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Thanks. I hope you’re right. I’m designing a site that will integrate BP functionality throughout in widget areas and the BP pages. Once I get used to using hooks in WP through functions.php, it should be OK.
Also have to learn some advanced CSS to make it all sing.
@wordpressfan. My theme probably won’t be much use to anybody else, but I think the plugins I have to build will be helpful extensions of WP/BP. I actually started designodyssey.org to chronicle what I’m learning as I build the site I’m primarily working on.
Everybody is busy trying to live life and make a living. The folks at VOCE that made Tastykitchen indicated they would provide more information to the community.
Nick Gernert on July 31st, 2009 at 6:13 am
We’ll be doing some follow-up posts here with more details around how we’re accomplishing some of these things on this and other sites, so stay tuned.
Nothing yet that I could find, but hey business first.
What most sites could use is a “librarian.” Someone to take the common questions, forum posts and turn them into a functionality knowledge-base. I don’t expect that here soon, so my forum-searching skills will have to suffice.
I’m hardheaded and trial and error is how I learned everything so far anyway. What I am looking for is some road markers, not detailed directions. Once I get started, I’ll post what I’m planning and let the community shoot holes in it so I can learn. Heck, I’ve gotta get WPMU running on my home box first.
Justin Tadlock of Theme Hybrid fame did say that Tastykitchen could be accomplished using Hybrid as the WP-part of the parent theme. My plan is to do that and add the appropriate templates from the BP parent. I’ll build the child from there modifying the CSS and functions.php provided by BP and Hybrid. That ought to create a functioning site. Then I can work on the plugins needed for my project. Since I’m doing a single-blog, directory-structure install of WPMU, I’m hoping to get over that hurdle quickly. Hopefully, before I launch, the merge of WPMU and WP.org will be complete and I can complete that “upgrade” and test it before going live.
I appreciate the feedback and perspective. What’s weird is I built a modular php/mysql site circa 2002 basically overusing includes, very basic css and taking functionality from Hotscripts.com’s PHP repository. In fact, what I liked about php was the modularity of what I was doing (even if a bit sloppy). BP/Wordpress seems to promise the same, but frankly the number of sites that deviate from the structure of the standard theme is small (maybe it’s too new). It’s like the complexity of the theme structure has scared people off or the fact that the themes are both style and functionality makes it difficult to be modular.
I’m hard-headed and have no hurried timeline – I’m designing for myself. I’ll probably take this on and suffer the pain of BP’s infancy just like I did in 2002. That was my education. What would be helpful is a methodology for taking on something like this.
My threshhold question is whether to use a theme framework as a starting point or whether that’ll be too restrictive and I just need to bite the bullet and build my own theme. I’d be on the hook for updates (sucks), but it sounds like it may save some pain. My limited understanding of actions/filters is that I should be able to build almost anything from a good theme framework using functions.php and style.css, etc., but not sure if that’s true or whether it’s worth pain of learning that way of developing instead of just tearing apart templates.
I’m sure, by the time I’m done there’ll be dozens of modular BP themes/frameworks to choose from. That’s what happened after I slaved over the site in 2002. Who knew WP was there with plugins for most of the stuff I hardcoded myself.
Using google, beginning to answer my own question.
http://vocecommunications.com/blog/2009/07/expanding-wordpress-with-buddypress-the-tasty-kitchen/
Now I’m wondering if I’m biting off more than I can chew. Anyone else taking on something this aggressive?
The more I read these posts, the more I’m thinking that BP themes are trying to serve two purposes and some people want one.
If you want a BP site, then the BP theme framework could be “childed” and you’re good. If you want a heavly modified solution like TastyKitchen.com, it seems that you are stripping the functionality of the BP theme and integrating it into a Child or your WP theme. In fact, for a CMS implementation, you might not even want the functions in the same templates as they exist in the BP theme.
To accomplish this, it seems Detective and others are saying you need to create a parent whose skin/functionality is based on a WP theme and whose additionally functionality is based on BP. When childed, this parent can supply the framework for the child which will inherit functionality from the parent and look/feel from it’s own CSS and functions. WIth Theme Hybrid, functions.php would be used to determine what info actually showed up in child and the CSS would determine how it looked.
The downside to all of this seems to be that we now have a combined BP/WP parent which could be awkward to upgrade particularly if there is substantial template overlap. Unless I’m mistaken this will need to be a future release issue.
Then again, I’m a noob and don’t know the complexities of BP or Hybrid.
Very nice work. It’s the use of buddypress as a CMS that I’m interested in and this is a good example. Patiently waiting for your learnings, expecially integrating as a CMS with other aspects of WordPress. http://www.tastykitchen.com is my model, but I have no idea how to accomplish that.
This is awesome. Of course, I’m not a coder and don’t understand it yet, but it’s a beginning. I will try the same thing with Hybrid theme next month. Not sure about using the custom function, but if it’s easier and more flexibile, I guess I’ll learn.
Thanks for sharing this. I’m sure MANY are thinking about how to do this
It appears from Detective’s post above yours that the path you described is being successful. I intend to do the same with Hybrid Theme when I get started.
Thanks, that the first explanation of working with a WP theme framework that actually made sense to me (I think I’m slow). I’ll be trying with Hybrid when WPMU 2.9 arrives. Doing it this way, I should be able to get most things done with child’s style.css and functions.php
Feel free to show us an example.
I’m essentially thinking of doing the same with Theme Hybrid. I’m guessing you move over the BP-specific templates to the Thesis theme directory and build the children off of the Thesis parent directory. Is this right?
Then you figure out how to make the css and functions work with this setup in your child. Interesting thing about Hybrid, most everything is done through style.css and functions and child themes have few, if any templates (as least with the two I’ve looked at).
Let us know when you have a working model we can view
