WordPress MU

I have been using Joomla to develop websites and want to move to WordPress. One key issue is the use of multiple templates.

Most of my clients are retailers who will at the most have one blog, but they will have many other standard web pages. I want them to be able to use multiple templates within their website (one template for the homepage, one for about us, one for their product displays, one for their blog, etc.)

So I have two questions. One, can I have multiple templates in simultaneous use within one WordPress website? Two, if multiple templates will require multiple installations of Wordpress (which my reading so far seems to indicate), then when someone adds a new page to one installation of WordPress will a link to that page be listed in the menu of the other installations or will I/the client have to log into each installation separately to add that link?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Have you looked at how WordPress themes are built? One theme (for one blog) uses multiple templates files which control the looks of things like the blog posts and also the single pages.

Navigation menus to other pages (in the same install) are done with one line of code and a special function already built in.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes
http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags

If you want to know what it can do, go sign up for a blog at wordpress.com.

"Most of my clients are retailers who will at the most have one blog, but they will have many other standard web pages. I want them to be able to use multiple templates within their website (one template for the homepage, one for about us, one for their product displays, one for their blog, etc.)"

All of this is entirely possible using one theme that has many template files.