I'm currently developing the layout of my new website. I plan to build a central website and subdomains for different aspects of my online presence.
name-lastname.de
portfolio.name-lastname.de
webdesign.name-lastname.de
nickname.name-lastname.de
I decided to create the central website as a hub for my other sites because even though the topics and target groups of my sites differ I want them to stay connected. I'll be using Wordpress as my CMS/Blog of choice, WPML for localisation (english / german) and the Wordpress 3.0 Multisite Feature to fuel all networked blogs (subdomains) with the same wordpress installation.
On my central website (name-lastname.de) I'll show excerps of my latest additions to the other sites as well as social media streams and stuff. The content of the other sites are for
potential clients/employees,
people interested in the web stuff I coded (read: scripts, css and html tricks etc.)
people I know and interact with online (more casual content)
What would be the best approach if I want those subdomains for the topics as well as different versions for english and german. I'm not sure I like the /de/ and /en/ approach but en.portfolio.name-lastname.de feels wrong too.
Should I go with language or topic as a subdomain and the other as a folder? Should I register both .de and a neutral tld (.com or .net)?
< edit >
After reading Steve H's comment, I'll put the nickname website on a seperate domain, beeing to casual for the other sites. Other then that I'll propably use a language subdirectory either with a topic subdomain or topic subdirectory.
< /edit >
I think this is largely down to personal choice, but if I was you I would choose between either totally separate domains for each of your aspects or just have one main domain (name-lastname.de) and just use Wordpress's category's to separate each section.
In terms of tld I would go for .com if you are trying to hit an international market or just use your native tld (.de ?) if not.
I can't really see any advantage with your subdomain approach to either SEO or to the user (unless you want more separation between services, in which case new top level domains would be better), so how about:
name-lastname.de
name-lastname.de/portfolio
name-lastname.de/webdesign
name-lastname.de/nickname (if not too casual)
etc...
So really it's up to you to decide just how separate these concerns are, from your list I think 1 and 2 certainly would match as any clients would be interested in your code / portfolio but perhaps point 3 would be best served on a separate domain if this is indeed too casual / you don't want clients to make too much reference to it.
Lastly in terms of language, could you not leave this up to the user, i.e. choose either English or German as your default language, but just add a link on the page to see the 'other' language. Again I would be reluctant to make 2 versions of the same page in different languages as it would be twice as much work for you to maintain, also in Chrome for example language translation is a trivial thing.
Related
Web newbie. I'm setting up a family website for sharing photos, etc. I plan to purchase my own domain name and will rent space on some hosting platform. I'm thinking ahead and will eventually want to create two more websites (another family website for my father's side of the family and a personal one for me). The frugal side of me would like to limit the number of domains and hosts I have to purchase/rent.
I want the family websites to be hidden as much as possible (no SEO and requiring a login just to get to the main page), but I want my personal website to be public.
So far, what I've read says the above is difficult or cumbersome to do with wordpress multisite. If this is true, then is it safe to assume separate wordpress installs are more appropriate? Or, should I consider a new/different domain for my personal website?
Thanks,
Jim
I would:
Buy one domain example.com
Buy one hosting (shared or VPS if you have the skills)
Create multiple independent Wordpress, and use subdomain site1.example.com, site2.example.com
protect some websites with Htaccess (some free plugin may also do the trick, but with htaccess you are sure Crawler (like Google) won't access it.
There is a plugin called My private site which allows you to achieve what you are looking for:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/jonradio-private-site/
A full detailed step by step (blogpost) tutorial on how to make your site private is published here:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-make-your-wordpress-blog-completely-private/
I am attempting to scope a website for a client who wants to have a site that will feature multiple language options. They also want it to be a CMS. I am reading that core initiatives for platforms like Joomla, Drupal, etc. are multi-language support, but I am wondering exactly how this works.
My question is on how the translated content gets generated and delivered within these platforms. Would these platforms just check for a language code, then based off that code, print out the Japanese version of the node? The English version of the node? So essentially, for however many languages I'd like to have, I'd have to create an individual page (node) for that specific language that mirrors say, English? So an install with a 10 English pages would also need the same 10 pages with nodes for the Japanese version?
For the admin's sake, would I be better off just setting up multiple Drupal installs in different subdomains or something? So the Japanese admin would visit jp.mysite.com/user and only have access to the Japanese database? And same for the English admin?
I guess essentially what I am asking, is if it is better to just duplicate my install on multiple boxes, or have one install on one box with a bunch of "duplicate nodes" that essentially mirror each other, but have different languages within them?
I can't speak to Drupal, but with Joomla - there are languages you can install on the backend (which are pulled from community added locale files I believe)
When you do switch it, you should see a message like "Default Language Saved".
This does not affect users that have chosen a specific language on their profile or on the login page.
However, when using the multilanguage functionality (i.e. when the plugin System - Languagefilter is enabled) the Site Default Language has to also be a published Content language.
So ultimately - use one install. Multiple installs would be a bit silly - especially considering these CMS are designed to have that functionality.
For Drupal, my recommendation would be creating only one site with multilingual support. You have the ability of deciding how you want your site to behave when there is no translation, like showing the original node, or hiding the page completely from the users if you have different menus per language.
Administration would be easier, and content edition probably too.
You can still use subdomains per language if you want to with a single site, that's a feature out of the box with Drupal. You can set up that in the language negotiation page, which is quite flexible in terms of how to perform negotiation of the content and interface languages you want to use.
We want to have multiple WP websites (in various countries). Each country's site will have the same template (markup/styles), but slightly different content. The biggest difference will be that each site will be in different languages.
Should we use multisite for this? If so, how do we make each country site a different language?
You can just run multisite and then use a language plugin. I would recommend wpml.org it's not free but it has great multisite support. You can easily activate it in desired sub-sites, and have different languages in each sub-site. I recently used this for a multisite with well over 30 sub-sites, each with their own set of translations/languages.
If you only have need for one language per sub-site, ie controlled via domain, you could just use wpml and skip multisite. Since you still got the possibilities to create different menus and pages in different languages. Then you can tell wpml to listen for either domain (.com should show english content, .es spanish etc..) or you can tell it to listen for sub-domains, ie yourwebpage.com/es/
Hope this helps.
You did not told if the existing answer was useful or not :-(
Still I will add a link to a good resource for others that arrive at this page: http://codex.wordpress.org/Multilingual_WordPress
Cheers,
Gabriel
I am developing a site in Wordpress that offers functionality and content to companies.
Each company will have hundreds of users. All users of all companies get the same content.
However, the main header changes (it needs to include the companies own logo). They also will have their own sub-domain, at least fo the login page, preferably for all pages.
The content will change regularly, so I would prefer having only one copy of that.
So the requirements are:
Same content for all users at same relative url
Different header based on group of current user
Different base url per group
forwarding of user to the correct base url if they login under a wrong one
What is the best way to implement this?
Straight WP with a sub-theme that deals with the header. Mod-rewrite to deal with the urls
WP-MultiSite (how would the same content under different base urls work here?)
Several copies of the site and somehow sync the content (how would I do the sync?)
Use a different CMS
Which of these is the most future proof way to go, assuming I might have to deal with thousands of companies each with hundreds to thousands of users.
Also, If there is an easier way because I missed something in my research like an existing plugin, that would be great too.
Thanks for your help.
I would say that such a thing depends on a lot more than these requirements. For instance, how granular would you like to have your user management? And how much are the users allowed to do on the different groups? Is unique information allowed on the different domains, or is all the information shared?
Based on the information you are providing, I think youy would be best off using the multisite version of wordpress. You then could use a broadcast plugin to share the information on all sites, and create a template site from which to create new sites (using the NS cloner plugin for instance).
There are of course some problems with this approach, for instance search engine optimisation. You will get a lot of duplicate content that will hurt the google ranking of the individual sites.
It would also be possible to do this using a single site install, but then you'll run into problems with the multiple domain structure. It can be done, but the available caching plugins will not support it (at least not that I know off), whereas a multisite environment is supported out of the box. It is also more difficult to keep users from posting on different domains, as they are using a single install. A multisite environment also has as shared user base, but they can be added or removed from the different sites at will.
Using a multisite environment would also allow you greater flexibility template-wise.
I'm being tasked at my company to work out a plan to handle 50 new clients that we're about to bring in. Each client is directly related and under an "umbrella" company that owns them all. All 50 sites will be pretty similar, each is for a different company so the themes may vary across them all.
We're planning to give them 10 themes to pick from for all 50 sites. So some of them will be very similar, some won't be at all.
Is Wordpress the best path? I'm very familiar with Wordpress. I've worked with Expression Engine before but am not as savvy as I am with Wordpress and I understand Expression Engine also has a multi site functionality.
So my question, is Wordpress Multi Site the best path for this? What would you do in my situation?
Also, if we wanted to create a user that has access to 10 of the 50 sites, is that possible? We'll need to narrow permissions.
Also, each site will need its own domain name. Is that possible?
Thanks guys!
Yes, Multisite can handle this easily.
To run Mapped Domains, using the MU Domain Mapping plugin cited by #Calle, you need to set up the network as sub-domains (opposed to a directories set up). And the mapped domains must be set as Parked Domains pointing to the directory of the WordPress Multisite installation.
Multisite user management can be a little tricky.
If some site of the network has really special requirements for its user's management, maybe you'll have a hard time.
All users of the network are given Subscriber status in all sites (this can be masked). You can easily assign one user as Administrator of 10 sites, give Super Admin access to others, use a network role management, etc.
You can have a couple of parent themes with the corporate identity and create child themes to accomodate specific needs.
Useful info:
Multisite 101, introduction to MS by one of its wizards, don't forget the tip jar if it's useful to you ;)
This ebook strives to pull it all together, explain you what skills you need to get started, and move you to the next step: running your own Network. Think of it as a basic tutorial in running your own Multisite.
Multisite Rationale, real case study for implementation of a MS Network, if you can find a document like this for Expression Engine, then you can make your choice pretty fast.
Wordpress Multisite can either be path based (www.domain.com/site1, www.domain.com/site2), or domain-based (www.site1.domain.com, www.site2.domain.com). I believe each of these sites have separate users; I'm not sure about your question about setting up a user that only has access to a certain number of the sites, but you can set up a "master user" that has access to all the sites on the network. If you use a domain based network for MS, you can then go into each of your domains you have bought for your 50 sites and forward them using DNS/.htaccess to the individual Wordpress Multisites.
I hope that makes sense :)