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Blogging advice please??

by Roger Mayne
15 replies
I have a blog dedicated to my local area (spans 2 counties / states). The main blog contains local news feeds from newspapers, plus I'm going to be inviting guest bloggers to add articles / news / events etc.

My question is, I have tons of PLR, so I intend to create blog articles around particular topics, then invite local businesses to sponsor articles, or add their business details into the blog for advertising revenue. Should I run this as sub domains ie, topic.blogdomain.com, or should I use categories like blogdomain.com/topic?

I'm talking both in terms of search engines, as well as visitor ease.
#advice #blogging
  • Profile picture of the author Adriana Copaceanu
    Subdomains are considered as independent sites, so I suggest using folders in your root: blogdomain.com/topic
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    • Profile picture of the author snapcontent
      Originally Posted by Adriana Copaceanu View Post

      Subdomains are considered as independent sites, so I suggest using folders in your root: blogdomain.com/topic
      it's also a hell of a lot easier to arrange. Creating subdomains takes time and effort. Subfolders... easy.
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  • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shane Roe
    blogdomain.com/topic would also fit the permalink structure that google seems to love.

    It's also easier for your readers to see the url to.
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  • Profile picture of the author Roger Mayne
    Hmm, but would you suggest installing a separate blog per folder, or simply use the permalink structure to create folders per category?
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  • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shane Roe
    If you create a seperate blog it would be the same as doing a sub domain.

    I would suggest using categories to handle it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Roger Mayne
      Originally Posted by Skid_Roe View Post

      If you create a seperate blog it would be the same as doing a sub domain.

      I would suggest using categories to handle it.
      That certainly makes it much easier to handle everything!! Now I need to go and learn how to create different themes for different categories!!

      Thanks for your input and advice.
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      • Profile picture of the author Virginia M. Clemmons
        Originally Posted by Roger Mayne View Post

        That certainly makes it much easier to handle everything!! Now I need to go and learn how to create different themes for different categories!!

        Thanks for your input and advice.
        ***This depends on which version of WordPress you're running.

        That's fairly simple depending upon your skillset. First, you need to find out if your theme has a category.php file in it. If so, half the work is already done for you. If not, then your theme is getting its list of post in each category from the archives.php file.

        Then, all you need to do after setting up you categories is
        1. Make a copy of either the category or archive php file
        2. Get the slug from each category
        3. Rename the file in this format (it applies whether you use archives or category.php): category-slug.php
        4. Do this for each one of your categories
        5. Now you have a base template to design anyway you like!
        Also, you apply a different css file to each one, or you could create classes within your current css file so you will have the ability to apply any particular style/layout to one or more category templates.

        Hope this helps,
        -Virginia Clemmons
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  • Profile picture of the author ecdavis
    I would agree, unless you have specific seo/marketing reasons for using subdomains, I would go with blogdomain.com/topic. I think you could create an effective silo structure. Interestingly, your project is very similar to one I'm working one as well for my local area. Since I'm narrowly defining the local area, I'm going to use blogdomain.com/topic (no reason to set up separate subdomains). However, depending on the scope of your local area, you might consider blogdomain.com/topic/countyortown/article.
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    • Profile picture of the author Roger Mayne
      Originally Posted by ecdavis View Post

      I would agree, unless you have specific seo/marketing reasons for using subdomains, I would go with blogdomain.com/topic. I think you could create an effective silo structure. Interestingly, your project is very similar to one I'm working one as well for my local area. Since I'm narrowly defining the local area, I'm going to use blogdomain.com/topic (no reason to set up separate subdomains). However, depending on the scope of your local area, you might consider blogdomain.com/topic/countyortown/article.
      I already have categories for each county (I cover 2), plus various villages / towns, so could be broken down to topic also.
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    • Profile picture of the author Matt Morgan
      For 3 mini niche areas of the main niche, i did this.

      blogdomain.com/nichetopic1
      blogdomain.com/nichetopic2
      blogdomain.com/nichetopic3

      with a diff theme for each one.
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      • Profile picture of the author addice
        I'm also using domainname.com/sub for my URL and it seems to work better. But nothing beats domainname.com though, with the domainname with your keyword in there.
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  • Profile picture of the author spennyc
    Yeah - I'd use folders - always works well for SEO for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Roger Mayne
    Thanks Virginia

    That sound like a plan! I must confess that I don't fully understand EVERYTHING you've laid out, but I think I can manage it. Great learning curve!
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  • Profile picture of the author ~kev~
    If you have serious people that are going to be adding lots of content, I suggest adding subdomains.

    If you look at the example set by foxnews, they have subdomain blogs. The blog of Glenn Beck is glennbeck.blogs.foxnews.com
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    • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
      Originally Posted by Roger Mayne View Post

      Hmm, but would you suggest installing a separate blog per folder, or simply use the permalink structure to create folders per category?
      With WordPress 3.0 (or later) you don't really need to install it again if you want to have separate blogs in each subfolder. It's a built-in feature: multi-site capability.

      Originally Posted by Roger Mayne View Post

      That certainly makes it much easier to handle everything!! Now I need to go and learn how to create different themes for different categories!!
      You can do it as it was suggested by using catgeoyr templates
      (Resources: Category Templates WordPress Codex
      Template Hierarchy WordPress Codex)

      Or... if you go by separate blogs, you can have a different theme on each of them.

      Originally Posted by snapcontent View Post

      it's also a hell of a lot easier to arrange. Creating subdomains takes time and effort. Subfolders... easy.
      It doesn't take any time with WP 3. It creates blogs on subdomains (or in subfolders depending on your settings) on the fly.

      However, all the decisions should be based not on what we say here but on how your content is going to be structured, how do you want your content organized, what kind of building blocks do you need for this particular project. All the rest is just gueesing and empty theories
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