In the very early releases of BuddyPress, most actions that involved entering information were done in the WordPress admin area. With blogging this works really well, you want to focus on writing and there is no need for you to be dazzled by jazzy graphics during that process. With social networking the story is a bit different. You don’t want to have to jump into the WordPress admin area to update your profile or check your messages, then head back to the themed front-facing site to continue browsing the network. All this does is break continuity, and provides a fairly scattered and clumsy user experience.
To alleviate this problem, BuddyPress themes contain template files and functions for displaying and updating information. By doing this, the user never has to jump between two different worlds and they can happily browse through a consistent interface regardless of their task.
By moving this functionality into the theme, we have something new to consider – new feature support and backwards compatibility. In WordPress new features are normally handled within the administration area. This means existing blog themes will usually always work with new WordPress versions, and only occasionally need some new template functions added.
New functionality in BuddyPress will almost always be enabled through theme upgrades. However, our policy will be that existing themes will not break and backwards compatibility will always be assured. As a theme designer it is up to you to decide which BuddyPress features you want to provide support for, and whether you want to support new features introduced in future BuddyPress versions.
With each major BuddyPress version, template functions will be added to provide access to new functionality. With each release we’ll also provide a “template cheat-sheet”, this will show theme designers how to use the new template functions and introduce new features in their themes.
As well as the cheat-sheet, designers can also take a look at the default BuddyPress themes (bundled with every installation) and the skeleton theme that provides a clean base to start from. These themes will always stay up to date with the latest feature set.
If you have any specific questions about theming, please ask them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.
Thanks Andy, this really helps. I use a custom theme which is based on the default BP theme (heavily modified) and I was worried there would a lot of work making it compatible with each new release of BP.
This way I don’t have to worry about it and just add the new functionality if I want to.
This is good to know as I too am relying heavily on a custom built theme tieing bp and non-bp site elements together. Just to clarify, this means that to “bp enable” a member theme or update to the latest bp build template functions will just require the addition/update of the relevent directories and files from the supplied sample member theme?
When can we expect to see the first of the cheat sheets mentioned above?
So the presumption here is that BuddyPress is like a “Facebook in a box” installation, eh? But I’m not complaining. More power to you.
😀
many thanx Andy. These words are importants, so we can concentrate about theming, without be scared from every new release.
Far-sighted, good.
Sounds good! Can’t wait to tweak the theme and write another Elgg v. BP post about it, haha =) Any chance you guesstimate the official launch of BP 1.0… summer/fall/winter? On another note, not sure if it’s only my computer but the layout of this page looks (and has been looking) a bit janky. I’m on Vista running IE8. Looks normal in other browsers though… go figure =P
Mike said:
“I’m on Vista running IE8. Looks normal in other browsers though…”
That’s right at this end too. But one difference.
With IE6, the site remains within a width of 800 px.
Firefox and Chrome however show a wider screen.
Is their any way to make the width 800 px with any browser.
[…] on the BuddPress blog, Andy Peatling has published a post explaining to us why BuddyPress themes are future proof. Andy explains that for folks into blogging, it makes sense to access a backend to configure […]
Good news,but awaiting the new member theme like this site,its the business,using one column style.
Sorry i’m unable to get the idea what does that mean. And can anyone tell me that from where i can install other BP themes.
Sounds good! Can’t wait to tweak the theme and write another Elgg v. BP post about it, haha =) Any chance you guesstimate the official launch of BP 1.0… summer/fall/winter? On another note, not sure if it’s only my computer but the layout of this page looks (and has been looking) a bit janky. I’m on Vista running IE8. Looks normal in other browsers though… go figure =P
very good news. In WordPress new features are normally handled within the administration area
Hey,
Where can I find a copy of the “template cheat-sheet” described in your post?
“With each release we’ll also provide a “template cheat-sheet”, this will show theme designers how to use the new template functions and introduce new features in their themes.”
Great article and inquire. Thanks for sharing.