Why should I keep my personal wordpress separate from my “professional” one?

Question

(this might be better suited as a community wiki, can one of the mods edit it please?)

Info : I have one main blog, where I discuss IT stuff like programming, android, Java etc which compensates my day job nicely (Java developer).

I want to start blogging about other, non related interests (such as karate, fitness, languages etc).

Question : Would it be best suited to setup a second installation of wordpress for these, or should I just keep one installation and separate using categories? What are the pros/cons of doing this?

Answer 1

It really depends on who your target audience is...

Keeping them together:

• Pros:
  • It's the real you.
  • You won't need to worry about what goes where.
  • There's always something (off topic) to blog about.
• Cons:
  • Narrow-minded readers are exasperated by diversity. Especially if some of the topics you blog about can be controversial. (And narrow-minded readers are many.)
  • It's harder to monetize, if that's the stuff you're into.

Splitting them on multiple sites:

• Pros:
  • Readers always get on-topic content.
  • The signal to noise ratio will probably seem higher to newcomers.
  • Fickle readers don't run away when they disagree on topics that may be controversial.
  • It's easier to monetize, if that's the stuff you're into.
• Cons:
  • It's not the real you.
  • You'll eventually grow tired of behaving like a schizophrenic.
  • There isn't always something on-topic to say, so the rate of posting may occasionally suffer.
  • Your readers' interest might fade faster: there's only so much you can read on a topic before you move on.

Tip: if you end up setting up multiple blogs, consider maintaining a twitter account or a brain dump blog, for stuff that fits nowhere.