Running Multiple Sites?

[moeghost]

recently i've decided to create a second website, i have a lot of free time, almost too much, so having a second project couldnt hurt...

my current site has a very soft, pink, cutesy and colorful feeling/style, but i also really love gothic lolita and emo and more alternative type styles. id like a space to embrace that part of me as well.

i then started to think that maybe having 2 websites at once could get a little overwhelming, and on some pages id be recycling information and some of my personal images.

do any of you run multiple sites, or have any experience doing so? are there any webmasters out there who've had this same idea or similar? i guess im looking for 2 types of answers

• do you know of/run any sites with this sort of idea in mind? like, one site is one style, but theres another site that's sort of the opposite or just different but run by the same person/group? this is just out of curiosity haha
• can running multiple sites be difficult or confusing? is there a way to reuse images and certain information without being too repetitive?

i hope this makes sense haha

[rolypolyphonic]

I have two websites that have different purposes, but in retrospect I wish I just had one main website. The main reason is that when I made my first website, its intention was to just host my webcomic and nothing else, but over time it just turned into my 'personal' website for everything I do, especially since I stopped using mainstream social media and never got into the concept of participating in servers/etc. either.

I wouldn't say my concern is that it's 'difficult' to upkeep both websites (though YMMV) so much as the other one's purpose is so specific (all it basically does is host a webring) that it seems a little 'pointless' for me to have it, other than the fact that I already bought the domain, and, well, I do really like its domain.

Of course, since I pay for my own websites and domains instead of taking the free Neocities/Nekoweb/etc. route, I do feel like there's a little more investment to consider. If you're making a second website on a free host it's not as big a deal. Even if one website ends up being less 'updated' than the other, it's not like there's a requirement to update a website regularly, so the issue is more about your personal expectations for yourself.

Personally though, if my desire was just to have a different visual style/theme for the website, and the second website doesn't have any actual content that significantly differs from the first one, I might prefer to just have different themes for individual webpages or a menu that toggles between themes. Sure, you might have to spend a bit more time styling the second theme and fiddling around with how to actually set it, especially if you have to toggle whether certain images get displayed or not too and not just changing the colours around, but you'd have to do only marginally more work than you would if you made a second website.

I think the main consideration is thinking about how you'd split the content between websites. Sometimes I find myself at a loss whether something I want to do is suited for my one website or the other, since even though they have different purposes, they overlap well enough that it doesn't really matter. If your websites had a clearer distinction between their purposes it might not be as troublesome for you to decide.

Of course, if you wanted a second website just to give it a different name than your current one like how I did that's as good enough a reason as any.

[Dan Q]

I have many sites... but they're all very different:

I like my site - DanQ.me - to be the primary source of truth about me. Sometimes I think it'd be nice to separate it out into multiple sites based on the categories of things I've put on there, because it's a bit of a mess: e.g. a blog post about work and technology can sit next to a poem about the shape of scones. Should I have a GPS-sports focussed blog that stands separate from my podcast? Would that help me make the two parts of my life feel distinct?

I've periodically flip-flopped on this for... well, definitely over 15 years. But I've chosen to keep everything in one site because it feels "whole". As in: this is where all of Dan can be found, in all his diverse and varied interests. It's about authenticity for me: I like having a single place that represents "me" online.

That said... I do have other sites too! These include:

• Sites that I don't consider "personal sites", e.g. games like my Wordle clone, fun/silly one-offs like my tool to change your star sign, and "serious"/useful sites like my site helping people change their name
• Sites that are "personal", but represent multiple people of whom I am only one, like my blog about a D&D campaign for which players rotated responsibility for writing (some of whom did so "in character"), or my site for a community I'm part of
• "Personal" sites that supplement, not detract from my main site e.g. my experimental plain-text-only blog (which mostly writes about plain-text blogging, but there are crossovers with things I write about on my main one!), of my "things" sub-site that links to other things I've made (and is way out-of-date)

So, in answer to your actual question:

Yes, I've strongly considered having multiple sites with shared content. In my case the most obvious split would be to fork my blogging into a "professional-looking" site about tech and work and things and maybe other derivative sites that highlighted other bits of my life, but fundamentally all of them would draw from the same central "me" site.

So why haven't I done this? Because of the extra work, mostly. However much I streamlined my processes, it'd be more work: I already produce content that gets shunted out over many different media, POSSE-style, and that already causes some challenges to automation... I worry that if I put any more barriers up in front of me then... well... I'd spend less time creating stuff!

But possibly that's just because I feel time-poor. Maybe there's a world in which I do fewer things in which I'd "fork" parts of my content onto other sites. But right now... that'd be too hard!

[rhyswynne]

I have multiple sites. I have my professional face (I'm a professional web developer) and my own personal site as my main ones, but I have about 3 or 4 side projects.

As far as overwhelming, I'd say yes sadly! Some of the projects are lying a bit dormant (though my two main side projects only require updating about once or twice a year). The plan is to introduce side projects as subdomains of the current site in the future, and then move them if I continue them to a decent standard of traffic.