One Company, Two Brands with Two Blogs, but One WP Panel for Blog?

[stephanwb]

I work with a company that has 2 brands. Both brands have separate sites (currently on a WP multisite install). We want each brand to have its own blog, but for ease of content creation have ONE wp install to create the blog content and depending on what category is clicked (Brand 1 and/or Brand 2), it will publish to that sites blog.

2 questions:

1. Is one WP install for blog syndication for 2 separate sites advisable (as client is requesting)? Or should we just bite the bullet and have each site have it's separate posting through it's own WP install?

2. Sometimes one blog post will be published to BOTH blogs (i.e. category Brand 1 and Brand 2 clicked OR if we use two separate wp installs for each site, publish to both blogs). Is using a rel=canonical for the original post (we need to decide which brand takes precedence) sufficient to overcome duplicate content problem?

Thanks in advance!

Stephan

[JaneCopland]

Hi Stephan,

I agree with Scott that this is possible but question how much more trouble it would be to run two installations for the two blogs?

The canonical tag will take care of the duplicate content. I don't see much wrong with duplicating using this approach if the duplicated full article is better for users on the non-canonical site, or using the snippet + link approach if that's fine for usability / reader interest.

[scodtt]

You can use one log-in for multiple WP dashboards, but running two blogs out of one dashboard... Dicey. Even if you can find a plugin to do it just seems like you are setting yourself up for trouble.

And as for running the copy in both places, that seems dicey, too. You can do it with rel=canonical, but then how much is it really going to help. Personally I'd just do the blog in one place and then do a small summary of it on the second blog and link over to it so readers can follow that if they are interested.