One WordPress install for main site at domain.com and blog at blog.domain.com?

Question

I asked this before over at the WordPress forums some time ago, before WP3 with MU was released and I think it's relevant that I ask it again, here instead, cause of WP3.

Basically I want to have my personal website and blog both powered by WordPress, the website should be at www.domain.com (or domain.com) and the blog at blog.domain.com. My first idea is to use 2 WP installations with the same exact theme sharing the same database. This would easily allow me to share content between the two. Like displaying the latest blog posts in the front page of the website, for instance. It would also allow me to easily maintain different content for each site with appropriate links for each page.

What I meant is, a blog post should be accessed like blog.domain.com/article/blog-post-title and not www.domain.com/article/blog-post-title; the same way, a main site page should be accessed like www.domain.com/about-me and not blog.domain.com/about-me.

But two installations come with a few problems too... Double the work for maintaining WP updated to the latest version along with plugins. In case I need user registration for comments, two would be needed and I don't think the users will like that. I'm sure there are more problems, but this is what I can think of right now.

So, does WP3 come with any feature, like MU, that could help me achieve what I want or my best and easiest bet is to go the double installation route?

Answer 1

You would just need to use the multisite functionality now in WordPress, see http://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network. Setup the site to use the subdomain install. You would then setup the main blog to be your site, ignoring the posts section for that site. Then setup a new site within the Super Admin menu and set the subdomain for the new site to be blog.yoursite.com. You can then write blog posts from this new site while keeping the site navigation in the root install.