Management system required for 400+ sites. Ideas please

Hey everyone.

I'm soon to launch a network of 400+ affiliate sites with a medium-sized team.

I was going to use Wordpress across all the sites to maintain consistency, but that'd still require logging in and out of every blog to update content.

Does anyone know of a CMS built for managing a large amount of sites? Perhaps something that allows you to publish content (via XML or MySQL perhaps) to any (or all) of the sites from one location?

It would need to maintain the same SEO functions that Wordpress has (clean URLs, blog format, meta/title options, etc) as well as allowing each site to have a separate theme/skin.

Has anyone worked on a similar project? Any tips?

 

I am asking a question here not making a statement that it can be done.

Why couldn't one high powered database location service multiple WP sites. Remote access would need to be enabled and it would take a high end VPS or better. Chances are that it would slow page loads a bit.

 

Hey Colbyt, I think that's probably possible, but you would still be logging in to each Wordpress installation to update the content (that or doing it through MySQL - which would be messy). Thanks for your interest.

 

Wordpress is 95% database driven if not more. An article in the DB would show on every site that used that DB.

 

I would write one by hand, and then make a drop down menu which I can change to different sites.

 

I need unique content on every site.

 

Do you mean write a CMS? What do you think that would cost to outsource?

 

Probably your best bet would be going for one of the bigger commercial CMSs like expression engine.

 

basically what you need is to run multiple websites with one single CMS installation.

I'm not sure if Wordpress supports that but: ezPublish, Joomla and Typo have those features built in. With a bit of configuration those CMS systems can let you do what you want.

I would try searching "multiple websites with singe wordpress installation"

Though by the sounds of it you already have multiple wordpress installations which means you might need to create a tool that can manage multiple wordpress installations from one main panel. It's doable but maybe not that cheap.

 

You're right, another CMS might be the best option - I'll look into those recommended, thanks.