makes sense or if it's better to have a separate installation for each domain?

I don't want to set up the blogs as subdomains like blog1.domain1.com, blog2.domain1.com like it's been described in the WP tutorial, but rather have it like blogdomain1.com, blogdomain2.com, etc.

The tutorial on the WP site seems pretty good to understand so I will be able to work myself through the process, I just would like to ask for opinions in which way to organize multiple blogs without having the struggle with multiple WP installations, different admin areas and different passwords. I would prefer to manage all blogs from one WP admin area.

I am not sure that you can manage multiple domains with the new way they are handling the multiple blogs scenario. From what I've read so far, it looks to be for creating sub-folder or sub-domain blogs, not new ones on its own url. The Kish Press plugin may be a solution for you to look into:

Kish Multi Pro

The advantage of this plugin is that you can switch between your blogs with just one click on a single page without a page reload. It does not matter if your blogs are hosted on different servers or on different domains. You can manage any blog which is using WordPress or WordPress MU.

Install the Kish Multi Pro plugin on to any ONE of your WordPress blogs and then configure it to manage all of your blogs by entering the blog urls and the admin login details and you are in full control of all your blogs.

You can write new posts, edit existing posts, upload images for all posts, moderate comments and use feed and search features for reading and/or blogging with in realtime. Kish Multi Pro lets you concentrate on your post creations by allowing you to be more efficient and focused. Check out the video and all of the other features this plugin offers on the website.

Thanks a lot Bec, that looks like a good solution and I will definitely go for it if there is no other solution within WP. My server admin said that it should be possible with WP MS and he's now "looking into it and learning", so I'm going to wait if he's able to achieve anything. I'll let you know about the outcome. :)

That Kish plugin looks really interesting, anyone here using it?

I have a few wordpress blogs, and I use one blog to write my post's in and then use feed word press and all my other blogs pick up from it. easy to use

Hey Attis,

From what I have seen with my own blogs is this:

When I have set-up a series of sub-domain blogs using WPMU it has increased my Google Page Rank and helped with Alexa ranking also.

From what I have been told is that the SE view these sub-domains as really being an extension of the main domain and thus the content counts towards the main domain.

One thing I did learn is that over-used cut & paste content can hurt your rankings.
(I use Blogs Organizer to propagate my sites with my Sponsor's RSS feeds)

That being said...I found a plugin called "Uniquefier" at: http://goscript.net/featured-article...er-plugin.html that changes the words to a numerical code within the backend.

It works really cool.

Hope that helps - Jay

You using any of the other scripts on that site Jay?

Hey Bec...

Not yet but I'm thinking about it. Uniquefier seems to work well so I may try the others.

Side note: If you install Uniquefier on the "Main" you can set it so it will work on all the blogs if you are using directories instead of sub-domains.

Thanks for your replies, ponyboy and Jay. :)

There are currently five or six blog domains sitting around that I want to fill with life. They all cover different niches and I want to use them as single domains, with the option to build micro niche blogs within those domains by using sub domains. So I will definitely make use of sub domains.

My server admin seems to have found a way to achieve the goal to work from one WP installation with one login/pw. I've briefly read his email explaining how it should work. Now I just have to see if it really works the way I want it working. I'll keep you updated with my progress once I figured out everything.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by attis

I'll keep you updated with my progress once I figured out everything.

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Please do ... it's always good to learn new ways of doing that sort of stuff.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by maxx68

That being said...I found a plugin called "Uniquefier" at: http://goscript.net/featured-article...er-plugin.html that changes the words to a numerical code within the backend.

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That's an interesting plugin, but how does Google (or any other SE) pick up the keywords in your descriptions?

Pocoloco...

I don't fully understand it, but here's a snippet from the plugin site:

Quote:

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Uniquefier is a WordPress Plugin which once activated will turn your blog content from duplicate to unique. All it takes is 1 single click to activate the plugin and everything will be 100% unique content.

You may be wondering how is this possible? Well, it is indeed, and no it’s not one of those article rewriters or any spinners you may have heard of. More, the articles will be the same for your site visitors, the changes which are being made to the articles are in the backpage, in the page source, changes which are not visible to the visitors, but only to the search engines bots and browsers. We are not adding hiding text or any kind of such activities which are strictly forbidden, the Uniquefier uses a simple, yet highly effective mechanism of turning your articles unique. It is a well known fact that search engines (for google has been proofed) can run and index non advanced JavaScript from your pages. This is why, by using a special technique we place the original articles under a JavaScript run. This way:

you get original content as the way you show the articles is different than just a pure copy+paste
search engines understand what an untrained human eye can’t.

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You can check your progress at Copyscape to verify that it works.

Attis...

Usually when you do a Wordpress install from your server (I have cPanel with Softculous) it will ask if this is a wordpress multi-site install just click yes.

You will then be able to view each site through one control panel without having to login in separately.

If you set Wordpress multi-site up on a main domain you'll have the option of creating separate sub-domains for each blog under the main domain.

If you set up Wordpress multi-site on a subdomain then you create directories for each blog. From what I understand of SEO and from what I have read...directories work really well under a main domain. The SE will view these as mere pages of content that belong to the main domain and as long as the content is unique (thus the plugin) you ranking should increase.

Hope that helps. Jay

Anyone know if you can still setup a free hosted blog service with the new multi-site system? As in each person can create an account, get a login, add more site names, etc? And would that be better to do as subdomains, which is what the free hosted sites have been doing so far? ... or try the directory route and get more SEO juice flowing?