WordPress isn’t natively built to say support multiple blogs on one site. However, there are ways to make this work. One of the easiest and most efficient ways to create multiple blogs on one site is to make use of Categories, Menus, and Users features that are built into WordPress.
The first thing to do is log into your site and navigate to Posts – Categories. It will be near the top of the left sidebar in the admin pane under the pin icon.
You will see four fields for your Categories on this screen – all of these will impact you being able to post multiple blogs on your one site.
- Name – This one will be the displayed title of the blog (i.e. if you have multiple blogs what will appear in your main menu). If you have Categories indexed by search engines, the archive will bear this title. If not, this name will be for internal use only, though it might display in some themes.
- Slug – Like a Post slug, the Slug for a Category indicates where you can find the category archive. Depending on your permalink settings (under Settings – Permalinks), this could also be part of your post structure.
- Parent Category – The parent category is very important for running multiple blogs on one site. You might run a brand called All Flowers Inc. that will have its own posts, and your blogs might be called Daiseys, A Rose Diary, and Wedding Florals. Each of those would be separate but tied to the main brand. You can also do this for a parent category as a primary blog for a podcast, but use subcategories as season archives. This one is optional, depending on the structure you want.
- Description – The description might not show up everywhere (or anywhere) depending on your theme. But it can be indexed by search engines, and it is good for internal organization if nothing else. Definitely worth putting a Tweet’s worth of info here (i.e. 280 or less characters).
Once completed, the new Categories will appear to the right of the page as a list. Each Parent Category will be listed above its respective children.
Add the Categories to the Navigation Menu
By using Categories, you can now put direct links to the “blogs” in the navigation menu of your site. Navigate to Appearance – Menus and select which menu(s) you want to add the links to.
If you have not yet built a Menu, its a good idea to name your menu something like “Main Menu” and to begin adding important pages and categories to it ( that is again if you want multiple blogs!)
- Find the new Categories under the View All tab if you haven’t used them before.
- Select which ones you want to add to the menu and press the Add to Menu button.
- The Menu Structure will update to include the selections you made.
- Drag the individual blogs you want to be sub-items into place if desired. If they are not indented, they will be top-level items in the navigation.
- Press Save Menu. Menus do not save automatically in WordPress, and this is an incredibly easy step to miss.
With that saved, you will now be able to see the blogs listed separately in whatever menus you created.
When you write a new post – be sure to include it in the Category (i.e. Blog) you want it posted under.
You would go to Posts and Add New on the right-hand side under your Post tab, you will see the new Categories you made (or existing ones) be sure to select the Category you want this particular post added to by checking the box off and making sure to save. This creates the effect of multiple blogs on one site.
