BuddyPress.org

I have been doing some theming and blog design and dev with wordpress for a little bit, I just recently got MU up and running on my local environment where I want to test something out. I have a few questions:::

1. I would like to create the homepage as a magazine layout, populating with a few posts from I suppose the ADMIN’s blog, or the main blog. Things like Feature, Recipes, etc…

what are the best ways to get this info and content from that main blog? Is there a plugin?

Also, I want to have a main nav that is NOT buddypress nav, but one created from CATERGORIES, I want the buddy press to fall under community links or a sub nav of the homepage. Is hard coding the way to get the MAIN nav with CATEGORIES as links?

Thanks in advance, I am very excited to mess around with this a bit

You’ll get a better answer from others, but look into the posts about using the BP Theme Framework. Specifically, using a parent theme based on a WP theme with templates for Buddypress functionality added to a child theme.

Take a look at h-mag.com. Although this is more customization than most will attempt, this is what I’m looking at doing and really seems like it can be accomplished by making heavy modifications of the template files and lots of CSS work. The developer of that site can be found in the showcase thread.

Good luck.

“Is hard coding the way to get the MAIN nav with CATEGORIES as links?”

No, it’s the exact same way as building a nav bar with pages in a WP theme. Except you use the categories list function.

Tip: start with buddymatic. Find one of the magazine-style Thematic skins and use that with it, changing the style.css so it uses buddymatic templates instead of thematic. I’d recommend Commune That will get you most of the way there, in maybe a half hour.