The production WordPress servers are locked down, secure environments.
Web Development Services tests all themes and plugins for security problems, compatibility problems, user experience issues, and performance issues before deploying them to the live servers.
With over 58,000 plugins and 8,600 themes on WordPress.org alone, not all of them play nicely with each other or with the latest version of WordPress. Not all are designed for a multisite environment, and some can kill performance on high traffic servers. Some plugins are banned by our hosting provider, Pantheon.
WordPress, itself, and all plugins and themes are uploaded to a separate version-controlled repository, then deployed via scripts to the QA and production web servers. This allows us to quickly roll back to a previous version of the environment if we discover a problematic plugin or theme.
We tried to mimic many of WordPress.com's features, and we have added many other plugins based on feedback.
To simplify the interface for casual users, not all plugins are activated across the network. Site administrators can activate certain plugins just for their site. These include a Poll/Survey plugin, an FAQ plugin, and a LaTeX plugin.
We welcome suggestions for added functionality and new themes to add to our WordPress environment. Please use the Contact link above.