Multi-Author Blogs – Should you use Single WordPress or WPMU
Thanks for being a return reader! If you haven't already, you may subscribe to our articles by email alerts or via RSS feed . Also you can follow us on Twitter !
WordPress is so versatile that you can use it as a blog, static business website, community, or CMS (content management system), pretty much anything you need to do, you should reach for WordPress. Lately, I’ve had a lot of requests for information on multi-author blogs. Using the leverage of multiple authors is a great idea, but you should plan out your strategy before you begin. You will leverage the time of more people for both content and promotion. When you start a website like this, the website owner assumes the role of community manager and has to keep the blog running smoothly. Don’t expect the blog to just take off because you have more content then before, you still have to run it like a professional blog. What platform to use, how will you find bloggers, How to reward your bloggers are a few good questions to start with.
What community blogging platform to use?
Worpdress (WP) and WPMU (WordPress Multi-user) are both great platforms for a multi-author blog. I have found that a normal WordPress website is good for a close knit group of bloggers, that communicate regularly and understand the overall strategy for the website. Examples on this type of website is Mashable.com. WPMU on the other hand is better for a blogging website where the bloggers don’t really know each other, but all have similar interests in the overall blog topics. WPMU powers wordpress.com.
A WP website is much easier to run compared to a WPMU site, but the WPMU site can grow to be much larger because a WPMU site creates subdomains for each author. Each subdomain can use different themes, plugins, etc, they are each individual webistes. You can think of it as each website made by WPMU is a normal WP website. WPMU will always be under attack by people trying to make a fake blogs and game your system, but there are many plugins and strategies to stop this.
An example of a WPMU structure will be as follows. maindomain.com will be main website and all sites built under it will aggregate to it. Now as authors start blogs, each one will have a subdomain. Let’s say this is a car site. honda.maindomain.com, toyota.maindomain.com are examples on subdomains.
If you really want to make your WPMU community take off, you can offer Top Level Domains. Besically the author that made honda.maindomain.com, can upgrade to hondacars.com… Now that author can have subdomains under them. CRV.hondacars.com… As you can see it can go on forever and can offer much more benefits that a normal WP install. Again, it will take more effort from the community manage to keep things running smoothly.
How to find Authors for your multi-author website?
When I get approached for a multi-author blog, The first question I ask is “How will you get people to blog or interact on the website?”. Most often, this causes a long pause…
Setting up a blog takes very little time, but the website owner quickly finds out that it is very hard to get people to commit to join their blog as an author or guest blogger. Try to make it beneficial to the authors and make a win-win for everyone. Most authors will have their own personal blogs or websites. It defintely helps if you have a large social following to start, In other words, build your community and group of authors before you start the website.
Rewarding Authors to make your community grow
Your website will live or die by the content and participation. You need to make it worthwhile for high quality authors to contribute. Points systems have long been used to identify the best authors, but this doesn’t always mean you will get good content… and of course if you run a WPMU blog, you will find a lot of authors trying to game the system to get more exposure. Therefore, if you do use a point system, place higher points for creating conversations. Comments, retweets, bookmarks, etc… should get the most points, while blog posts get very few.
Make sure you provide ways to get your blogs’ authors content out into the wild. The community manager should tweet every post, submit it to sharing sites, and make sure the website is running high SEO. Let your authors see the analytics so they can see what organic searches are used to find their content. Not only will they see that you (the community manager) is promoting the site and driving traffic to it, but they will also know what to write about and what people are looking for.
This post was written by Matt Dunlap. He specializes in building WordPress community websites for small businesses and loves to help anyone with their wordpress problems.He has written a really helpful tutorial on how to start a WPMU website on a shared host
.
Similar Posts:
- Why Guest Blogging Is An Ideal Link Building Strategy
- 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Blog
- The Importance of Commenting on Other Blogs
- 15 Ways To Get Your Blog Comments Noticed
- How To Get Backlinks From Optimal Link Targets
Tags: Wordpress
About The Author
johnmcelborough
Kristi Hines
Breeme - Affiliat...
Doc Campbell
Gab
"Gerald handles all of my SEO and web marketing needs. I seriously think he might work at his computer 24-7 because it never takes more than 30 seconds for him to respond to any question I might have. Within weeks of hiring him, he quadrupled my web traffic. He seems to be virtual friends with just about everyone on the Internet, and he knows how things work. If you have a website that you need optimized, he s your man." - Alisa Bowman 
"Gerald has deep knowledge of Search Marketing and a unique ability to understand the needs of each specific business. Gerald has helped my business and the businesses of my clients successfully!" - Craig Klein 
"I am impressed with the results of Gerald's SEO work he did for my website, with some keyword research and link building magic he moved me up to the first page in Google using a couple of keyword seaches in only 2 months. I also really like the tracking system that is sent to me weekly. Thank you Gerald!" - Elicia Woodford - 
"Since hiring Gerald to handle my SEO and link building needs, my website has taken a drastic leap upward in the search rankings. I'm now enjoying first page rankings for many of the most desirable keywords, and my website is getting more quality traffic and more conversions. I look forward to continuing the use of Search Engine Marketing Group's services!" - Eric Brantner 
I'm very impressed with how Gerald has increased my rankings in a short period of time. I have been stuck at the same spot for over a year until Gerald stepped in and helped me out. I'm excited to see what he can do for my other businesses! - Barbara Aquino
We are mutual friends on Twitter, I noticed your Tweet and found your blog. Wow some great information here. I saved it in my favorites definetly want to read your posts. Come visit my site http://www.internetcontentpublishing.com anytime for a comment and a link.
Cool! Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog and comment. Hope to see you around here more in the future.
Hey buddy, sorry this is so OT. My apologies for being gone so long but my current post describes it a bit. I’m ready now to re-subscribe and get back into your awesome blog! Slowly at first until I get full swing again.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..What I’m Doing – What You Should Expect In The Very Near Future.
No problem Dennis. Good to see you again.
Everything OK? You gonna start blogging again?
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Are You Thankful For Your Blogging Community?
i saved this blog in my favorites and will back here.good work.
Just amazing stuff…I’m going to look into these because having more than one blog it gets overwhelming sometimes…
Salt´s last blog ..SPIDER-MAN 4 Villain Revealed
I found your blog most informative; I am looking for more information dealing with this and will be checking back for your future posts.
Well , the view of the passage is totally correct ,your details is really reasonable and you wslmart.net guy give us valuable informative post, I totally agree the standpoint of upstairs. I often surfing on this forum when I m free and I find there are so much good information we can learn in this forum!