Can wordpress do this?

  • Hi,

    I’m looking to start up a blog site and in my research I’ve brought it down to MT and WordPress. I’d like to go WP as I’ve been reading great things about it, but I need to know it is capable of doing certain things. I’ve read it can’t, but the posts I read were very old.

    I was hoping someone on the forum might know. Here’s what I need:

    1. the site will be made up of about 5 blogs, each with a different author, but again, all within one site. Each author’s blog will look slightly different.
    2. each author can only post on their own blog site
    3. a main page which collects all the newest posts from the 5 blogs and displays them
    4. sub-main pages which collect all the posts of a particular category across all 5 blogs, i.e. anyone across the 5 blogs who posts to the category “dogs” will also have the post displayed on this sub-main page.

    Can wordpress do this? If it will require minor editing, I’m willing to hire someone. I just need to know that it’s possible, and it won’t cost me thousands of dollars in programming.

    Thanks in advance for all your help!

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • I believe it can, but it would most likely take some modifications.. I will look into some options for you.

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/42793?replies=8

    Something like this might work.. It would involve setting up a primary install, then another install for each user. They could be configured to each have their own options separately in the database, but the rest of the data could be shared across them.

    Hmmm. I agree it can be done with some modifications, but I thought of a different (IMO easier) organization.

    5 Authors = 5 Categories (‘Author Categories’). When author2 writes an article, he puts it in Category-Author2, as well as the topical cateogry (Fishing, Technology, Whatever). So every post is in at least 1 author cat, and 1 topical cat.

    Following the Template Hierarchy in the codex, you can create a custom template for each of the AuthorCats. For example,
    category-3.php
    and you can customize it as that author’s page

    Get a plugin to restrict the authors as to which categories they can write in.

    this method is just 1 install of WordPress, 1 theme with some custom templates, 1 database, 1 admin, 1 Users list…

    Thread Starter gruegoo

    (@gruegoo)

    Thanks Aleister and Dgold!

    Dgold, I agree, your way seems easier, but I’m worried the authors will just forget to select a category and I don’t want to be spending all my time editing their posts. I’m dealing with a group of people who are new to blogging and (for some) new to using the internet for anything other than email and yahoo.

    Would I be able to use subdomains with either method? i.e. author.maindomain.com

    In all honesty I’m surprised that multiple blogs haven’t been implemented into WP yet, as it has in MT. Having to do a separate install for each user limits the feasibility, especially if someone needs to do this for a larger number of users.

    Would it be hard to add multiple blog functionality to WP? I was going to pay the $200 MT commercial license anyways, so maybe if a few other people chipped in, we could pay someone to program it for us and then release the code under GPL?

    Some PHP, mysql, htaccess knowledge is usefull when using this, but it is mostly needed to get things set up and running. And that is because most servers are set up differently so a small amount of tweaking is sometimes needed (you don’t necessarily need to tweak the WP portion but just general tweaking).
    The website is https://mu.www.ads-software.com
    you can also check out this recent thread
    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/66281

    I don’t understand how you would have to Edit the novice-author’s category choices if it was all 1 blog, versus how you supposedly wouldn’t have to edit their mistakes on 5 different blogs.

    It’d be easier to fix author errors if all the posts are in 1 admin…

    Using Ggold’s method, there might be a way to force the users to only write in one category..

    I know there are some plugins out there to give more specific user rights.. maybe one would work based of categories.

    Thread Starter gruegoo

    (@gruegoo)

    Dgold, what I meant was, I’d have to fix it if they either posted in the wrong category, or simply didn’t choose one. That’s why I want to make it as “idiot proof” as possible, i.e. they get little to no choice in anything. All they’ll do is type and hit send, and everything else is as automatic as possible.

    I’ve looked through the multi-user version of wordpress and I’ve gotten the sense that it’s still buggy. I might have to go MT, simply because they’ve had more time to work out bugs. I’ll keep an eye out for future WP mu releases though.

    gruegoo – I’m thinking this could be done as a plugin. Don’t think it would take much to do. If you want, contact me off line and we can discuss it in more detail.
    tg AT tannagh DOT com

    -tg

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • The topic ‘Can wordpress do this?’ is closed to new replies.

Tags