BuddyPress

Wondering if anyone can clearly articulate how to take an existing WordPress theme and convert it to a BuddyPress enabled theme for 1.2?

Andy has provided a good overview of how to Build a BuddyPress child theme from the new parent, but what about if you want to take a theme like P2 or a premium magazine theme and have it BuddyPress enabled?

If I’m missing something let me know.

Cheers

It’s actually quite easy with BuddyPress 1.2, just requires cutting some stuff from the default BuddyPress child template functions, adding them to your own theme functions & some CSS edits.
I will be happy to post a howto once BuddyPress 1.2 comes out of beta if it helps.

http://www.bp-tricks.com/design/member-blog-themes-to-match-your-buddypress-theme/

This is pretty old, since 1.2 doesn’t have wire anymore, but it’s almost the same.

That’s the exact opposite of what he needs though.

Woops, wasn’t reading correctly. Well work the other way around then.

Add the files that your theme doesn’t have and start using bp functions.

thekmen and I have done this with Hybrid as the parent theme and our own child theme built on a Hybrid Child theme and Buddypress. Have a look at http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-and-buddypress for the functions that need to move over at least for Hybrid. It was actually quite easy. My post at http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-and-buddypress#post-2506 is as close to a step by step as I’ve seen. However, there are still more CSS tweaks needed after following those steps.

@odyssey ~ thanks for the nice writeup – one other step that I’ve found helpful in a merge is to call a custom – bp-header.php in the bp dependent files to reduce a bit of weight on the non bp pages, reduce any instances of javascript conflicts, increase the design and flexibility of the BuddyPress pages, and use bp specific functions(<?php bp_page_title() ?> in the alternate header.php ~ so I swapped out the get_header’s, sidebar’s, footers on the default theme with these ~<?php locate_template( array( ‘bp-header.php’ ), true ) ?> or <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/bp_header.php’); ?>

@ScotM – Although converting a WordPress theme to a BuddyPress child theme is a bit more challenging than converting an HTML template to a WordPress theme is, the basic concepts are the same – knowing at the very least, HTML and CSS plus basic PHP and JS, and adapting it to the required environment.

The level of difficulty and required skills for conversion of a WordPress theme to a BuddyPress theme depends on what aspects of that WordPress theme you want incorporated into your BuddyPress theme.
- If it’s the styling or layout, then level of difficulty and required skills = Medium.
- If it’s incorporating/combining functionality and design of a WordPress theme framework like what @designodyssey and @Windhamdavid are discussing above, then level of difficulty and required skills = High.
- If it’s incorporating/combining functionality of truly advanced layout designs and functions like what you would see in say, Headway theme or ithemes’ Builder Theme, then the level of difficulty and required skills = Superduper.

So to better address your question, my question is what WordPress theme were you thinking of porting over as a BuddyPress child theme?

@mercime I’d like to hear from someone who has enabled the P2 theme for BuddyPress, for starters, and I’m not looking for major customizations.

Simply ensuring that the features within BuddyPress stay intact when using P2 versus the default theme would do nicely.

Thx

Guess it depends on a couple things:

- what you want on the front page (activity stream vs posts)
- if there’s any javascript/ajax conflicts between bp & p2.

man I wish I had time to play.

@andrea_r i’m looking to have posts on the main page. definitely potential for conflicts with js/ajax.

So anyone have a general guide to converting an existing WP theme to work with BP 1.2?

Thx

I think you can do it the same way as upgrading theme from 1.0 to 1.1..

http://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/upgrading-a-buddypress-1-0-theme-for-buddypress-1-1/

@Scotm

The conversation has a little traction over here

http://buddypress.org/forums/topic/new-theme-framework-and-exisiting-wp-themes

you will want to read over this as well.

http://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/upgrading-a-buddypress-1-0-theme-for-buddypress-1-1/

@25knots

I’m aware of both threads but as you know they’re pretty old and do not address 1.2.

Am I the only one who finds it strange the idea of using existing WP themes with BP should be more of a priority (at least a detailed tutorial or blog post explaining How), versus creating child themes from the parent?

I see the benefits for the latter, obviously, but I can envision many WordPress users who wish to implement BuddyPress without switching away from their existing theme, etc. Is this not creating a significant barrier to entry?