New Site on Travel
Thu, 16 August, 2007 – 9:03 am
I've been working on a new site this week using the WordPress MU to power it. The site is simply a collection of blogs on Travel, one blog per destination. After my parents went away to Canada for a few weeks back in June/July, and I set up a WP blog for my Mum to update whilst away, it got me thinking. Whenever we go away I want to be able to write about it beforehand and write up what happened whilst we were away (either during the holiday or on return). However I don't want to bore everyone with my ramblings of my holiday, daily accounts etc. unless they really want to read it! With planning for our holiday to Italy underway I started to think about setting up some sort of site that I could update for friends, family and other passers by to read. Build it up into an online travel diary of sorts, and maybe start to attract more passers by with the content, the information and photos. The beauty of this being that you don't need to think too much about the content as you're simply writing out what happened for the holiday, perhaps throw in a few restaurant names or even mini reviews of them. Once the holiday is over then there's no work really done until the next holiday.nnWordPress MU is designed for anyone to sign up and create a blog (by default). First off, I've changed that. For a start I'd already had 3 spam blogs sign up within a week of buying the new domain (which is already indexed by Yahoo for some reason), so I put a stop to that by restricting the email domains allowed (mine only!). I'm intending to put up a blog request form, allow people to request a blog and have a little control over it. At first I'm hoping to simply convince friends and family to post up their holiday news. Most of them don't have a site of their own and it's my chance to get extra content written.nnThen comes the monetisation. Travel guides (I like the 'Rough Guide' series personally), holiday necessities and plenty more. I'm toying with either a holiday shopping section, which would then list everything, and also perhaps target specific items on each blog depending on their subject.nnHowever, at this point I'm still working on the front end and need to get that finished off before I can start linking to it. But if you're looking at anything to run multiple blogs or sections on a site, WP MU is a good choice.
i'd be interested in checking it out. I used to put all of my posts on ilovecode and then my parents and friends started asking me about php and databases so I figured maybe it would be best to start a blog specifically for them…enter The Wandering Family. I don't update it as nearly as I should though.nnI think your idea sounds great though and it would be great to allow people to create their own blogs there!
By sara on Sun, 26 August, 2007
How are you getting on with WPMU? I've been meaning to install it on my (yet to be launched) community site…
By gary on Mon, 27 August, 2007
Sara, once the site is finished and live I'll be sure to let you know
nnGary, it's pretty good for multi blogs. You've of course got the whole typical WP admin area plus an extra section to administer the whole MU part, allowing you to view and access all the blogs, users, allow themes and plugins.nnOnce you've sussed these pages the rest of it is simple. The only thing I couldn't get working was the subdomain method for each blog, so I had to use the directory method. However that's not a major concern, and I probably just didn't have the right permissions set 
nnWorth a look if you're thinking of anything that could utilise it's flexibility and functions. And so far the themes and plugins I use on a standard WP site have worked fine on this too. It's almost like just having a WP site with an extra section and the ability to create a whole new blog with a couple of clicks.
By Sarah on Mon, 27 August, 2007