BuddyPress.org

The situation can be summed up like this:

The BuddyPress 1.0 theme structure made it easy for existing WordPress sites to use BuddyPress out of the box (but only with the default theme which was never ideal). However, it made life very difficult for anyone designing a site from scratch with BuddyPress, and for 3rd party theme designers.

BuddyPress 1.1 makes it harder (but still very possible) for existing WordPress sites and themes to use BuddyPress, but makes it very easy for sites starting fresh and for 3rd party theme designers.

The number of people starting sites fresh using BuddyPress significantly outweighs the number of people trying to use BuddyPress within an existing WordPress setup. It is only logical to make the lives of the majority easier.

There will be more documentation on using BuddyPress with existing WordPress installations and themes once 1.1 is released. Let’s get it out there first.

On a side note – I’d really love to see existing WordPress theme designers coming out with BuddyPress theme extensions for their WordPress themes. This for me is the ideal scenario, let the top theme designers provide support for BuddyPress, rather than the end users trying to force a square peg in a round hole.