Technology behind blogging networks

As we all know, there are many approaches to developing a blogging network. The most successful ones are those which can be easily expanded and managed. The concepts behind blogging networks are basically the same... a few of the most common are: WordPress, Moveable Type, and LifeType.

There are many other possible solutions available, which one you choose will depend mainly on your knowledge and skill level of the technology used.

WordPress, Movable Type or LifeType?

WordPress for example is written in PHP, very popular and have many interesting plug-ins and templates which could be very helpful to begin establishing your blogging network.

Movable Type is also an excellent alternative, it is commercial and written mostly in Perl with some PHP, it could provide the necessary tools to create and manage your network.

LifeType isn't as popular as WordPress or Movable Type, but I have used it for a long time and I know the capabilities of this software to make your network successful.

In the next part of the articles we'll use the following abbreviations :
- WP for WordPress
- MT for Movable Type
- LT for LifeType

The Network Strategy

Now, before diving into the technical issues and the solutions to choose from, let's talk a little about the strategy of your network, the niche, the bloggers, management, the design, and the blogs themselves.

For example, WP isn't good in the management of multiple authors and multiple blogs. If you are planning to give an author permission to write in more than one blog, it will be difficult to manage, not only for the administration, but also for the bloggers who will have to use multiple logins for different blogs !! This is something that is very trivial for MT and LT.

The second issue is related to the architecture of the network. Many prefer using a different domain name for their different blogs, but at the same time keeping them linked and running in the same environment. All the different solutions we are talking about offer this feature in their core (LT), or via plug-in (WP and MT). The most difficult task will be to have global plug-ins that can be personalized.

If you want to keep links of all your blogs in the network, you can use the blogroll plug-in in WP... but the day you want to add a new blog in the network, you will have to add it in all your blogs one by one ?!

We’ll take a look at some different techniques available to make your blogging network successful.

Most relevant points

Some of the key points that we will keep in mind and try to answer while discussing what makes a successful blogging network are:

1- How to easily create new blogs
2- The possibility to adopt a unique or different design strategy for each blog
3- How to easily manage authors and content
4- Setup a strong advertising management solution
5- Creating links between the different blogs in the network
6- Monitoring Stats of visits and the available solutions
7- The ability to support a high traffic – performance tracking
8- How to easily expand the features without broking the core
9- Maintenance of the network
10- The flexibility overall to move from one platform to another

Conclusion

"Successful" is a term which depends on you and your network. In the coming articles, we’ll show you a few of possible solutions to make your network successful.

This first part is just an introduction. Next, we'll start exploring the different technical issues and take a look at some of the possible solutions.