[Brad Edwards]

While tinkering, I’m fairly sure I’ve done something wrong…. these are my problems:

1) When a user creates a new blog, he can click the sub-domain address to visit it and goes to a blank page. He has to login to his dashboard first and select a theme. Then it works fine….

2) Unless the theme that the user chooses is the same as the main theme (my main theme, which is a BuddyDress theme), pages such as Activity and Community will not work. Only static pages like Home or About work. However, if he chooses the same theme as I have running for the entire network, all pages (like Activity) will work.

3) Early on, I had attempted to make it so that users could only choose my main theme (in other words, I attempted to remove the default buddypress theme). But, after I removed the default bp theme, I started having problems, so I added it back. It seems that after doing that, is when I began having these other problems.

Any ideas how to get things working right? This is what I’d like: (1) when a user creates a new blog, the default theme (my main theme that I have installed) will appear automatically; (2) I’d like to be able to install child themes that my users can choose from to use on his blog(s).

[Boone Gorges]

What you’re describing is the expected behavior of BP/WPMU. BP is designed to work on a single blog in a WP installation. Additional blogs are more or less totally independent (“more or less” because BP still tracks activity that happens on those blogs).

You might be able to do what you’re trying to do with a plugin like https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpmu-new-blog-defaults/, which lets site/super admins determine defaults on new blogs. You could set your home theme as the default.

If you want to offer child themes, you’ll have to build them. Make them children of your BuddyDress theme, make them available through Site Admin > Themes, and then your users will be able to select them.