WordPress MU

Hi there,

I've just put up a new review website for me and my friends. I used WPMU because I needed to segregate our reviews according to genres(movies, tv, books, etc.) and there will be a lot of users posting. I need a HomePage for http://www.bluemumble.com, our website, that will link to all these sub-blogs. Here are my requirements:

1) A link to all the sub-blogs on the main domain
2) Whenever a new article is posted on one of the subblogs, it is immediately reflected on the homepage. This would take much of the content of the whole page.
3) a nice looking theme for the homepage, where we can also post some articles.

Thanks and I hope to hear from you guys.

BlueMumble.com

1. Look in the wp-includes/wpmu-functions.php, couple of ideas for ready-made functions which list all blogs. get_most_active_blogs, get_blog_list.
2. http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Most-recent-posts---updated. Or activate the "sitewide feed" plugin and then embed that feed on the page in an rss widget.(Fewer queries, cached output etc.).
3. Any Wordpress theme can become a WMPU theme. Find one you like. http://themes.wordpress.net/ and massage the template code to your liking http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags

hi dsader! your reply helped a lot. i decided to go for the RSS feeds for the meantime, by using some plug-in found on number 2. you can check out our new website at http://www.bluemumble.com Hope to hear from you guys! Thanks again.

The "structured blogging" plugin for single wordpress can be massaged to work with MU. Kick the tires on a single user install first. I've been nursing my SB install for a couple years through every WMPU so far.
http://structuredblogging.org/
Adds your affiliate ids from amazon to all links/pics.
Has a neat "lookup" script that grabs product details from amazon: release dates, cover art, author etc.
Uses xml to customize/standardize the look of review posts embeded in otherwise normal looking posts.
Adds rating stars to each review, and a custom style sheet for each category of review.
Adds a class for each type of review so pulling posts from database is easy-peazy via a sitewide search plugin.

Development appears dead or dying on the plugin, so the "massaging" may be very consuming of your time.