Re: The News section
Thanks for the tip!
Yesterday I reinstalled for what I had hoped was to be the last time (at least for a little while) worpressmu and buddypress using the subdirectory rather than subdomain option for new blogs. My plan was to simply create a news blog, since that works (as noted by chriscarter) — it isn’t as elegant because you can’t use the buddypress home theme (unless you want whole new buddypress blog with its own useres, etc.). Nevertheless, it works.
I just checked with bluehost, and they told me that I cannot use the subdomain option on bluehost. Maybe that simply means I need to modify the database DNS wildcard, but for the moment I am sticking with subdirectories for blogs and a new news blog — and hoping I can find a way to fiddle with the appropriate php code in buddypress wpmu.
Please feel free to check out the site, just realize its very alpha and could be much beta ; ) — http://whiteblackthepenguin.net/