This question is not necessarily Atahualpa-specific, but I'd appreciate feedback from any of the many helpful people who use Atahualpa and post in this forum.

I am creating a static website for a private school (http://theagnonschool.org)

In addition to approx. 25 pp. of static content, the site will have about 15 individual blogs.

Each blog is password protected so that it can be posted to only by the teacher and can be read only by the parents of students in that class.

My question is what is the best way to do this? I'm currently using a combination of cat2page and Redirection, but I'm sure there is a simpler, more elegant (and easier-to-administrate) way to set this up.

Here's what I've been doing:

I split the navigation of the site into 2 parts:

1. the page bar navigates the way through the static pages (most of which are designed for prospective parents)
2. the category bar (designed for the convenience of current parents) navigates the way through the class blogs & a couple static pages

Initially, the current parent's menu -- the default Atahualpa category menu -- was supposed to be linked only to categories. Then, to accommodate teachers' request to add static content as well, I started using page2cat to situate the class blogs on their own pages. Then I used the Redirection plug in to redirect links on the current parents' (category) bar to the blog pages.

But the whole thing is really becoming too convoluted for me to keep track off, and I feel sure WP has a simpler more elegant solution that I just can't quite figure out.

I've thought of getting rid of cat2page and redirection and using sticky posts for static content on parents' blogs. I've thought of setting up the blogs on subdomains. I've thought of switching to WPMU -- although that seems like overkill, because the school administration doesn't want teachers to have the ability to change themes or colors or add widgets etc.

If you've made it this far, bless you. And if you have any solutions or thoughts about what I could pursue in search of a solution, I'll be much obliged to you.

Thanks,
Lila

Do I understand correctly that the 15 blogs each have only a single author? In other words, Blog #1 contains only posts from teacher #1, blog #2 is only for teacher #2 and so forth...

If that's the case, then it should be pretty simple. Wordpress supports author pages. Author pages typically show all of the posts from a single author, though it can be set up differently. So www.example.com/author/Joe would show only Joe's blog entries.

If you really want all 15 author pages accessible through a menu bar, you'd have to get a bit creative, but it's possible. With 15 different choices, it might be better (and easier) to have a static page with links to each of the author pages.

-Brad

Thanks for the feedback.
Yes, one teacher per blog. I hadn't thought about author pages -- haven't used them much before. And you're so right about the navigation -- now that the number of blogs has grown to 15, I think I'd better abandon the idea of putting them all in a menu bar.

Thanks again,
Lila