6 replies to this topic

[Ahmed]

Hi folks,

I joined HR forums in 2007 but left web development for some time to finish University; I'm back and I hope everyone is doing well I'm currently working on a pro-bono project for an online literary journal and I could use any help/guidance that this community can provide. The webmaster quit and I've been approached to take on the "job" (in the art world no one gets paid!) because I am a fan of their work and my wife is involved in the journal.

Currently the website structure looks like this:
- The journal has a website for each issue (about three are created every year) and there are 12 issues in total. In fact every issue has its own Wordpress installation...
- Domain name (whatever.com) forwards to the latest issue (whatever.com/issue12). So the domain name would be redirected to a new subfolder every four months. There are no universal pages; all pages are duplicated in each issue; including pages like "about us, contact, archives, etc.

What do you think of the website structure? I would have gone with a Wordpress multisite installation (each issue is a site) with some universal pages (home page, contact, archives, submissions etc). The universal home page would talk about the literary journal and maybe include a "table of contents" from the latest issue. This portal/home page would then give the visitor the option of going to the latest issue.

Does anyone have experience making websites of this nature? What do you think is the best structure for both usability and seo. I think I know what I'm doing but a second opinion never hurts!

Thank you,
Ahmed

P.S. I instinctively searched for their name in google and found that their main domain name (whatever.com) wasn't indexed. I thought this was because of the forwarding but it turned out that the Wordpress installation for the newest issue had the privacy settings "do not allow search engines to index" - doh! I added them to my google webmaster tools, who knows what else I'll find soon.

[Jill]

If I'm understanding correctly, I'd just make the whole thing one domain, one wordpress installation.

Then you just go to companysite.com/issue1 etc.

[Ahmed]

Hi Jill, thank you for responding By one Wordpress installation do you mean a regular one or one with multisite functionality turned on. Maybe I'm being slow here but I don't know how to organize 12 issues with their own navigation, widgets etc. without using multisite. Each issue has about 40 pages and they're organized into 7-8 categories.

[Jill]

I don't know as I'm not familiar enough with the multisite functionality of WP. I just don't understand why they have multiple domains rather than 1.

[Ahmed]

Me neither, sometimes people take ideas from print media and try to apply it to the web. I had to convince them that having 3+ columns on every single page (to simulate a newspaper/magazine) wasn't such a good idea.

[chrishirst]

Single site with issues in subfolders definitely

zmpm.com/ Completed in 2005 hasn't been touched since, predates all CMSs so I wrote my own.

Edited by chrishirst, 01 September 2012 - 05:14 PM.

[Ahmed]

Thanks