Multiple blogs are a reality surely?

Um, has anyone here actually used MT?

The ‘multiple blog’ feature is pretty literally that – it’s not just a mangling of category usage. Each blog has it’s own config, users/permissions, templates, and so forth.

For a single user it may not be a big deal, but in a school or business environment it’s a great help. And that’s even considering it has pretty weak user/perms management overall. It would be a great thing to have in WP but if the infrastructure’s not there, it’s not there (yet?).

So while it may be possible to simulate it, that’s not the same thing, esp for the majority of people who aren’t going to hack PHP to make it happen.

Multiple blogs are a reality surely? (WordPress)

A reality? No, they aren’t… and stop calling me Shirley.

I was just checking to see whether WordPress has made any progress towards implementing multiple blogs. Many people who commented on this thread are thinking of multiple blogs in terms of “One blog for my professional stuff, one blog for my personal stuff, one blog for what I’m reading right now.”

Yes, it’s easy to fake that by creating separate subcategories within a single blog, but that won’t work when we’re talking about a single administrator and scores of separate users (or, in the case of the U of M, hundreds of users).

I expect I’ll be stuck with MT in the fall. I’d rather stick with MT than take on the added burden of installing WordPress 90 times and having to deal with remembering 90 passwords, and having to install updates 90 times — in addition to teaching 90 users how to blog using different software.

For the time being, I can still keep using the free installation of MT I’ve already got, and soon I’m going to present to my boss a budget for our software expenses (that would include the cost of upgrading MT to the paid educational version).

We shall see.

Update, 2013: 

    For the record, yes WordPress does permit multiple blogs. Back in 2003, when I was creating a university-wide blogging installation, I rejected WordPress as an alternative because at that time I would have had to run a completely separate blog installation for each student. At the time, MovableType was the better option. Fast forward several years — WordPress now does a great job managing multiple blogs.
    Just trying to figure out why this old blog entry is so popular… I switched to WordPress several years ago, so I wouldn’t be of much help answering a current question about MovableType. if you came here looking for something, I’d love to know whether this page was helpful. (I turned off comments on this page some time ago, perhaps because of spam… I’m turning comments back on to see what happens.)

10 thoughts on “Multiple blogs are a reality surely?

  1. Cool, I’m glad to hear it. MT is a great program; people have build all kinds of good sites with it.

    BTW, here’s what tipped the balance for me between Drupal and b2evolution: With Drupal you create content and view it in the same site. With b2evolution, those are two different sites, each with its own look and feel. Since we are a small group creating content for each other, it feels more right to me to have both functions in the same site.

  2. Thanks for the feedback. In the time since I posted this, MT revised its educational pricing policy back into the realm of the affordable. So I decided to stick with MT.

  3. No, Drupal does have separate blogs. Each user automatically gets their own blog with its own URL. In addition, any blog entry (like any other kind of content) can be promoted to the home page. You can set the default for this option off or on, and you can also choose let anybody promote their own content to the home page, or restrict that ability to a certain group of users.

    b2evolution is really nice too. If you’re looking for something in this area I would spend some time at http://www.opensourcecms.com/ trying them both out, or better yet, install them both and give them a workout.

    I’m setting up a group blog for my team at work, and it’s a tough call betweeen b2evolution and Drupal. Either one would meet my basic requirements, individual blogs that feed into a combined group blog, but after setting them both up and experimenting with them, Drupal seems closer to my taste.

  4. Please consider b2evolution. I tried various blogs in an attempt to get away from MT when it became expensive. Multi-blogs was the stumbling block with WordPress, Textpatter, Serendipity which are all good blogs. Even Drupal as the poster above says, does not really have seperate blogs. Users are given their own blog, but it is more their own comment area within the two outer columns of the main blog (last time I looked.) Nucleus was the one I thought I would go for because it does have mutliple blogs, even if they are a little tricky to set up. But I did not like the back interface. But b2evolution is nice both back and front and multiblogging. Both WordPress and b2evolution originated in an older blog soft called b2. b2evolution does not seem to be as famous, but I can’t work out why. I recommend you give it a try. At the time of writing my blog is still MT.

  5. Drupal has fantastic capabilites, but the last time I checked individual bloggers didn’t have the ability to personalize their own blogs — and I’ve found that students do get pleasure from tweaking and personalizing their MT templates.

    From my pespective, what Drupal offers is the ability to sort postings by author, which isn’t the same thing as giving individuals their own blogs.

  6. Neha, the need arises if you want to have different user permissions and even different users for each blog. And if you want to give three different people the ability to put things in the “Current Events” category, but the category means different things in different contexts, then it would get extremely messy to use only categories to differentiate blog content. (Yes, there are subcategories, but that’s still using a screwdriver as a hammer because the screwdriver happens to be handy.)

  7. This doesnt really apply to me completely, since I didn’t post simultaneously on both my blogs, but it’s a little rough trying to manage multiple blogs, isn’t it? All the time I was posting on TypePad, all I could think about was switching my template on Blogger, and vice versa. However, like Susan says, it is fun, but if a blogger creates multiple categories in his/her personal blog, then where does the need arise for ten (well, five) other blogs? I suppose there’s really no explanation for geekiness other than passion. I’m guilty too.

  8. Even as a single user, I find the multiple blog ability to be helpful. I have my main blog, another one as a working portfolio, one I keep to try out different templates or fancy doo-dahs and colors, and one for one I’m just spouting off the absolutely no one gets to read. Some things can be shared, or easily transferred via cut and paste of the stylesheets, etc., and links to each make them easily negotiable. Fun stuff. Especially the spouting-off one.

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