MultiBlog – a bit further on…

well, i’ve spent an hour or so on trying to create multiBlog in the most simple manner possible. in some respects, with the new version of WordPress, the biggest sweat of maintaining multiple installations is lifted by being able to specify a separate directory for wp-content. but using this we can’t guarantee the workings of third party plugins.

in turns out that we can solve the multiBlog issue very very simply and with only two minor edits.

wp-content/db.php

define ('FQDB', FQDBDIR . SITE . '.sqlite'); //use the SITE constant as the file name

and wp-config.php

define('SITE', $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']); //define SITE

and it’s that easy. really.

but …. and it’s a small but … all the blogs will need to use the same permalink structure (as permalinks are done via .htaccess some of the time and therefore php isn’t fired up by the time rewriting is done); or, perhaps better, is to use php based url rewriting – so called PATHINFO permalinks by prepending the permalink structure with index.php/. See the WP Codex for more info on permalink structures and here for a plugin that helps work out what’s going on with rewrite rules.

personally i haven’t managed to get PATHINFO permalinks working properly yet. i’m not sure whether it is the PDO plugin or the rewrite rules or that i’m just doing something talentless. I guess i could debug by using a mysql database and still achieving the multiblog element by changing the wp-config file like this

switch ($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']){
 case 'blog1url': $table_prefix  = 'wp_blog1_'; break;
 case 'blog2url': $table_prefix  = 'wp_blog2_'; break;
}