One install, 14 blogs, assigned to different users – possible??

Yes, and I want it to be dynamic so I am not constantly changing it, or if I MUST change it, then just one, not for each “site”. And it MUST be SEO friendly, because my site has been #1 for its search terms for 5 years, and I can’t lose that.

And I don’t why you WP’ers use this terminology of each blog being a “site”. A site is a online presence in its entirety, not each page of a, well, site. It’s quite confusing you know. Because I really don’t want the same navbar across multiple sites, I just want one cohesive site. Nit-picking perhaps, but it doesn’t help new users when you have a different definition for common terms. ??

And I don’t why you WP’ers use this terminology of each blog being a “site”. A site is a online presence in its entirety, not each page of a, well, site.

Because … they may not be blogs. One one setup, I have it like you do. Subfolders are clearly children of the main site. On another, different sites entirely, managed by one WP install. So site is the correct term.

And you do want one nav bar for multiple sites (yoru sites happen to be blogs is all).

Which isn’t too hard.

Option 1 is to hard code it into your theme.

Option 2 is to follow Andrea’s advice here and make a nav menu in ONE site.

OK. I appreciate all the replies. I am going to drop WP as a possible solution for now. For a 3.0 product I expect it to do what .01 alpha CMS products can, at least. It’s rather strange that I can’t just create a new blog page and then assign it user privileges. It’s rather inexcusable in fact. Instead I have to jump trough hoop after hoop, hack after hack just to get it to do what every single other CMS that I have ever looked at can do with ease. It makes no sense. Hopefully one day someone will release a plugin that will do this, or WP will be updated to do this. I will be a happy man on that day and will reconsider WP. Thanks for your help.

Because you’re thinking of it ‘wrong’ ?? or rather not the way it was designed. WordPress multisite is meant to run multiple unrelated sites. Separate sites.

Not that it can’t be used to run separate, but related sites, but at it’s core, multiple sites. To do what you want isn’t complicated, nor does it require trickery or hack afater hack. It’s just a matter of making decisions of which way would you rather support something.

Do you actually need multiple, separate, sites? Could you do it via categories custom post types instead? I find the best way to decide what CMS I want is to ignore the details of each one and write down what I want. Then I go in and sort out the best way, in each CMS that’s still on the list, and ask the experts their suggestions. This one is pretty easy. Three lines of code isn’t too much for wordpress tweaks. ??

Every CMS has always involved a learning curve, and whats a hack on one is standard on another (compare mediawiki to wordpress and you might cry).

Yeah, except what I want to do, is sooooooo basic, it should have been part of WP before it hit 1.0. That you can’t have more than one blog in a “site”, is ludicrous.

Your terminology is, i think, what’s probably the most frustrating.

Stop using blog for now :). I know, I know, but just put it aside. Okay?

You want a network of SITES. You want all your sites to have the same navigation menu. Okay, that’s easy and there are two methods.

1) Hard code it in your theme.
2) use the fix I linked to above https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/menus-for-sub-directories?replies=14#post-1688813

Those are pretty easy. I suppose a third solution would be to use word press hooks via your functions.php, but those two are pretty easy and, once you set it up, work great ?? the second one is dynamic and easy to maintain from a main site.

Yeah, I looked at that page, but it’s a menu for each “site” isn’t it.

Well I need menus that are like:

Cat1 >blog1
>blog2
>blog3
>blog4

Cat2 >blog5
>blog6
>blog7

etc…

It can not do that can it?

Yes it can totally do that, and no, it’s NOT a menu for each site. You make ONE menu, on site #1 (think of that as your admin site) and then you call that code on each site to pull in the main navigation menu.

Generally speaking the arch goes like this:
A site
Categories in a site
Posts in a category

So when you say you want to organize your SITES by categories (seriously, stop calling them blogs, you will make your life easier ?? ), that’s something else just a bit! You could do it manually, making one menu, or I think there’s a plugin that can help.

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/blog-topics/ will let you group blogs by topic, which may be what you want.

I will ask again, though, are you absolutely certain you want to make individual sites (blogs whatever) for each user? Could this be acomplished by just having multiple authors and have them post to specific categories or special post types?

If you hard code it in the theme, yes.

And by hardcode I mean write html, rather than pull it dynamically.

If you’re using each blog as a different sub-category, do you really even need multiple separate blogs? Why not one blog with multiple authors? Separate sites only makes sense if you want to keep the authors from seeing their co-authors work int he admin area. that’s it.

OK, so let me rule two things out. Hard Coding. Not doing it, my site will be growing like crazy, adding new blogs almost every day.

Using one blog but different categories, sorry, not going to work, people need to be able to login and control their own blogs and not have others being able to get into it. Also a majority of these blogs will be used as podcasters.

So. I am setting up a staging site right now. I will activate multiuser now. It will be here: https://godsipod.org

Please tell me what to do…

Does it matter whether I choose sub-domains or sub-directories? It would be good to use a sub-domain so I can give bloggers their own vanity url.

Are you planning on using the same theme for everyone? Then do this: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/menus-for-sub-directories?replies=14#post-1688813

While that might look like something ‘hard coded’ it’s not. It’s dynamically called ?? I promise, it works, and it’s a Ron-Co (set it and forget it!).

Sub-folders are seen as ‘children’ of main sites via Google etc. Sub-domains are seen as their own site.

“Sub-folders are seen as ‘children’ of main sites via Google etc. Sub-domains are seen as their own site.”

Well in that case I will need to stick with sub-folders and I will make the vanity URLs in CPanel. So now what…

And yes, all “sites” will use the same theme…

vanity URLs? You mean their own domain name?

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/

subdomains or subfolders don’t matter in that case.

So looking over what you wanted here:

people need to be able to login and control their own blogs and not have others being able to get into it.

then yes, multisite IS what you need. ?? Just like I said way up near the top – like your own wordpress.COM.

using one theme for everyone is a non-issue.
https://wpmututorials.com/how-to/change-the-default-theme-for-sites-without-a-plugin/