Single-blog vs multi-blog

Owned by James Roper
Last updated: Jul 09, 2009Version comment
2 min read

Pebble has the ability to host one or many blogs from a single web application deployment. This page details the key differences between running Pebble either way.

Single-blog (multiBlog=false)

By default, a single Pebble web application instance hosts a single blog, which is specified by setting the multiBlog property in the /WEB-INF/applicationContext-pebble.xml file to false. In this mode, the home page of the Pebble web application represents the home page of the blog and all URLs are relative to this. For example, assuming Pebble is deployed at http://localhost:8080/blog/:

  • http://localhost:8080/blog/ : the home page of the blog
  • http://localhost:8080/blog/rss.xml : the main RSS feed for the blog
  • http://localhost:8080/blog/2006/01.html : the permalink to content for January 2006 for the blog

Multi-blog (multiBlog=true)

By changing the multiBlog property in the /WEB-INF/applicationContext-pebble.xml file to true, a single Pebble web application can host multiple blogs. In this case, the home page of the Pebble web application represents an aggregated view over the blogs managed by the Pebble instance, and each blog has a slightly different home page URL. Assuming Pebble is deployed at http://localhost:8080/blogs/ and manages 3 blogs (blog1, blog2 and blog3):

  • http://localhost:8080/blogs/ : shows an aggregated view, showing the N most recent blog entries across all blogs
  • http://localhost:8080/blogs/rss.xml : the aggregated RSS feed, containing the N most recent blog entries across all blogs
  • http://localhost:8080/blogs/blog1/ : the home page of blog1
  • http://localhost:8080/blogs/blog2/ : the home page of blog2
  • http://localhost:8080/blogs/blog3/ : the home page of blog3
  • http://localhost:8080/blogs/blog1/rss.xml : the main RSS feed for blog1
  • http://localhost:8080/blogs/blog1/2006/01.html : the permalink to content for January 2006 for blog1

Switching modes

The rationale for providing two different modes of operation is to keep the URLs as short as possible when only running a single blog. Behind the scenes, the data for all blogs (regardless of whether Pebble is hosting one or more than one blog) is stored in exactly the same way. For this reason, you can start with Pebble running in single-blog mode and switch to multi-blog in the future. If you do this, your blog URL will change as follows:

  • Before (single-blog mode) : http://localhost:8080/blog/
  • After (multi-blog mode) : http://localhost:8080/blog/default/

After switching to multi-blog mode, you can create additional blogs by logging into Pebble as a blog admin and use the administration features. This process is detailed in the online help, which can be accessed after logging in.