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You can run multiple sites on a single WP install without using that god-awful WPMU, but it takes a bit of work. That said, the method here looks like a major pain in the ass. Make symlinks for every single one of those files? That's insane.

Try installing WP somewhere reasonable (I'd recommend not using a .hidden directory, just for convenience) and then, in each web site directory, create a symlink to the WP directory, instead of each file. Something like this:

 /var/www/wordpress

 /var/www/example.org

 /var/www/example.org/wp -> ../wordpress

Then copy the main WP index.php into each site's directory and change the path from "./wp-blog-header.php" to "./wp/wp-blog-header.php".

Finally, in wp-config.php create a hash with database prefixes and web site hostnames and change the table_prefix line to use the hostname as a key to find the appropriate table prefix:

 $prefix = (

     "www.example.org"  => "wp1_",
     "blog.example.net" => "wp2_",    
 );
 $site = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
 $table_prefix = $prefix[$site];

You'll need to go through the WP install once for each site in order to set up the database tables, but you'll be ready to go after that. All your themes will go in a single location and you'll have a single directory for your plugins, which can then be enabled on a site-by-site basis, as needed.

This is all off the cuff; I haven't implemented this yet but I've been meaning to. I'm actually using a slightly different method for multi-WP sites but this one is a bit better.

Thanks kchrist, I'll give that a try and report back.

I haven't used WPMU on a public site, so I can't comment on the resource usage, but my multi-WP method above will be the same as using a regular WP install for each site. I don't know if this is better or worse than WPMU.

My problem with WPMU is that it's a major pain to get working in a reasonable way, the community is not very helpful, and the developers do asinine things like enforce their "no-www" preference in code (seriously, it won't let you install for www.example.org instead of just example.org). There's also no reasonable way to make it work for multiple distinct domains instead of just subdomains, which makes it fine for community blogs and the like but not really useful for consolidating multiple sites (it's possible to do multiple sites, just not very easy).

Thanks for the info guys.

I just checked my .htaccess file and it was empty!

I found the following on another site

http://perishablepress.com/press/2006/06/14/the-htaccess-rules-for-all-wordpress-permalinks/

# BEGIN WordPress

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

</IfModule>

    

    
END WordPress

with this copied into my .htaccess

My centrally installed wordpress has friendly urls :D

Thanks again for the suggestions and advice in this thread

thumbs up

@scoby - I've never done symlinks before, but I do have SSH from my host provider. I have 4 sites that I want to use from a single install of WP. I want to be able to upload theme's and plugins once and then be able to activate them separately across the different domains. Have you ever considered making a tutorial for dummies (like me) using your method above? I need super detailed instructions!!

I have www.domain-1.com
www.domain2.com
www.domain3.net

what is /var/www/? Is does the 'var' just stand for variable where 'var' means the path to your www directory?

Also, I use my local computer to edit/change stuff on my WP theme, and then I 'publish' it to my live site on bluehost. Will this method (using the symlinks) still work if I do that? Do I need to create symlinks on my local computer as well for the 'edit/changing'?

Any help you can give is greatly appreciated!