This can get complicated; particularly if you lose track of what is what – but if you remember which page/post has to do with what, then you’re in clover: Allow me to spell it out a bit better: -

The Objective

The objective is to do something like I’m doing with kkomp.com domain, using only a single WordPress installation: What am I doing? – Well, in short I’m running currently 3 blogs from a single WordPress installation. Check them out if you like: You’ve already seen Kkomp.com – Beyond because you’re reading part of it now. Also on this domain, using the same WordPress installation, is ICE Showbiz and The Shazzalive Alive Show.

Granted; this is, in a way, pushing the boundaries: But it works. – So how is it done?

How is it Done?

Remember in a previous article I taught you all about how to create 1 or more new WordPress template(s) for your existing blog? – Well, in short, that is exactly how it’s done: Each “blog” is on a separate template using the same master css stylesheet. If any variation of the stylesheet is needed then this is accomplished on-the-page itself. Because the template used for each “blog” – shall we call them “blog-ettes”? – appears identical every time it’s used; you have, basically, a mini-blog within a blog, a “blog-ette” each time you use a custom template along with a page or group of pages

(Note: The linked article explains how to create a template with no page showing, just the standard header and footer with a note between them on the page. For the purposes of this article we want to create a template that DOES call a page but that shows a specially-built custom footer and holds the header on itself (the template) rather than calling a header by means of php.)

- So you can have a main-blog with a technical-flavour; yet a blog-ette about a project concerning showbusiness, and another blog-ette about a radio-show, for example, as in my case.

Though you’re running what in theory amounts to separate sites dealing with separate subjects; you can never make a blog-ette as functional as the main blog. Each blog-ette consists of a page or a collection of pages. Posts can’t be incorporated under my present system; though I’ll eventually hopefully work out a way in which to do just that. Since each blog-ette is made up of pages only, it’ll be a static blog-ette unless you regularly edit it. Here is where the WordPress text-editor and html-editor come into their own. – Invaluable tools for editing your static blog-ette( s) so that it/they don’t stagnate. The method of doing so should appear obvious.

Of course, if you like; and I’ve also posted about this; you can use Windows Live Writer as an html editor and compose your pages on that app before either uploading them via xml or copying and pasting the html of your edited article to the item-page on the blog-ette in place of the existing html. – Simplement!

Well; not quite so simple: The hardest bit of it, before you can do anything, is to design, create, and tweak, a new template.

Template Tips

Here is how I go about it: – I always start at the top of the page, and at the top of every page the first thing people should see is the site’s (blog-ette’s) logo. There are two ways of achieving this: The first requires an all-encompassing knowledge of html, excellent manual and mental dexterity, and time. – Not all of us have all of those assets, and I personally usually can’t be arsed anyway to spend days of intricate coding and html image-blending to achieve the desired result. – So we’ll leave that method to the uber-geeks with Mensa-brains.

The way I go about creating a header is by, first, artistically designing a .png image and using a simple line of code to call it to the screen: -

<p align=”center”><img src=”http://kkomp.com/images/example.png”></p>

The header image should be around 999 pixels wide (no more than that) by anything from 100 to 400 pixels deep. If you can’t afford or can’t be bothered with Dreamweaver or similar to use for your designs, then I’ve always found a free yet powerful program called Paint.NET to be the best alternative. I’ve become a type of expert at manipulating it over the last few years and I can’t teach you all about it in this article – therefore I won’t even try to start doing so.

When you create a header image you should avoid anything too elaborate. I almost broke this rule with the ICE Showbiz header; but only just got away with it. Having said this; you also don’t want your header to be too bland.

A good rule for checking a finished header against these rules is to take a copy of the finished header and convert it to monochrome or black and white: If it looks better in monochrome then use it in monochrome or simplify it in colour. If it sucks in monochrome or b/w then it’s probably far too complicated in colour. – Vastly simplify your design. If it looks good in both monochrome/black and white as well as colour then you’ve probably got a nice design which is pleasing on the eye and won’t baffle and surprise your readers.

At the risk of appearing mean I’m not going to tell you any more: It’s YOUR page, not mine, so you make it as you see fit. – You have enough basic knowledge from this article and from those linked from it to kick you well off; so I’ll say no more.

‘Advert time: enjoy: -

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