Re: Buddypress – overall site – home page
I am not 100% sure that the download offers the home theme – yet.
Go to the Site Admin menu, pick Themes and make sure the BP theme is the only one enabled. Then users can’t change themes.
Any plugin you put in the mu-plugins folder does NOT show up on the Plugins menu. That is for plugins that are in the plugins folder. So no, you won’t see any BP related plugins there to to turn them off and on, because in the mu-plugins folder, plugins are always ON.
If you really want to understand how WPMU works, to take full advantge of what it can do and get a feel for what you’re in for, check out http://wpmututorials.com , or sign up at wordpress.com to check out the user’s perspective & compare it to testbp.org.