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Looking for partner for collab BuddyPress theme (big project)

  • @marcella1981

    Participant

    10 years, 11 months ago

    I’ve tried numerous times to build a BuddyPress theme from scratch and always run into some troubles. It’s fun learning about BuddyPress but there is always something I leave out from the workflow which leads to problems with code bloat and unmanageable files.

    That said, I feel I have lots of good experience with BuddyPress (without the AJAX) that allows for a full featured BuddyPress theme to be built from scratch.

    However I’d like to build something really cool, something I can pick up and go for any BuddyPress needs… Even only WordPress… Sorta one theme to rule them all.

    I’ve gotten a little behind the times and responsive design isn’t where my skills are at, but would like to see a theme built that is written in such a way that should it be required it can be made responsive in the future.

    I typically start a project using the bare minimum from getskeleton.com to help with making a grid based layout, but really it’s obsolete after writing a few <section class=”twelve columns”><aside class=”four columns”>.

    That all said, I’m looking for someone who has a little time to work on this theme. Maybe 3 hours a day.

    It’s maybe something that when complete can be used for clients, or gaining new clients… It could be an open source project or even a premium theme. It could be used for personal endeavour such a hobby group or a club.

    I’m really excited about building a BuddyPress theme but not having anyone close who is like minded I feel contributes to the demise of any BuddyPress themes I start to build.

    With all of that out the way, if anyone reads this and would like to work together on a project like this I’d love to hear from you. Hopefully we’d have something super awesome to use for the future.

Viewing 16 replies - 1 through 16 (of 16 total)

  • @marcella1981

    Participant

    10 years, 11 months ago

    I’m going to continue writing here as it seems to fit right now. I’m going to outline how I’ve approached BuddyPress theme development at my last iteration. Hopefully someone can see where they could jump in to help contribute to the creation of a new theme.

    Concepts
    Concepts have always been tough, I usually miss out some important aspect of the design. Like if I was designing a concept for the activity streams, I’d leave of the threaded comments aspect of BuddyPress. However I’ve gotten good at outlining some of the features in the concept stage. Usually I take a BuddyPress install using the Twenty Twelve theme and copy all of the components into a Photoshop document and cross-reference design like that.

    The concepts would be an iterative process, with the wealth of templates in BuddyPress designing them all in Photoshop first is very desirable but not very practical. I would love to have the time to really design all components in Photoshop first before moving into code.

    Templates
    Taking any Photoshop concepts and making them into templates usually is a static process for me, I’ve done the activity stream page design in Photoshop, I then use a boiler plate I have to rough out the html and css of this page. Again and iterative process. If I had 1 Photoshop file to work with, let’s say BuddyPress registration, I’d do the template of that in raw HTML and CSS.

    BuddyPress
    Taking those templates previously coded has been a bit of a pain for me, I write markup differently to how the bp-default theme shipped, so it really is a case of building these files from scratch. Dropping in the loops, the BuddyPress function calls and actions at each template iteration. This leaves for problems, but I’ve got it down well now and know how BuddyPress works. So it’s like building a WordPress theme on steroids. I’ve even spent a while taking the bp-default theme and removing all the markup it shipped with. This makes building new BuddyPress themes a whole bunch easier to shape. Although I’m still not perfect at this.

    Iteration
    The above workflow procedures have served me well in getting off the ground with BuddyPress theme development but they haven’t taken me the whole way. I end up failing to use the CASCADE that CSS offers and ultimately reside to the fact I have to repeat my self lots with CSS.

    The repetition I don’t fear, but the labour involved really does effect the overall fun in development and really the theme that had so much potential when building the activity stream and registration pages becomes a hard slog to getting something that works. Photoshop concepts suffer in design and the code suffers from bloat (hence my whole piece about designing all the concepts first).

    That’s it, in a nutshell. 🙂

    @marcella1981

    Participant

    10 years, 11 months ago

    http://pixelcoder.co.uk/members/alistair is my latest endeavour with BuddyPress. It’s nowhere near complete and I’m at that stage where I’d like someone else to work with and help with the theme. To do code reviews, refinement and design.

    A collab build process would be ace.

    @marcella1981

    Participant

    10 years, 11 months ago

    *bump* Would really love to find a buddy for this to work together.

    @bilalvirgo10

    Participant

    10 years, 10 months ago

    Hi Marcella,

    I’m new to BuddyPress development and I would love to collaborate with you since this would be a *great* learning opportunity for me.

    Thanks.

    @buddyboss

    Participant

    10 years, 10 months ago

    If you’re looking to pay someone, I can help out (or one of my developers). I don’t have time to partner on a project like this, but could do a few paid hours here and there to do code review, refinement, etc.

    @mercime

    Participant

    10 years, 10 months ago

    Persistence paid off for Marcella 🙂 https://buddypress.org/support/topic/0-1-release-of-my-theme/

    @marcella1981

    Participant

    10 years, 10 months ago

    @bilalvirgo10 I’d love for you to join in, I’ll be uploading my theme shortly. You can take a copy and look at the code to help with learning.


    @mercime     thanks! I got there, it’s now on version 0.2 I tighter design, WordPress options and soon BuddyPress support. I despise BBPress theming though, it just aint that much fun.


    @buddyboss     Thanks man, i’m not looking at it as a paid gig.

    @buddyboss

    Participant

    10 years, 10 months ago

    Understandable. Excited to check out the first big release.

    @henrywright

    Moderator

    10 years, 10 months ago

    @marcella1981 visually, I’ve got to say version 2.0 is a huge improvement over 1.0. I think the design of 2.0 looks very stylish!

    @marcella1981

    Participant

    10 years, 10 months ago

    @buddyboss – Thanks, it’s nothing fancy. I keep getting annoyed with the messy code I write.

    @henrywright     – Yeah it’s a little bit tighter but could use some work yet.

    I keep getting frustrated with the code I’m writing. It seems verbose and hurts my head. ^^

    Can any of you guys envision who would use a theme like this? Feels like i’m building for no one but myself, and that’s not too wise.

    @henrywright

    Moderator

    10 years, 10 months ago

    @marcella1981 I think you should really have a target audience in mind instead of building something and wondering who will use it. I’d come up with a list of ‘audiences’ and then perhaps build a theme for each one.

    Take the Theme Directory as an example – in there you will have themes for photographers, themes for beauty therapists, themes for the big corporates and so on. Each theme author has a pre-determined target audience they are designing for. If you think of it that way, it might give your coding some direction – and maybe even ease the headache slightly (we all get them) 🙂

    @marcella1981

    Participant

    10 years, 10 months ago

    I think that’s what I’m getting at with this theme.

    It’s deliberately neutral, which is maybe counter-productive. I feel it could be a catch-all with a neutral design, the content of the demograph would speak for itself.

    I don’t think there’s enough time in the day to build a theme for multiple audiences.

    I’d like to get this theme to a stage where it’s robust enough to maybe start a community on a whim, but it’s not quite there yet.

    Ultimately I think I want to retire from theme building, and have this as a going away gift to myself. That all said, it’s not very satisfying.

    I get what you’re saying though and yes the headaches suckkk.

    Do you have any audiences in mind? Maybe we could tackle a personal project together @henrywright ?

    @henrywright

    Moderator

    10 years, 10 months ago

    @marcella1981 I’m probably the worst person you’d want to help out on a design project 🙂 – my eye for design isn’t great. I pretty much use a front-end framework for everything – check out Bootstrap and Semantic UI. There’s also Foundation which is V popular but I haven’t used that.

    @marcella1981

    Participant

    10 years, 10 months ago

    @henrywright Ah that’s cool. I thought about using a framework but figured it’s much more learning than I wanted to commit to.

    The Gumby framework is pretty nice.

    @henrywright

    Moderator

    10 years, 10 months ago

    Gumby isn’t one I’ve used personally, but agreed it does look good! I see it’s built with Sass – which is always good.

    @marcella1981

    Participant

    10 years, 10 months ago

    Yeah, I was thinking about learning SASS just to use the framework. Claymate looks cool. Also like the bower support it has.

Viewing 16 replies - 1 through 16 (of 16 total)
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