There is no denying the popularity and in turn richness of WordPress.
It is the only Wiki/Blog software with professional looking themes and a strong community of exports who can customize WordPress.
Requirements
- Allows multiple sites
Research
Multiple Sites
Start of multiple blogs instructions states that,
If you want multiple blogs using WordPress, you must actually install each separately (that is, as a separate WordPress installation). You can do this whether you have the ability to create multiple databases or are limited to a single database.
Please note in WordPress 3.0 there is now a native ability to create multiple blogs, referred to as a network of sites. This is because the codebase for WordPressMU was merged into core. See Create A Network.
Now, which method is better?
Separate
Well looks pretty straightforward.
Multisite Network
From Before You Create A Network, it has the following features,
- Can do different domains, subdomains or paths
- This is confusing but the message is that WordPress refers to domains and sub-domains the same thing, sub-domains. "A sub-domain install creates a domain-based network, even though you might use separate domains, and not subdomains, for your sites."
- You can have separate databases or use the same with different table names
- There is only on instance of WordPress to maintain
Cons,
- Wordpress works differently
- Relatively newer concept and plugins often not written in mind
- Performance gain is negligible
Conclusion
Will go with separate self contained installs as the performance gain is negligible. Wordpress upgrades are straightforward so the maintenance gains are also negligible.
References
Determine if this actually increases security - http://www.suphp.org/Home.html. It seems to make the most sense for shared hosting.
This article indicates that suphp is slow as it makes php run as a cgi. Instead it recommends restrictions using mod_php - http://serverfault.com/questions/279938/should-i-use-suphp-or-mod-php-for-shared-hosting. Along this thread another poster recommends, http://mpm-itk.sesse.net/ which allows vhosts to be run under different uid and gid.
This restricts the php process to specific directories - http://help.godaddy.com/article/1616