WordPress® All-in-One For Dummies®

Hosting Multiple Sites with One WordPress Installation

The self-hosted WordPress.org software lets you run an unlimited number of blogs on one installation of its software platform, on one domain. When you configure the options within WordPress to enable a multisite interface, you become administrator of a network of blogs. All the options remain the same, but with the multisite options configured, you can add additional blogs and domains, and allow registered users of your Web site to host their own blog within your network. More information about the multisite feature in WordPress is found in Book VIII.

The following types of sites use the Network options within WordPress:

• Blog networks, which can have more than 150 blogs. The popular electronics retail store, Best Buy, uses WordPress to power 1,050 local store blogs (example: http://stores.bestbuy.com/577).
• Newspapers and magazines, such as The New York Times, and universities, such as Harvard Law School, use WordPress to manage the blog sections of their Web sites.
• Niche-specific blog networks, such as Edublogs.org, use WordPress to manage their full networks of free blogs for teachers, educators, lecturers, librarians, and other education professionals.

Extensive information on running a network of sites by using the multisite feature in WordPress is found in Book VIII. The chapters there take you through everything: setting ...