WordPress MU

So i have wp MU and buddy press and I am a little bit confused. Right now I hsve two users.. one is admin and one is a test contributor who also has their own blog.

So I log into the admin account and when I click the top area it says "My Blogs' and I see the main website blog, the "dashboard" blog and CREATE a blog..

So what is the dashboard blog?

Also, its strange..sometimes when I log into the admin using domain.com/wp-admin SOMETIMES I see the buddypress and siteadmin settings in the sidebar and sometimes I don't - what is that? How do i get to the MAIN SITE ADMIN so i can administer users and stuff??

please take a look here - feel free to create an account if you want to
http://connecticutaquaticplantenthusiasts.com

The dashboard blog is for users who do not have their own blog. They still need an admin area somewhere to do things like rest their password.

If you're not seeing the site admin, you may be logging in as the other user.

I wish i could say that was the problem, but its not!! I triple and quadruple checked!

there are two users "admin" and "linzard" look here at this screen shot
CLICK HERE TO SEE SCREENSHOT

As you can see it can tell that I am an administrator and it knows i am "admin" user.. So where in the WORLD did the site setting go?!

Here's a shot of the non admin user login
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SHOT

Holy crap this is SOOO bizarre. So i logged out as "linzard" and just clicked login again and didn't realize that i was in the sub domain linzard.CAPE.com (cape replaces that stupid long domain when typing in forums, not the ACTUAL domain)

ANYWAYS, when i login as ADMIN to the linzard.connecticutaquaticplantenthusiasts.com THEN i get the buddypress / mu site settings.> WHY?????

BLAH I GOT IT.. it was the FLUTTER plugin! I killed my admin because i never finished setting it up apparently.

Jesus that was entirely frustrating.

I'm still kinda missing some of the points here. I mean, I get that when someone signs up they can create their own blog or not create one and just be a member.. Is there a way to make all people who sign up through buddy press automatically contributors to the main blog??

Also, is there a way to make a duplicate version of my theme but instead of using widget areas I just hand code "widgets" into the blog so that they can not change them?

re: theme = put what you want in sidebar.php. remove the widget calls aroudn

presto, a non-widgetized sidebar they can't change.

basically, that's the way we did it before widgets. standard WP stuff. ;)

Is there a way to make all people who sign up through buddy press automatically contributors to the main blog??

Yes, and I know we went over it a few times here in the forums. :) kinda buzzing thru this morning, but it is in here.

ahh yea. MAkes sense. Pretty silly of me to not have thought of that!!!