What makes a good theme for MU?

[Andrea_R]

Discuss what makes a good theme for a WPMU system.

Also - does there need to be more "home" themes out there? 

[drmike]

Having had my entire site lifted in the past a couple of times....

I just found the first professional looking theme and threw it up there.  Almost something.  Don't even remember the name.

Flipping through themes.wp.net (if it's online) may give you a couple to suggest.

[Luke]

I feel you Doc. I'm on my 4th incarnation of the Lounge.

As for what makes a good home theme...

It depends on what you want to target.

"Most" people seem to come to MU wanting to be WordPress.com out of the box, or expecting it to be.

That being the case, they're chasing tails as we all know, but I would think that something light on the load would be good.

Not necessarily a minimalistic approach, but something that was maybe just a little heavier than Kubrick.

I'd say that being able to be a fluid width, and make the most out of the screen real estate available is a must.

Nothing can turn a user off quicker than either having 780px worth of content in the middle of a 1900px wide window, or having 1440px worth of width for their 800px wide window.

"Most" peeps would probably want some features in it too, or be expecting them because of them being a "home" MU theme. You know the "features" I'm referring to.

Of course valid code is a given.

[Andrea_R]

Oh how I loathe kubrick...

[Luke]

I meant in terms of page weight, not design.

[ron_r]

Somewhere Andrea has a theme that we did which was all done except it had a minimal amount of styling  (on purpose). No colours, no header image. All you really had to do to use it was edit the stylesheet and add colours, borders, etc. It's fluid and we may have done a 2 & 3 column version of it. I don't think it's widgetized though (but easy to do).

[quentin]

what makes a good theme for a WPMU system.

The most popular themes for my users are giraffe, k2 and variations, citrus, fauna... So the clear good points are admin pages, configurable headers, background, colors, font, and width. I'm actually having all this implemented across all themes on my site. Can't wait for it to be done.

Also - does there need to be more "home" themes out there?

Don't think so. Home page needs custom design, not a theme, if you want to brand your site at least a bit.

[Luke]

Absolutely right on the home theme deal.

With that, goes hand in hand a ton of other things, but I don't think I'll get into that now. lol

[Andrea_R]

As you can imagine, i am not to keen to get my themes all back online and gussied up at the moment. At least not in my old "free wp themes" section.

[quentin]

hell, sorry for probably being the only one not "aware", but why (i mean why are we supposed to imagine it would be like this) ? I must have missed something important hapenning because I keep seeing people who sound quite bitter in the WP world this past 2 days.

[Luke]

Um, be like what?

[Andrea_R]

I guessed you missed that part where they gave drmike the official boot and then acted like turds on top of that.

For me, it was mostly the straw that broke the camel's back.

[Luke]

I didn't miss it, but is that where this is leading to in terms of whatever?

Oh hell, I think I'm lost now.

[quentin]

ha. Indeed I missed that. There seems to be an awful lot of people not bringing automattic in their hearts. Ever talked with DrDave (the creator of SK2) about them ?
Anyone else here has "arrangements" with them ? I was approached by (i think it was) Toni a while ago, but didn't lead to anything.

[drmike]

I guessed you missed that part where they gave drmike the official boot and then acted like turds on top of that.

Oh, it's still going on.  It's take Pot Shots at Drmike day over in the forums.

I've got to admit that with one post, I could have my own clients over there expressing their annoyance.  Too much of a setup though. 

The last straw over there for me was Mark banned someone who then was allowed back in when promised that they would be good.

And wasn't.

This after a half dozen threads where he wasn't.  So glad he was trusted.

[Luke]

Aww damn it, it's closed.

And I had such a lovely comment, too. lol

Nah, better keep the hate to the MU forums.

[drmike]

paradoxian.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/my-last-post-from-this-blog

Be sure to copy and paste that so they don't find the link.