In the previous post, I discussed the basics of hosting a website on your own domain. I will now discuss the factors involved in installing WordPress for maintaining two blogs on this site.
WordPress Installation for Multiple Blogs
After I was the proud owner of www.skepticgeek.com, I had the following options to run my two blogs:
- Use a single WordPress install, and segregate blog posts using different categories for two blogs
- Use two WordPress installs, with a common database at the backend
- Use two WordPress installs that are completely independent with a separate database for each
The decision depends on the following factors:
- Will multiple authors be posting to either of the blogs? Will the same authors post to both blogs? This determines requirements regarding access control and security.
- Do you need two separate, independent feeds for both blogs with separate subscriber tracking? In this case, you need two WordPress installs.
- Is disk space a constraining factor? Two databases will most likely take up more space.
- Do you plan to use different themes, different plugins for the two blogs? If so, separate installs are a must.
- Do you plan to have ads on one blog but not on the other? Again, this means you need two installs.
- Is heavy traffic and site performance a consideration? In that case, using a single database might help site optimization.
I chose to setup two independent WordPress installs, so that I could have guest posts from other authors or even contributing authors to this blog in the future, while I kept An Unquiet Mind as my personal, individual blog.
WordPress Location: Root Directory or Sub Folder?
The next issue is deciding on the WordPress installation folder structure.
