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Which is the best direction for me? (2 posts)

  1. kp2575
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I had a blogging "network" with 70 bloggers, but they were all hosted on subdomains with their own wordpress accounts on yahoo hosting.

    I had a lot of issues with yahoo hosting and downtimes, and also didn't feel like the subdomain route was the best way to go. So I shut everything down at the beginning of the year (also I had to concentrate on school).

    I want to relaunch the blogging network and I am debating between using a hosting account where I can have unlimited domains and giving everyone their own wordpress account, designing a general template and running with it.

    vs.

    Going with wordpress mu, using the domain and theme plugins and have a more centralized control of the setup. MU seems to offer a little more control and a centralized place to update. However, I have a lot more to learn in regards of programming languages, not that I mind learning it.

    I am just torn between what to do. Just looking for some feedback and if you think mu is the appropriate solution

  2. ekusteve
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    For what it's worth, for the past few years I have been setting up multiple WordPress installs for graduate students to teach them WP as part of a graduate educational technology class. For the past few years, I've created and managed between 80 and 120 individual WP installs per term. When class is over, I always give the students the option of keeping their blog on my server and continuing to use it...about 40% of the students do that. Of that, about 10% actually do continue using the blog.

    I do have a pretty efficient system for creating those individual blogs, but there are a few drawbacks.

    1. It does take time to create those blogs each term, although I can get about 100 set-up in around an hour.
    2. There is a lot source code duplication and I do have some code customization. So, if I ever need to "tweak" the code, then I have to apply the change to each individual install.
    3. In addition to the duplicated WP source code for each blog, I have literally hundreds of duplicated themes and plugins since they have to be installed individually in each blog.
    4. Upgrading is a real time consuming and tedious activity.

    I have been aware of mu for a while, and have experimented with it in the past, but until a couple of months ago, I didn't feel confident enough to start using it. However, a couple of months ago I did set-up an mu site, spend a few weeks getting comfortable with it and doing some customization, then I used it with a summer class as a "test". Everything went great during the test and I'll be using it again with two additional classes this summer.

    Bottom line...barring some unforeseen disaster, I'll continue using it with my classes...it has all the features I need and is infinitely simpler to manage than the multiple installs.

    I would suggest installing mu and spending a little time experimenting with it...I think you will fine it is a very good solution for a multiple blog application.

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