The link bait title should have been something like “5 Must See Themes for WordPress Multisite” but in any case, I’m wandering around the Internet looking for interesting/useful looking examples1 (educational and otherwise). I started by browsing this old Google spreadsheet of WordPress in education examples2 and then moved on to the WordPress showcase but focusing on BuddyPress and multisite flavors.
[snap url=”http://www.trcommons.org/” alt=”Tufts Roundtable Commons” w=”400″ h=”300″ link=”on”]
Clean layout with some links out to multimedia elements (Roundtable Radio). This is a nice additional example to show that while DS106 is undeniably great, there are other people in education pushing at the transmedia publishing.
[snap url=”http://www.msoe.edu/welcome” alt=”Milwaukee School of Engineering” w=”400″ h=”300″ link=”on”] Slick graphic design and lots of content without feeling too overwhelming. I think it’s a good balance of static/activity. The WordPress inclusion write ups are also interesting reading.
[snap url=”http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/blogs/directory.html?_r=0″ alt=”NY Times Blog Index” w=”400″ h=”300″ link=”on”]Interesting to see how they display 60 some odd blogs.
[snap url=”http://sites.psu.edu/” alt=”Sites at Penn State” w=”400″ h=”300″ link=”on”]
A different focus/look but one worth considering for example browsing. I’d consider randomizing the examples on refresh and possibly adding some method for drilling down to site based on some level of categorization.
[snap url=”http://www.heroyalmajesty.ca/” alt=”Her Royal Majesty” w=”400″ h=”300″ link=”on”]
A literary magazine with a varied layout. It feels a bit busy to me but they have put a lot of pieces together in a way that’s worth looking at.
An Aside
[snap url=”https://blog.mozilla.org/” alt=”Mozilla Blog” w=”400″ h=”300″ link=”on”]
Mozilla’s site runs on WordPress. I flipped to view source to see what theme they were using out of curiosity and with a quick Google search found they have it up on GitHub. Just a little piece of open Internet beauty.
1 I’m assuming most people who read this blog are already aware of UMW, CUNY Commons, and DS106.
2 It is interesting to see which have stayed and which have folder as the spreadsheet is being updated but is also several years old.