Setting up multiple user blogs - where do I start?!

[stormywhether]

I'm trying to get a multiple user blog up and running for my company. Being a total noob to PHP, and generally learning on the job, I'm finding Wordpress MU quite a struggle to get up and running effectively.

So I essentially have two options:

1. Look at another open source blog system that allows for multiple blogs that doesn't take perhaps as much mindpower to install and maintain (I don't want bells and whistles, just an effective platform for up to 100 blogs, at the very most)

2. Look to get someone to produce a bespoke blogging platform for us. However budget is an issue and if you guys think this would be the best way forward, I'd appreciate a really rough guesstimate as to how much this would set us back.

Of course 1. is the ideal, but if there would be significant maintenance involved (aside from the actual blogging itself, which I'm perfectly capable and ready for) then possibly a bulletproof 2. would be in order.

Really appreciate your thoughts on this people! Great forums!

[EJ]

Well with some hosts (Such as DreamHost) you can have the option of 1-click WordPress installations.

Don't you think that sounds like a pretty good idea?

[stormywhether]

Thanks Eli, top tip.

However I'm contracted to Pipex - we have a VPS with them - and I'm using Plesk rather than cPanel which generally offers up blog facilities.

Guess the point I'm trying to get over is that I feel comfortable with WordPress, and I suppose the option of creating multiple blogs by setting up three installations is a possibility if I want to hem myself into the bare essentials, but I want the added flexibility of an MU environment.

Unfortunately it seems that this comes at a price for a rank amateur to programming like myself! (I'm a web editor, but not a big coder).

[bigalreturns]

By multiple user blog do you mean one blog, with multiple writers, or several different blogs?
With WP, once you've set-up the blog (if this is more than your coding skills then shout!), get the other authors to sign up from the main blog page. Then if you go into your admin account, you can change the permissions of those users to "writer" rather than "subscriber", and they should be able to make posts.

[stormywhether]

Thanks big Al!

A local - I'm from Southport in Merseyside! Hope you're doin well.

What I want is for each blog to reside in an independent area of the site. I'm working with a two-column theme with 'tabs' above the header.php and I want people to click on the tabs to switch between blogs. I'm getting ahead of myself here a little because I'm still trying to appreciate the permalink structure and how to do this with php - I don't think this would be possible using three different installations of individual blogs, would it?

Maybe it would, if they shared the same MySQL database. But it probably wouldnt.

So to recap:

Bare essentials: three individual blogs linked together (by tabs, or worst-case scenario, via the sidebar).

Ideal scenario: Potential to have a few hundred blogs linked to from a home page.

Thanks for ALL your help so far!

[hamstu]

This might be of interest, http://mu.wordpress.org/

[stormywhether]

Hi hamstu.

As you'll see from my original post, I've been dabbling with WordPress MU - but the whole backend server stuff is starting to get a bit too technical for my liking and as a lightweight coder I'd like something a bit simpler.

I don't need anything sophisticated in design, I'm just looking for something that does the job - showcases three different blogs and making it easy for the visitor to navigate between them.

Any more ideas?

[spiritquest]

I know that the serendipity blog system has a server based install option. I just launched a multi user blog site but it uses the earlier suggestion of having multiple authors. in the one main blog setup. Ethical Pulse.

From using the permalink structures I've created custom plugins that use mySQL queries to provide drop downs and links to the authors blogs .. Its still in need of a lot of work, but install and writing plugins were not as hard as I though, just class creations.

[vgarcia]

MovableType does multiple blogs too, and you can even go so far as integrating it with your company's network via LDAP if you wanted to. I don't think that version is free but it's another option if you have some money for this project.

[hamstu]

Hi hamstu.

As you'll see from my original post, I've been dabbling with WordPress MU - but the whole backend server stuff is starting to get a bit too technical for my liking and as a lightweight coder I'd like something a bit simpler.

I don't need anything sophisticated in design, I'm just looking for something that does the job - showcases three different blogs and making it easy for the visitor to navigate between them.

Any more ideas?

Ah, sorry. Somehow missed that.

[michaelper22]

Try Joomla. (Everything from here is assuming you know how to use Joomla .) Make a new menu with a list of all your blogs, and set it accompanying module to the header position. If you want nice looking URLs on the site, play around with Artio JoomSEF or OpenSEF (you might have to manually edit some URL to get exactly whay you want).

Each blog would be its own section, and the categories in each blog would be categories of each section. The menu items would link to their respective sections.

I've never used it, but they say WP MU is pretty good. For navigating between blogs, set that up in the blogroll (or make up some new machanism for storing them), and call the function for listing blogroll links in the header. Mix in some creative CSS, and that's basically it.