WordPress MU

Hey folks!

I've got sort of a long-winded question and was looking for just some guidance and suggestions on what to look at and what I should be looking to do to set up what I'm looking to do.

I run a webcomic at http://www.noreasoncomics.com. I chose the MU platform so that as other projects come along, we could expand easily. In the last year we've added a podcast (http://www.noreasoncomics.com/thewatchtower/) and a few personal blogs.

Myself and my writer (I'm the artist, and so-called 'Admin') have been asked to come down to Covenant House in Toronto to run a workshop on comics, drawing and writing and such. What I'd like to do, or see if it's possible to do, is use the blog to set up an area where the kids that we're going to be working with can upload their drawings. and create a front facing gallery of the artists - so that as we build contacts within the Comics community, we can direct them to raw talents that surface and provide a place where they can build their own portfolios within a certain blog. These are troubled, at-risk youth that have a second chance through this private charity, and for those that have god-given talents in the arts, we'd like to provide an easy resource for them to use to help them get into fields related to what we do.

So here's the Laundry list of things I'd like one blog within the MU framework to be able to do:

Facing Pages

• Front facing gallery with thumbnails of the most recent works uploaded in place of 'posts'.
• Sidebar with feature of the most popular/most viewed/highest rated works
• Rating function for each work, with comments (so, not unlike a post
• Standardized Post - tags perhaps, categories
• Anything else you can think of that I should do - but the idea is to keep it light, simple and fast.

Back-End