Design Issue – One Site or Two?

[nstratman]

Hi I’d appreciate your advice on a design approach I am facing.

I look after the website for the Lavenham Literary Festival (LLF). This festival runs every 2 years. In the intervening years we recently started the Lavenham Children’s Book Festival (LCBF). This year, October, is the year of the LCBF. Because of the pandemic it will be an on-line offer.

2 years ago the children’s content was a few extra pages in the main festival site, in the same format. This year a designer has been engaged and has developed artwork for what would have been the brochure for the physical festival. We intend to use this new design for the children’s pages of the site. There will be a new home page to replace temporarily the existing LLF home page, plus author pages and related content. Probably around 15 pages in total.

I had intended to create these pages using the blank page template and checking pretty much every per page option to override the default design. The issue is that everything about these pages is different from the main site: layout, header, footer, menu, colour scheme, fonts. In effect I would be designing and maintaining by exception, using all the replacement options available in Xtreme. As an additional factor the main LLF site will be redeveloped in time for the 2021 festival.

So I am coming to the view that pragmatically it would be better to build a different site altogether where I can set up the environment to suit. I’d welcome your thoughts based on your wider experience.

Thanks & stay safe.

By the way, I submitted a broadly similar post a few minutes ago. I immediately went back in to edit it just to check the box for an email alert of a response and after resubmitting the whole thing vanished.

[nstratman]

Hi again, an update: I’ve just been speaking to the chairman of the overall festivals. The outcome as it affects me is that it’s not going to be viable to set up a separate website for the children’s festival.

So with apologies for the false start I need to re-frame my request to you for advice along the lines of: broadly what approach should I take to build a set of pages on my literary festival website which are radically different to the main site layout and content?

Thanks.

[scrambler]

There are two aspects to your question.

The technicality, which is that if you have to create many pages with completely different structures, then it would be easier with a separate site.

The URL, which is if you want a different URL for the site.

Now if the URL could be a sub section of the main URL, you can create a separate site at no cost, by creating a new WordPress installation in a sub folder of your main domain directory.

The new site will have the same Domain address, but will be in a sub folder of that, so no cost.

 

[nstratman]

Thank you. I’ll have to accept the same URL in this case. Can I just clarify the sub section comment. Are you talking about a subdomain which would look like newsite/lavenhamliteraryfestival.co.uk? I thought subdomains counted as a separate licence instance?

[scrambler]

Subdomain is not quite the same as subfolder. Both could be used depending on the condition of your host provider.

To use different site in different subfolder, I believe you would need to have created the main site in a subfolder of the home directory

In your Cpanel, you would see Public_html at the top, then underneath that you would have one folder holding the main site. If so, then you can create a new WordPress installation next to it under a different name

For example, in WordPress admin of your main site, in Settings > General, you would see something like

WordPress Address (URL) : http://www.yoursite.com/MAINsitefolder
Site Address (URL)  : http://www.yoursite.com/

SO the URL of the main site shows up as http://www.yoursite.com/, when in fact it is http://www.yoursite.com/MAINsitefolder

If so, then you can use your Cpanel to create a new WP installation in another subfolder, and the new site will be under http://www.yoursite.com/NEWsitefolder

Now if your Host provider gives you free subdomains, which they usually do, you can create a Subdomain, which then shows up under

http://NEWsite.yoursite.com/

Either way works

[Weaver]

Note that I tend to the subdomain solution. For example, weavertheme.com, forum.weavertheme.com, shop.weavertheme.com, guide.weavertheme.com, etc.

Any reasonably modern hosting plan will allow you to easily created a subdomain site.

On the other hand, the licensing setup for Weaver Xtreme Plus requires a license per each domain or subdomain.

An alternative would be to set up a WordPress multi-site installation. You set up separate sites, and the easiest way to set up sites is to use the “folder” approach: example.com, example.com/subsite1, example.com/subsite2 etc. This does require learning about multisite setup, but it is not difficult, nor difficult to transform an existing site from single site to multisite. Weaver Xtreme Plus only needs one license for an entire multi-site setup.

[Author]

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