Opinions whether to go multisite VS 3 separate WP installation [closed]

I’ve been reading a lot of questions here regarding multiple blogs/sites in one WordPress installation and I’ve added some of them to my favorites. But I still have the urge/nerve to post this question as I’m excited to have my first attempt in blogging.

I will ask for your opinions and experiences on how to best solve my dilemma.

My goal is to launch 3 blogs based on my varied interests. I’ve already bought domains and web hosting. Now the questions going through my head are:

1. It might be better to have one account to manage the 3 blogs I’m planning. Is that the multisite feature of WordPress? Those 3 blogs will be on 3 different domains as they are different (niche) in category. They’ll also be having their own themes.
2. In this multisite feature, will they point to one database only? If that’s the case, it would be better to have separate databases for those blogs to avoid bloating the database. I think this database thing is my main issue. What do you guys think?
3. I’ve really no need for unified user registration as of the moment, contrary to what other users reason out for setting up multisite in WP. These are just blogs not forums, besides users/visitors can use OpenID or their WP accounts to comment right?
4. Finally, am I better having 3 separate WP installations on my host? What pros and cons can you guys give from choosing multisite versus 3 separate WP installations?

The perfect example might be the account one could have on WordPress.com. You only have one account but you get to create many blogs that will be on their own domains later on. The benefit is that you control it on one account only.

Hope to hear your opinions and thank you.

You can use one installation to serve three or more single-site setups (just switch on $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] in your wp-config.php) or one multi-site installation. But running three updates for the same software on one host doesn’t make sense. Just a waste of time.

1. Unless you plan to install hundreds of different themes and plugins on each instance you can share the same plugin and theme directories on multi-site or different single-site-installations.

2. The database will not be a problem. And again you can reuse the same data base in multiple single-site installations too.

3. There are OpenID plugins to allow such a login. No relation to multi- or single-site.

4. There are no big differences. Some plugins work with less problems on single-site installations … and that’s why I recommend a multi-site: You will write your own plugins or themes sooner or later, and writing those for a more complex environment that you are actually using will make you a better developer.