Pretty much a complete noob when it comes to this topic, so forgive any ignorance.
I’m looking for a way in which my client can easily “archive” a WordPress conference site, by year, to subdomains.
In other words:
The site will be set up at http://www.domain.com for the client’s 2011 conference. In 2012, the client will use the same templates to set up their 2012 site, but before they do that, they’ll want to archive the 2011 site to 2011.domain.com.
As an example, check out the evoconference site. They have their 2010 site linked to from their current 2011 site, and clicking on it brings you to a 2010.evoconference.com.
Is there a way I can set this up via WordPress multisite? I know I can set up 2011.domain.com, but how can I make it easy for my client to transfer http://www.domain.com to 2011.domain.com, once they are ready to implement the 2012 site?
Since this is just a once a year thing, just install a new copy of WordPress each year with a different table prefix in the database settings. Change the site URL in the config of the old copy then move it to the folder for your subdomain. 5 minutes of work a year.