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WordPress is no doubt one of the most popular blogging platform currently in use. If you're hosting your own WP blogs and own several of them, you can understand the amount of efforts and times it takes to install, maintain, updating WP core codes, updating plugins and themes, FTP downloading, uploading etc.

Since those required times and efforts translate into ‘lost’ money or opportunity most of the time, it is wise to use a system where you can simplify and save time and efforts while doing more ‘meaningful’ chores within WordPress. That is so unless you have a lot of time to kill.

One such tool is called "Virtual Multi Blog (VMB)".

This tool will help you:

• Keep just one copy of WordPress core codes - no matter how many sites of WP you have installed and running. So how about that? To me, that's cool!
• The same simplicity applies to plugins and themes too. This makes going multisite route irresistible to a lot of WP blog owners.

Warning

Backup all your files and databases before attempting any of the procedures described below as results are not guaranteed. Do all these at your own risk ok.

Here is a step-by-step tutorial to setup VMB:

1. Setup your WP domain to point to the WP install directory using “Add-on Domain” feature in cPanel. 
2. Download VMB scripts from here.
3. Extract the files and upload the whole ‘multiblog’ folder to your “/wp-contents/” directory on your WP server or host.
4. Move the wp-config.phpand wp-config-vmb.phpfiles from "multiblog" to the directory in which you installed WordPress. Make sure you backup the original wp-config.php just in case you need to revert to it. 
5. In wp-content/multiblog/config/, rename mb-users-sample.phpto mb-users.php. Open mb-users.phpin a text editor. Populate $vusers[]according to the instructions there. For this example we have:
6.  
7. $vusers[] = 'catblog.com';
   $vusers[] = 'dogblog.com';
   $vusers[] = 'mutts.dogblog.com';
   $vusers[] = 'catblog.com/celebrities/morris';
   $vusers[] = 'dogblog.com/fido';
8. Create a mb-config file for each domain or sub-domain that you want to include. Don’t forget to change the database’s name, user & password within each file. Please note the file naming method in use here. Say your domain is “example.com” then the config filename will be “mb-config-example_com.php”. Yes, omit the quotes.
9. Next time you want to add a new site, just add a new $vuser[] in mb-users.php and create a new mb-config file. That’s it! No matter how many sites you have that’s all you need to do every time.

Yeah I know, these are quite a task but it’s surely worth it. I can’t imagine running tens of WP sites without this system!

Full version tutorial can be seen here.

Some Possible Challenges

• Things may not work first time, at least it didn’t for me. It takes a while to do the “hack” correctly.
• Since themes are shared across multiple sites, any customization done on a theme will affect every sites using it. One way out is to create a copy of the theme and use it exclusively for a site of your choice.
• Installing sites in different folders may require you to fiddle with symlink.

Personally, I’ve been using it since WP2.7 without needing to change anything. In other words, it went through WP upgrades smoothly at least up until now.

Want to know more? Go visit the VMB site.