iWeb, Wordpress, Multiple Blog's

[onemacmini]

Guys/Girls,

I am currently looking to set up a website with a few friends of mine. We plan to have a homepage, then mulitiple pages of each persons Wordpress blog.

Whats the best way to do so?

I've designed the site in iWeb and looks neat. jsut need to decide how to intergrate it easily. Tried iFrame but doesnt look so proffesional as you cant have categories etc.

any ideas?

thanks,

Miles

 

[7031]

Personally I would just do the entire site using WordPress, even if this means using an install of WordPress MU, just because it would mean better overall integration, and truthfully with iWeb there's really no other way to embed the sites other than iFrames, which is just an overall messy way of doing things.

Other than that though, what you could try if the WordPress blogs are self hosted, is to try making WordPress themes that match the site you have made in iWeb, but then you have to remember that well, based on the fact that you're using iWeb, you probably don't have the level of experience required to do this, but people on the internet might be able to help you out. Of course, WordPress themes such as Sandbox would make this process a whole lot easier, but it's something that you would have to research first.

Whichever route you plan to take, good luck with this, and I'd definitely be interested to see the final result.

 

[onemacmini]

Thanks 7031, you are incredibly helpful!

how does one go about having the best part of what could be 20 blogs on one wordpress website? most wordpress websites ive seen only contains 1 blog?

Thanks once again!

 

[FourCandles]

Thanks 7031, you are incredibly helpful!

how does one go about having the best part of what could be 20 blogs on one wordpress website? most wordpress websites ive seen only contains 1 blog?

Thanks once again!

Currently, the "normal" WordPress is designed to produce one blog per install. WordPress MU (multiple user) gives, as expected, multiple blogs using one install. In effect, this is how wordpress.com works (the free blog hosting service from the WP platform).

There are some compatibility issues between the two products, notably with plugins and themes which may not work in MU.

All this changes with WordPress 3 (currently in beta 2), which effectively merges WordPress and WP MU into one product.

Wordpress.org (not .com) is your best source for info on all of the above.

 

[FourCandles]

...

Other than that though, what you could try if the WordPress blogs are self hosted, is to try making WordPress themes that match the site you have made in iWeb,
...

This site had a go at it a couple of years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if someone's made some more recent attempts.

 

[7031]

This site had a go at it a couple of years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if someone's made some more recent attempts.

Never knew about that, but it's a pretty nice design. From what I can tell though, they've just skinned WordPress to match the iWeb site, which is what I already suggested to try.

Thanks 7031, you are incredibly helpful!

how does one go about having the best part of what could be 20 blogs on one wordpress website? most wordpress websites ive seen only contains 1 blog?

Thanks once again!

As FourCandles said, you'll need your own PHP/MySQL hosting (so not MobileMe, but I'm sure people on these forums can help you find this), and an installation for WordPress MU. If you need help setting up WordPress MU, feel free to grab me via PMs and I'll help as much as I can.

All this changes with WordPress 3 (currently in beta 2), which effectively merges WordPress and WP MU into one product.

Never knew about that, but sounds awesome, I'll definitely have to check that out.

 

[onemacmini]

thanks for all your replies. extremely helpful on my quest to get this website flly functional by september when the universities go back.

What i want is to host a website where i control the main bits, and then users / authors can post on their dedicated page their blog. the idea is that they can all post their blogs but i act as the link between them all. Providing a main page with links to each of their blogs.


i have read up a bit on wordpress mu and tried to install it locally but its been a serious pain. got a few books to read but still need to decide which route to take.

either.

• wordpress-mu - all have own account etc.
  
• have each person as an author on my wordpress.org and have them post in categories such as "manchester" or "birmingham"
  
• set up the front page on iweb and link to each persons wordpress.com blog

the above all seems a bit hazzy which routes best to take? if you have any ideas which might save me a few days feel free to write them down!

thanks for the help 7031. might have to pay you to do it but i'll try my best for the mean time

 

[7031]

Good luck with this by the way

i have read up a bit on wordpress mu and tried to install it locally but its been a serious pain. got a few books to read but still need to decide which route to take

Yeah installing it locally generally well be a pain for the novice user, since you would need an install of Apache (although Mac OS X has this preinstalled, see Web Sharing), MySQL and PHP. What's important to note though, is that this would mean hosting you site from home, which for many people, is slow, and of course, would require you to leave your computer on and connected to the internet 24/7. This isn't an issue for everyone, but I would recommend getting some paid hosting for this, just so you don't have to worry about it.

Of course, if you want to use iWeb and just link to blogs at WordPress.com, that should be OK although you won't be able to make the blogs match the design of the iWeb site most likely.

have each person as an author on my wordpress.org and have them post in categories such as "manchester" or "birmingham"

Just want to make you clear on this - hosting a wordpress.org blog would still require you to have a server to host it on - WordPress.org does not provide hosting, unless you mean WordPress.com, which can host WordPress (but not WordPress-mu) blogs. (WordPress.com is built on WordPress MU).

That does seem like a pretty interesting idea though, just make sure that you have permissions set correctly, although I'm not sure if it's possible to limit a user to just one category, but there could be a plugin that allows this. Also, keep in mind that this means that all posts will be displayed on the front page. It is possible to have a different front page set up, with the blog posts on another page, but of course, this will mean that the authors will all be posting to the same blog still, although it shouldn't be a problem to just link to each category from the front page, and treat them as separate blogs.

If I was in your position however, I would just use WordPress MU. If I recall correctly, t's a bit harder than standard WordPress to set up, but it works great and I have used it in the past to set up multiple blogs on one site. Of course, if you have any issues setting it up, let me know and I'll help you out.

Anyway, when you do decide what route to take, let me know, I'm curious to see how this turns out.