WordPress MU

Can I use themes I got from themes.wordpress.net on wpmu? If not I'll have to hurt myself. I downloaded so many!

Most of the newer ones will work.

Should have kept my mouth shut. :)

I've finding lots of issues with Scott's themes. Haven't found one that worked yet. :(

Most standard themes should work. The ones to look out for that may cause problems, are ones that use custom code that may be specific to single-user Wordpress. Also look out for themes that require you to hard-code menu links or 'About' text into the theme files.

Thanks Guys...

There's a theme pack over at wpmudev.org that you can download. That would get you started although I'm sure by now at least one or two of them need to be updated. There's a thread in the Theme subcategory here that mentions a fix that needs to be done on a half dozen of them.

Best bet would be to set up a test blog and try them one at a time.

I'm going to start re-adding in theme on my MU site starting today. I plan to post about them as I go with links on where to get them. (tdjc.be seems to get a lot of hits from those looking for themes)

I will make the suggestion though that when you install a new theme, you have a plan of how to do them. For example, when I add a theme, I run down the following list:

- Check for Widget support. If it's missing, try to add it in. If I can't add widgets, I ditch the theme right then and there because it will cause whining down the road.

- Put my link into the footer. :)

- Install it on my test blog and poke around for a bit to see how it works.

I'm also planning on adding in Page Templates this time around as well for all of the themes involved. This seems to be mentioned on occasion over at the WP.com forums as a needed item.

Current list for that will be Links, Categories, Archives, Contact (maybe), and Most read Posts (10, 25, 50, 100) if I can get one of those plug ins to work.

If you have any themes you would like to see if I can get running, feel free to suggest them and I'll take a look. Please note that I don't really have the time to be rewriting entire themes though. (I have paying clients to worry about. ;)

drmike is right on. Also? Just as a general note, there is no guarantee anywehre that any theme you download even for a regualr WP install will work right out of the box.

They should, but often something somewhere needs to be changed. I've checked out literally hindreds myself (and made a few) and I'd say in all that I've had to tinker with at least half of them.

Also, for any theme you want in your MU setuo, unless you rusers don't have any options at all, you mainly have to edit the themes to add plugin functionality - widgets included, unless it is widget ready.

Go to wpdev.org and snag the theme pack. There's enough there to get you started.

If anyone paid attention to my little checklist, I've gone ahead and added in "Add comment ability to Pages" to that list. It comes up from time to time over at the Wp.com support forums and, since a user can just turn it off if they don't want comments to be made, I think it's a good idea.

Hi "drmike",
I think your offer to test themes is very generous. attempted to do that also - yes it's tidious but worth it.
I found a theme I believe is definitely worth takind a look at "giraffe2". It's got the options for color scheme and columns built in [choose 1,2 or 3]. The only thing tricky is the head logo to change.
I uploaded the theme as it comes, and so far everything works fine incl. widgets but have not experimented much further with it so far.
you can take a look at: http://marsart.org/blogs/ and see the theme.
the reason for choosing this one is the ability to auto choose which layout a user wants, which I believe makes it easier for novice wp users.
There are not many themes that have the sidebar on the left, most are on the right, which is actually not the smartest way to focus visitors for navigation. It is common knowledge that left side nav's are more browse than right side.
I operate a few websites since 1993, and experimented throughout the years with both and wound up since 1997 using 3 colums with much better results. Our stay-power for visitor sessions increased to an average of 20 minutes per session [not on marsart.org yet, site is not publicly used yet].
Yes, would appreciate your feedback for the giraffe2 theme.
thanx
michele

I've started with 2 themes by Stephen Reinhardt:
http://vaguedream.com/wordpress-themes
Both are generic and slick enough to be liked by most people and both fully support widgets without any modifying.
For the widgets I grabbed the MU compatible version here:
http://jason.lah.cc/2006/04/07/widgets-as-an-mu-plugin-on-wordpress-mu/

First I've seen about this widget issue. Worked for me out of the box. Only thing i had to do over the instructions was move the widget.php file up a level to the /mu-plugins subdirectory and not leave it in the /mu-plugins/widgets/ subdirectory.

Fair enough, I came across it searching for mu plugins, so I hadn't tried the 'normal' version yet.

Just tested it and, with moving the widgets.php up a directory, they work fine.

Not trying to give you a hard time or anything. Just wanted to state that in case someone else comes across this thread later on. :)

I know, that's why I mentioned the 2 links in the first place :)
Search is a bit crud when you get a million wordpress.org results instead of just MU ones (unless I'm missing something there as well).

- Log in

- Pick a forum category at the bottom of the page

- There's a search link near the bottom right above the new post form.

They put in a real search bar over at the Wp.com forums. I wish they would do here as well. *HINT* *HINT* :)

I'll second the hint.
And yeah, I did search like that, and got nothing but 'normal' Wordpress forum results, not from just the MU forums.