I just started creating a new a child theme called “Frisco”.

The goal is to release it around the same time BuddyPress 1.3 comes out, if possible, so that BuddyPress users have a solid (and free) option for a theme that looks different than the default theme.

Aiming for clean and simple. Ideally, it will just be a stylesheet and functions file. And the theme should be as responsive as possible so that it works reasonably well on mobile devices. It would also be great to add support for the more popular plugins, too.

No demo site yet. But here are a few screenshots from my local setup.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/frisco/screenshot-1.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/frisco/screenshot-2.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/frisco/screenshot-3.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/frisco/screenshot-4.png

If you are interested in contributing or trying it out, please download it from GitHub and report issues. I’ve only put a few hours into it so there’s lots to do. I hope to update it a lot more in the coming days and weeks.

https://github.com/davidtcarson/frisco

Note: This theme is not even close to being ready to use on a live site. It has been tested locally only using the BuddyPress trunk (1.3-bleeding) as of today (July 17th, 2011). Download the theme only if you are going to install it on a development/local install of BuddyPress. Don’t expect anything to work normally after you activate this theme.

If you would like to get notified when the theme is further along or the demo site is available, please head over to the theme site and drop your email in the box.

http://friscotheme.com/

[@skippybosco Member 13 years, 5 months ago]

@David: This looks really great. Very clean + a mobile version? amazing.

Love to help out.

[@djpaul Keymaster 13 years, 5 months ago]

Very nice

[@bluelf Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

Thats its a great job, i will be glad to translate to spanish if needed.

[@sushkov Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

GG!

[@luccame Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

Well done!

[@mercime Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

“so that BuddyPress users have a solid (and free) option for a theme that looks different than the default theme. “

Cool! Will you be submitting this to the WP Theme Repository?

Cheers.

[@davidtcarson Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

Will you be submitting this to the WP Theme Repository?

That’s the plan. I remember reading about BuddyPress child themes having difficulty with theme review, so if anyone has any updates on that or if you’d like to help, please let me know.

[@mercime Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

” I remember reading about BuddyPress child themes having difficulty with theme review, so if anyone has any updates on that or if you’d like to help, please let me know.”

There’s a special queue for bp-default child themes in themes trac. These themes go through the same process as regular WP themes. For your reference:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
https://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Review
https://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Unit_Test
http://www.chipbennett.net/2011/04/20/a-guide-to-reviewing-themes-for-the-wordpress-theme-repository/
https://make.wordpress.org/themes/guidelines/theme-review-process-and-scope/
https://wordpress.org/extend/themes/upload/

[@davidtcarson Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

Thanks @mercime. I haven’t submitted a theme before but I have read through the codex/theme links before. Just haven’t seen any info specifically discussing BuddyPress child themes.

If BuddyPress isn’t active, my child theme doesn’t work.

Do you know if that is going to be an issue? I have looked through other child themes in the repository and they seemed to make it through.

[@mercime Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

A theme reviewer with test BP install will be checking out your theme, so no worries.

When you submit a theme to the WP Theme Repo, a trac ticket will be generated.
Your theme (bp child theme) will be queued and the next available reviewer with BP experience, will test your theme and post the review in that trac ticket. Review process can take from a few hours to max 7 days. You will be notified via email and you’ll see whether the theme is approved or whether it needs to be revised and resubmitted to the theme repo. If approved, it’ll take one week max before your theme is shown live in Extend > Themes.

[@davidtcarson Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

Thanks @mercime. Very good to know that.

[@bagerathan Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

Thanks @David. I am creating a child theme for BP 1.3 to learn. Your’s is going to help me a lot.

Bage.

[@intermike Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

I couldn’t get this theme to work with the latest trunk version of BP from a few days ago. I stuck the theme in the both /wp-content/themes/ and in /plugins/buddypress/themes/, and everything, but WP would never pick it up.

[@jackhowland Member 13 years, 4 months ago]

Looks very sharp. Have you ever heard of an in-page (as opposed to in the WP environment) text editor that works with BP? I want to save my members a step.

I’ll definitely try out Frisco.

[@intermike Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

Thanks @davidtcarson for the best BP theme to date! A few issues, though:

1. Need support for sidebar/widgets.

2. Main nav tabs on the Activity Stream page looks like they’re missing some CSS, they’re not centered properly for me (using Ubuntu 10.04/Chrome 13). Changing default.css on line 2710 to:
div.item-list-tabs ul li a, div.item-list-tabs ul li span {
display: block;
padding: 5px 10px 10px 10px; /* Changed from: padding: 5px 10px; */
text-decoration: none;
}

made it look better.

3. Too much white space: too much use of margins and padding, especially on activity updates. (BP Default has this problem, too.)

4. When pages/menus are hierarchical and you create a drop down menu, it’s hidden by the Activity Stream text box (or whatever happens to be underneath it.

5 Layout is too wide. Just a CSS thing, but make sure things fit into the layout properly when the width is changed. Very wide layouts aren’t in style, especially for “social networking-related” websites. It’s awkward and uncomfortable lol. Perhaps you might want to change it so that things look right when the layout’s width is changed to 960px or so.

6. The Buddy Bar doesn’t extend all the way to the left and right on large screens (at least it didn’t for my other computer with a larger square monitor.) The CSS in buddybar on line 1:
body#bp-default #wp-admin-bar .padder {
min-width: 960px;
max-width: 1250px;
}

had to be changed, I had to uncheck “max-width: 1250px;” for it to extend all the way on both sides.

7. When you have bbPress installed and sidebar widgets activated (which only appear on bbPress pages)

needs a fixed width or something on the bbPress topic edit page, because it extends underneath of the sidebar, and you can’t click on the Submit button. (I have to go into Inspect Elements and delete the sidebar in order to update a topic lol.) But all other bbPress pages seem to be fine, though.

8. BP pages, WP pages, and bbPress pages are inconsistent with their design. BP pages are wide and have no left and right side (ie. http://allmad.org/lol/), while bbPress and WP pages have spaces along the top and sides (i.e. http://allmad.org/lol/forums/forum/rants/) – which, I think, looks much better because it’s makes the header stand out more, and it’s easier to understand since the pages are then separated from the header, rather than BP pages where they’re not. Oh, and bbPress /forums/ page isn’t styled (i.e. http://allmad.org/lol/forums/)

[@davidtcarson Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

Thanks for trying it out InterMike. I think that a few of your issues are related to the theme not being updated in the last week. I’ve been away on vacation and, as I’m sure you know, the BP Trunk has been getting loads of updates every day. I’ll have a chance to look into the updates this weekend and look for an updated version of the theme on Monday.

[@intermike Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

No problem @davidtcarson, glad I could help! You were busy, and BP is definitely getting tons of updates, so I understand Looking forward to test driving the updated version on Monday!

[@davidtcarson Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

@InterMike. Are you using `define(‘BP_USE_WP_ADMIN_BAR’, true);` in your wp-config.php file as recommended? That should square away your admin bar width issue.

[@intermike Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

@davidtcarson No I wasn’t, but thanks, that took care of the Admin Bar problem.

[@intermike Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

One more thing: the Create Group pages’ menu tabs’ CSS is kind messed: http://i55.tinypic.com/4jorw1.png

[@pjnu Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

@davidtcarson How can I get the theme to work?
@intermike How did you get it to work?

The theme comes out all mixed up
header:
http://i52.tinypic.com/16hnviq.png

Please help me fix it. The theme’s screenshots look amazing, I hope I can get it to work.
Thanks.

[@intermike Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

Weird, it looks like some CSS isn’t being applied. Try downloading the theme again, and reactivating it.

[@pjnu Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

@intermike I downloaded and re-activated the theme but no luck.

[@davidtcarson Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

@PJ Are you using the latest BP trunk? https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk

And are you using the latest theme from here – https://github.com/davidtcarson/frisco?

[@intermike Participant 13 years, 4 months ago]

@davidtcarson Thanks for the update, it’s looking awesome – especially the sidebars! Might wanna style the nav drop downs, though (http://i56.tinypic.com/15q53y9.png)