I’m working on a plugin that lets group administrators theme their group pages. Two of the methods involve there being custom css themes that the user can choose from.

1. Group themes: These are straight-up themes that work much like WP/BP themes work, and uses the same format for style.css, except that it’s just css and images, no templates. The css links load after everything else, so it inherits from the BP theme.

2. Customise colours: This loads a custom CSS file with 6 colours that are customisable by the user via a GUI colour picker. It also features presets, so you can pick “Huey Blues” from a dropdown and it would plonk those 6 colours in there, which you can then tweak.

I am building it such that it looks for these custom themes inside a sub-directory of the currently active theme, as well as in the plugin directory. So… my question: Are there any theme developers out there who like this idea enough to want to design their own themes with some custom options for groups thrown in to be used by my plugin?

The sample designs I am throwing in can’t possibly work with every theme ever designed, and it’s prolly best to have some designs that are specific to the main theme.

Oh, another thing – Shall I make a Public Profile version of this plugin too?

[@r-a-y Keymaster 14 years, 6 months ago]

I’m sure there are going to be theme designers that want the functionality you’re building.

One thing to note is have you checked your plugin with the BP Groupblog plugin?
Also what do you mean by “public profile version” of your plugin?

[@rustybroomhandle Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

On the site I am building that i pilfered this from initially, I do have Groupblog running, and it does indeed work there. I may have stripped out the necessary code to make this version work with it, but I’ll be sure to plonk it back in before I call it 1.0.

And by public profile, I meant a plugin for people to personalise their profile pages in the same way.

[@pcwriter Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@rustybroomhandle

Really cool idea! I’m sure eventual users of my site (not launched yet) would appreciate being able to personalize their group/profile pages, if only via a color selector. Looking forward to testing.

[@gregfielding Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

Another chime in to allow people to upload images as wallpaper. It won’t do much on a full-width page, but would be fantastic on a fixed-width site.

[@paulhastings0 Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

Yeah, I like this whole concept. Have you looked at the code for BP Group CSS?

https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-group-css/

[@rustybroomhandle Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@pcwriter The colour selector thingy is almost done. For your purposes you’ll be able to switch off the advanced css stuff and just have the colour selector and/or the wallpaper thingymaboo available to your users. It works by loading a css template with 6 custom colours. I’ll work on making it such that if you choose to customise the template and the preset colour schemes, it will be upgrade-proof. The way I am doing that is by having the plugin look for your (site admin) custom stuff in the currently active BP theme folder, which I assume for most sites will be a customised child theme anyway. If there’s aaaany issues with that, let me know.

@gregfielding Yep, see above… also almost done. It’s taking a bit longer because I don’t want to accidentally create a security crater in someone’s site and then be driven out by a mob with flaming torches and pitchforks.

@paulhastings0 That would be the very plugin of which I am speaking. And am considering a version for profiles. But one thing at a time.

[@pcwriter Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@rustybroomhandle …kool nickname BTW!

I also think looking first for child-theme/style.css (then _inc/css/default) would be the goof-proof way to go.

And please, oh pretty please, add the features for profiles too

[@pcwriter Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

Just installed BP group css to play around with it and… oops!

If “Link to an external CSS file” is not checked, sidebar disappears when on Group Custom CSS subnav page in any group.

Fun stuff, but I’ll wait for the next release before installing

[@rustybroomhandle Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

Ahh, yeap, a wayward closing div. Also fixed.

[@rustybroomhandle Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

I’ll be commmitting a stable release this week. There’s a bajillion changes and the hop from 0.8 to 0.9 will seem a bit small for the amount of new stuff. The version numbers are screwy though since this was never meant to be more than just the two CSS features, and has since exploded into something more substantial.

[@bpisimone Participant 14 years, 5 months ago]

What’s the latest development here @rustybroomhandle?

[@bpisimone Participant 14 years, 5 months ago]

& I’m with @gregfielding here, we absolutely need a custom background for group pages. Why don’t you use the perfect add_custom_background(); for wp 3.0, just translate it to work from the frontend?

[@andrea_r Participant 14 years, 5 months ago]

“Why don’t you use the perfect add_custom_background(); for wp 3.0, just translate it to work from the frontend?”

Because the function, when you add it to themes, is one line. then is uses core code to do the rest.

He’d have to rewrite it entirely anyway.

[@rustybroomhandle Participant 14 years, 4 months ago]

New version is up, but not with the custom background stuff just yet. I’m taking my time with that because if I do it wrong I could end up causing big security craters in people’s sites. There are a few other features I am also holding back for the moment.

[@anointed Participant 14 years, 4 months ago]

When I visit the page to edit the group css in any group I get the following js error:
(I am using a custom theme with a few plugins)

jQuery(“.colourpalette li”).tooltip is not a function
[Break on this error] fade: 50

[@rustybroomhandle Participant 14 years, 4 months ago]

@Anointed – I would like to have a look at your site, if you don’t mind. I’ll see if I can figure out what’s biting it.

[@anointed Participant 14 years, 4 months ago]

@rustybroomhandle/
site is:
http://jerrygaffney.net/groups/mens-ministries/
If you need access let me know where to send a temp pass for you. I have activations turned off, so there is no real way for you to test it out publicly.

[@rustybroomhandle Participant 14 years, 4 months ago]

@anointed – Got it, thanks, and it’s ok, don’t need access, I just want to look at which scripts and css load when the page loads.

[@rustybroomhandle Participant 14 years, 4 months ago]

@Anointed – ok, I have managed to replicate your error. Seems to be something that happens with Internet Explorer. I only have IE8 here, but will test it with some other versions also.

EDIT: Yeah, it’s the hover tooltip script I use. I’ll find a better one.