Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › General Discussion › 3 Designs, one WP installation
Tagged: layout, multiple temlates, styles
- This topic has 6 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 11 years ago by Summer.
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January 4, 2014 at 10:49 am #83158TalMember
I have a situation where I am basically wanting to combine 3 wordpress sites into one (two are new with little data and can basically be recreated from scratch within the main site).
My server won't allow me to use any kind of user table sharing across installations or a multi site installation of wordpress so I'm left with making one site pretend to be three.
Here's basically what I'm trying to achieve and my thoughts so far.
All three sites will share a primary menu (essentially a banner across the top of the page which will include links to each of the three "sites" and a shared forum, chat room etc.
Each site will have posts contained within categories and sub categories so it's easy to separate those, I can keep essentially the same layout but just change the colors and background images using an alternate CSS file for each site.
I would like to have some common widget areas (say at the bottom of each site) but when a user is on each "site" I'd like them to see a different sidebar widget area so I can have content there that is essentially relevant to which ever "site" the user is on and I'd probably have to create a widget area at the top of the page where I can set up a custom menu widget to allow a different menu for each site.
This so far isn't seeming super complicated based on my current level of knowledge and I think I could do it but may need help tweaking some aspects within a genesis template (right now I'm using a template that's modified from the backcountry theme.)
What i don't know how to do is essentially create three separate "home" pages using widget areas to display recent posts, sliders etc.
Here's a couple of images to try and explain what I'm trying to achieve
Any ideas/advice on how I can achieve this?
January 4, 2014 at 10:56 am #83166AnitaCKeymasterQuestion - why can't you do a Multisite on your current host?
Need help with customization or troubleshooting? Reach out to me.
January 4, 2014 at 11:21 am #83181TalMemberThey won't allow it. Didn't say why, but they said they'll migrate existing multisites (after they approve it) but won't allow new setups. It's a wordpress specific host and they're very careful about how resources are used ... they don't allow anything else on the servers - email, DNS stuff all has to be dealt with off-site, I can't complain too much because it's the only stable server I've found despite spending hundreds of dollars a month elsewhere
January 4, 2014 at 11:24 am #83184AnitaCKeymasterWell then, there is a plugin called WP RSS Multi Importer. You can set up different RSS Feeds and add them as widgets. It allows you to pull in the posts and featured images as real posts - however, they stay linked to the originating website. This way if they are ever edited, the new version will show up on your website. I've tried it and it works really well. Then you can add the content to different widget areas by your websites.
Need help with customization or troubleshooting? Reach out to me.
January 4, 2014 at 12:17 pm #83203TalMemberThanks, but that's not really what I want. I want users to be able to log into all the sites at once, so they dont' have to have multiple logins
January 4, 2014 at 12:19 pm #83206AnitaCKeymasterThe Jetpack Plugin has just released a Single Sign On (SSO) function that may work perfectly for you.
Need help with customization or troubleshooting? Reach out to me.
January 4, 2014 at 2:28 pm #83238SummerMemberIf your primary goal is to have certain widgets appear on certain locations, I'd suggest taking a look at Dynamic Widgets plugin... you can pick and choose which pages display which widgets. I use it on a handful of personal and client sites.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
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