[rossagrant]

Hi guys,

This is NOT spam, I just thought this site would be very useful to the BP community.

If anyone is interested in sharing some cool BP Tricks and tips then I’ve just noticed that Bowe’s site http://www.bp-tricks.com is nearly back online with an AMAZING new theme called BP Slick.

Check out his site and have a look at the screenshots. I have just pre-ordered ithe theme as he’s giving early 20% discounts but seriously it’s awesome.
I managed to get on his site before it was protected and the bp-slick theme is the nicest/ most funsctional I’ve seen.

Sliders for images/ customisable accordian sidebars, FULL S2Member integration and even integrated CDN functionality so it’s lightning fast.

Sorry for going on but it just blew me away.
Ross

[Hugo Ashmore]

Spam

[rossagrant]

No seriously it isn’t spam! Sorry if it sounded like that! I was just being a little enthusiastic perhaps. Check out the site, it’s 100% genuine and a great addition for the BP community in my opinion. Just trying to help.
Cheers!

[Hugo Ashmore]

:p

[Hugo Ashmore]

It’s a great addition to the community if it’s provided free, as a premium theme well…

No offense Bowe, Know you are a good egg

[Boone Gorges]

I have to agree that Bowe’s theme does look pretty, uh, slick. His video walkthrough is worth watching: vimeo.com/15053425 (Also not a paid endorsement )

[rossagrant]

@hnla I agree in the most part but the fact is, I run my BP sites for profit. Whether I’m developing them for myself or others. People cant expect everything for free. BP itself is the best thing I have used to make communities and it’s AMAZING it’s free. I like to donate where I can for themes and plugins where they are free but things can be a great addition to the community even at a small cost.

Bowe’s theme is very cheap (currently with 20% off) and will save me 10’s of hours in development time. Do I mind paying $24? NOPE!

(not a paid endorsement either!)

[Hugo Ashmore]

I agree wholeheartedly people can’t expect everything for free – sadly they do though – I was not really knocking the premium model at all in fact I have very strong views on when ‘Stuff’ should be free and when it ought to carry a value, I’ve been a jobbing coder for quite some time I have to try and earn a living and that means paid client work I have to be careful how I proportion my working hours.

Also BP is not really ‘Free’ it represents a lot of man hours and as such has an intrinsic value, the fact that we are not asked to contribute in monetary terms to it’s continued development is indeed amazing

[Bowe]

“Spam!!!”
*sees the topic is about his own theme*
“Absolutely NO problem with this!”

Thanks for creating this topic Ross, I’m really glad you like the theme I’m putting up for sale. And Boone thanks for promoting my already outdated video as well My intention with the new BP-Tricks site is not to only sell a premium theme, and offer some kind of subscription service (I’m not a big fan of subscription models for Themes).

BP-Tricks will hopefully become a resource for great BuddyPress tips and tricks. Selling the theme is just a great way for me to keep BP-Tricks running, earn some money and hopefully improve the quality of BuddyPress Child Themes.. The theme is GPL and cool stuff that I add to it will all be shared in the form of Tutorials on BP-Tricks. The actual design elements and the support are what people are paying for (similar as WooThemes does this for example).

Everyone can submit code/design/inspirational Tricks through a form or the backend, and by doing so you’ll earn Awards ( @DJPaul his Achievement Plugin FTW!) and badges awarded by me. The best new trick each month earns a nice price (currently a Free theme, but I’ll try to get some sponsors) and they get listed on the frontpage in Widget of Fame

Besides that the Activity Stream is purely meant to be a source of information displaying ONLY new Tricks, external Tricks (BP-Links from @MrMaz) and external member blogs from our members (if you blog about BuddyPress or anything related to it) you can add your RSS feed to your profile and people who follow you get your updates in their stream. This plugin will be released to the community when the site launches next week.

There’s also a customized search feature which only searches the BuddyPress network (BP.org, BP-Tricks, WPMU.org, Etivite.com, BuddyDev.com, ShabuShabu.eu etc) and a bunch of other stuff which I probably forgot to tell.

All the site features remain free, and also the site will be Ad free for as long as I earn enough to keep it running without loosing money on it.

I hope this makes my intentions clear, and that it will become a place where you can enjoy great BP Tricks from not only me, but from anyone, without getting the feeling that I’m out for someone’s money.. because that is certainly not my intention If you want to have access to the site before launch to look around and submit some Tricks for the community just let me know, and I’ll make sure you’ll have access and be a part of the cool kids

[Nahum]

@bowromir i’m trying to be a cool kid! I just registered. Nice theme. Nice idea for Achievements. This is interesting I think we’ll begin seeing some pretty awesome bp themes, yours being one of them. I think alot of folks, including myself, have been hunkered down designing BP in really nice ways.

[Hugo Ashmore]

Just in case it was actually taken seriously the after the spam comment I made was meant to be tongue in cheek

Good luck with the site Bowe and I concur with the “not a paid endorsement” brigade the site does look good

[Bowe]

@hnla sure you did.. sure.. whatever.. *looks mad at awesome macbook pro monitor*

Your intentions where absolutely clear to me, and I’m glad you also like it I would love to see some cool Tricks from you when the site launches, so I’ll probably stalk you until you do!

@nahummadrid: awesome! Thanks for the compliment and if you have something to show design wise, please do

[Nahum]

@bowromir not that I’m saying my designs are awesome or nice. I’ve just been hunkered down, is all…and seeing all the ways BP can be made to look like not-BP. (and working with Achievements too) – I’ll share on BP-tricks ! So that I might earn a badge!

[Bowe]

haha that’s the spirit awesome

[linusf]

I find myself constantly refreshing the site for it to go live. I guess I am a little bit tooo eager for my own good

The whole concept looks absolutely gorgeous, I cannot wait to read more about all the features availiable.

Keep up the good work!

[Bowe]

haha thanks @linusf that’s the biggest compliment I can get. I’m currently working very hard sorting all the little styling issues and setting up the support section+documentation. Then I need to create huge amount of Achievements for people to earn for submitting tricks, and then it’s ready for launch! I have quite a few small tricks, and hopefully others will be submitting their tricks soon.

Thanks for your interest and you can view some screenshots of the BP-Slick admin theme options here: http://bp-tricks.com/buddypress-slick-screenshots/.

[pcwriter]

@Bowe

Damn! After looking through the screenshots, I want one!
Just sent you my contact info through the pre-order form.
Very, very cool stuff. Thanks!

[skolbloggense]

I have preordered, and I would love to see it work with BuddyPress Courseware, they also have archivements I think…

[Bowe]

@pcwriter: Thanks Patrick! Glad the screenshots sold the deal for you, I hope to not disappoint you, there’s a bunch of other stuff which hasn’t even been showed yet!

@skolbloggense: I’ll install CoureWare on my local install and see how it looks and behaves.. If it’s coded with the default theme in mind, it should behave pretty well.. If it contains LOTS of custom css and templates, it might mean that I’ll look into on a later date.. Depending on the work involved that might mean a special version of the theme to be released with custom templates, and to keep the code clean for people who are not using CourseWare. I need to study the amount of work involved to see if it can be a free download, or that it comes with a small price (like the MultiSite and s2member version). It is a good suggestion, and since Courseware is an important plugin for a lot of education based communities, it is something that will be right on top of to-do-list

I’ll report back to let you know how it behaves! Thank you for your pre-order

[Bowe]

Sorry for the double post guys!

@skolbloggense: I’ve been looking into CourseWare and it seems to behave great under BP-Slick. There are a few css styling hickups and I will look into them on a later date, but it is certainly usable straight away without any major problems. I did add a new option to the theme options panel which allows you to make Theme fluid. This means it will expand on higher screen resolutions (like the standard theme does as well) and communities who use courseware should benefit from this, because it looks less crammed. A screenshot:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1628201/courseware.png

[pcwriter]

@Bowromir

So-o-o… any clue about, say, ummm, a release date?
(mouth waters as he speaks…)

[PJ]

I’m looking forward to this. I hope to have it installed on my site ASAP. Thank you for the suggestion and feedback of the interface.

[Bowe]

@pcwriter The theme is done! I’m now creating the different packages and setting up the payment system. It should be two days max!

@pjnu: thanks for your order!

[pcwriter]

@Bowromir

That will be a great start to a new week!

A few questions…
1 – I’ve got s2member set up on my install and have already coded a membership page to display info according to level and ccaps along with various other extras. I’m guessing I’ll have to take that page down when I install bp-slick, right?
2 – Do the s2member settings in bp-slick adapt to the current install, or should the current install be reset to default settings and let the theme take over?
3 – Should I wait for theme documentation before asking more?

[Bowe]

1: No you can keep the same membership page! Just fill in the ID of that page on the S2Member Theme Options page. By using a very simple plugin (included with your purchase) this page will then be added to a person’s profile. So basically it’s a nice wrapper to show the membership page inside someone’s profile. I did not want to mess with the brilliant S2Member plugin, and this is a nice solution.

2: See answer one.. Since S2Member can be used for so many different things I focused on adding:

– an extra template for the welcome page with some nice tabs (shown on the bp-tricks homepage right now)
– a sidebar for that page
– Profile integration
– Some nice shortcodes to create cool looking buttons
– A welcome page template to get people started

So the changes are mostly aimed at making your sales/welcome page look awesome, add a nice membership section to profiles and allow you to quickly set everything up. S2Member remains intact and is not “messed” with.

3: Nope! Although most question you might have should be answered in the docs

Hope this answers your questions!

[pcwriter]

@Bowromir

1 – Phew!
2 – Cool!
3 – Umm… no more for now