We have no shortage of interesting and unique sites in our Behind the Site series. Today’s is no different. The site we will be hearing more about today is called Adaptistration, and it’s a blog run by Drew McManus all about the orchestra business.

And naturally it’s running on WordPress.

Drew will tell us a little bit more about the site and what plugins he is running just after the jump. If you see something interesting, or if you’d like to submit your own site for inclusion in a future installment of Behind the Site, leave a note in the comments.

I’ll hand the mic over to Drew for the rest of the post.

About Adaptistration

I recently updated to the WooThemes Canvas theme and made some moderate customizations, such as inserting the search field into the top navigation bar. The blog (about the orchestra business) is the parent site of a network of sites, each focusing on different specialty areas (all of which run on WordPress):

• A jobs board (free to post and apply, something my field didn’t offer).
• A premium subscription site which offers access to compensation report data and website reviews for the orchestra field.
• A weekly cartoon site featuring a comic strip about orchestra life.
• A resource site for an annual audience development effort.

I have customized a few areas of the site using plugins as well.

The contact page includes the ability to upload a file. This is especially useful for groups wanting to send press release oriented content, complete with the explanatory options you see in the image on the right. This is built using the Gravity Forms plugin.

The index is specialized and derived from tags using the Taxonomy List Shortcode plugin.

The site also has sortable data tables for the compensation report data (example). It’s using WP-Table Reloaded with an add-on plugin written by the author to incorporate percent signs and currency symbols into the sortable functionality. He’s a great guy for doing that!

Plugins on Adaptistration

The full plugin list includes:

• Akismet
• Audio Player
• Currency Values in Tables (extension for WP-Table Reloaded)
• Custom Widget Area for WordPress – I love this one as it has universal settings for existing WordPress templates like single posts, archives, etc.
• Google XML Sitemaps with Multisite Support
• Gravity Forms
• Lightbox Evolution
• Pie Register
• RSS News widget – This is a great plugin as I had some unusual sidebar RSS display requirements and this plugin made all of it point-and-click-here-stupid easy.
• SexyBookmarks by Shareaholic
• Styles with Shortcodes for WordPress
• SWS: CSS Tooltip add-on – Very handy as I use a lot of acronyms.
• Taxonomy List Shortcode
• TweetMeme Retweet Button
• W3 Total Cache
• WP-Optimize
• WP-Polls
• WP-reCAPTCHA
• WP-Table Reloaded

More about the site

I’ve been writing this blog since 2003 and went from being an author on a blog aggregate (artsjournal.com) to running the site and extended network myself in 2007. Over that time it moved across four different publishing platforms: Web Crimson, Movable Type, Typepad, and then WordPress. Cleaning up content has been an ongoing chore.

Although it isn’t plugin related, I do use all of the characters created by Ioannis Kounadeas (licensed of course!) to help brand the site in the featured image area.

Be featured on “Behind the Site”

Thanks for telling us about the site Drew!

If you have a WordPress site with an interesting story, an interesting mix of plugins, or a clever use of a theme to pull it off, let us know and it just might be the next site we take a peak behind.

In the meantime, what do you think of what Drew is doing at Adaptistration, and how it works? Did you see any plugins in his list that you are going to check out now?