[muraii]

This is the case with many of the premium themes. Woo themes, for instance, use a custom framework to bootstrap everything. Fairly straightforward to edit the calls in functions.php, to point to the correct paths; but that’d have to be done each time the theme is updated. Not sure how frequently that happens in practice, though.

Detective’s way looks interesting, but it’s worth noting, perhaps, that it’s still a matter of hacking one thing or another–either the WP theme or the BP parent theme.

Nice work, though, Detective. I’m eager to see some really creative applications of BP, that break out of the default. With any luck, I’ll be able to do so myself.

[muraii]

This seems mostly or entirely an issue of my ignorance of how to use Subversion. Rather than update, I was checking out code each time I pulled the trunk. Various files had been left with references to bp-sn-framework, which thwarted my productivity. I have fixed this, and all is well. I’m fixing the ticket #1031 right now.

Oy.

[muraii]

Just thought it was worth noting, though, that I’d been running WPMu and BP without issue for quite a while. It was BP 1.0.3 at first, but then BP trunk. There didn’t seem to have been any issues that WPMu had been installed in a subdirectory during all that time.

[muraii]

Thanks, DJPaul (though there’s no href in your anchor). I’ll have to figure out a way to test in a root context, most probably on my machine.

[muraii]

* You’ve deleted all the content (visible and invisible) from your root folder

– Have not done this, but I did create a new subdirectory and installed WPMu in that location.

* Your using a blank DB that has a different name, username, and password from any that you’ve used before

– Check.

* You’ve cleared your browser’s cache

– I’ve done this with previous testing, but not with this new install. I’ll try that.

* You’ve downloaded a new copy of WPMU and installed it, creating brand new wp-config and .htaccess files

– Check.

* You’ve downloaded the newest BuddyPress trunk (if running bleeding edge). If using a tagged version of BP, then you’ve downloaded that version again to have a fresh, clean copy. You then manually install BP and then activate it.

– Check (revision 1903, as noted).

* You have no other themes installed in wp-contents (other than the default WPMU and BP themes)

– Check.

* You have no other plugins except BP (and possibly the default plugins that come with WPMU)

– Check.

—-

So, it seems that clearing my browser cache and clearing the root folder might be the only issues. I’m imagining that the latter assumes I’ve installed in root, which I haven’t; I have a single-user WP blog there that’s not going anywhere. I could install to my local machine (which I’m likely to do anyway), but that wouldn’t seem to invalidate this particular phenomenon.

As to browser cache, I’ve cleared that before without affecting results, and will do so now; but that would seem to suggest it’s not critical. I’ll leave a note after I’ve tested it, though (don’t want to while replying, for obvious reasons).

[muraii]

Hi,

Just installed brand new WPMu 2.8.4a, with a new database, and BP trunk 1903. There are no other plugins; I’ve done no editing of any code or any themes. I activated bp-default, which, even in this virgin setup, Themes claims has template files in themes/bp-sn-parent/messages, and this same phenomenon emerges.

Again, I’ve tried other child theming arrangements, and in any case that doesn’t involve bp-sn-parent (bp-default child of WP theme, WP theme child of another WP theme), there is no issue. As soon as bp-sn-parent is involved as a parent theme, WSoD.

I’m not sure what environment variables would make this an issue, but that seems a plausible area to research. Is there a particular way in which recent revisions of BP interact with {load, locate}_template() that might be causing the problem, but only on some servers?

For what it’s worth, I’m hosted with Fourbucks.net, a subsidiary of IDA Group.

Daniel

[muraii]

Hi there,

Using same trunk revision (1902) on a different install (not new, clean install, but different directory and db), and the same thing happens:

– bp-default is claimed to have its template files in bp-sn-parent/messages

– activating bp-default kills the renders the whole install inaccessible

– renaming bp-sn-parent returns access

As I tried some non-BP parenting the other day without problems, and even parented bp-default to another WP theme without issue, this seems to be bp-sn-parent. I will, however, start with a completely fresh install once I have the time.

Daniel

[muraii]

New trunk (1902) changes nothing. I’m going to test on another site. I’ll get completely fresh later this weekend probably.

[muraii]

Hi there,

I have made one WP theme a child of another WP theme, activated, and had no issue.

I have made bp-default a child of another WP theme, activated, and had no issue.

There is something about bp-sn-parent that confuses WPMu.

I want to keep the situation clean, and not confound troubleshooting by installing a new trunk revision. I have tried this a couple of times already, having noticed the problem while using 1881, then pulling 1882 without improvement, and similarly with 1885 (what I’m currently using). However, if you think that would help, I’m happy to.

Is there anything in the way SVN pulls everything down to my local machine that might cause the issue(s)? Since I’m not checking trunk out directly on the server, as I don’t have ssh access, I check out locally then FTP.

Anyway, I hope this proves useful beyond my particular situation.

Daniel

[muraii]

Ah, so maybe I haven’t b0rked anything myself, or, in fact, several people are breaking things consistently yet independently. I will tonight test the parent/child behavior of WPMu itself, by setting two WP themes into such a relationship to see if it, too, has issues. If not, it would appear that there is something in the WPMu <-> BP interaction.

I have filed this ticket:

https://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/1031

Just for clarification, I had been working with parent/child theming with BP trunk for some few weeks without any problems. I’ll keep from updating until we have sorted something out.

Cheers,

Daniel

[muraii]

Hi, Jeff,

Yup. /bp-themes/ has been toast for some time now.

[muraii]

I’d like to delve into this more deeply, but for now, even using the child themes there is an additional complication. It’s reasonable to expect someone to be integrating BP with an extant site using an advanced WP theme, and simply setting this theme to be a child of the bp-sn-framework doesn’t suffice. I’m working in one such setup, where a theme uses several include() statements in a functions.php file, and setting this as a child of the BP framework b0rks the whole deal. Now, I know what to do here, at least in the simplest case: just amend the functions.php calls. That won’t necessarily persist as the theme is updated, so maybe, instead, this can be done via a plugin.

The point here is that there are easily found examples where existing WordPress installations aren’t set up to so trivially extend to include BP. This one has a straightforward solution, but some will not. And as WP theme developers continue to do ever-more-amazing things with WordPress, and as you and other developers continue to make WordPress and BuddyPress more powerful, this sort of nonlinear theme infrastructure will likely become the norm. I don’t think these are quite edge cases, either; the theme I’m testing with is a free Woo theme, so not quite off the beaten path.

I don’t want to add to the confusion. Rather, I wonder if I could help flesh out some use cases, which might later get wrapped into the documentation (if it’s helpful). For instance, there is the site that purports only to offer social networking, without long-form blogging intentions. In that case, Using bp-default with customizations is pretty straightforward–well, as straightforward as the styling for the site needs to be.

However, for folks who have an existing WP site to which the BP functionality will be at most equal in priority, their branding and existing structure may be complicated enough that simply setting their existing theme to be a child of the BP framework doesn’t work by itself (styling issues aside–there will always need to be style adjustments; this is about structure and objects). Again, as my example demonstrates, this complexity is closer to the norm than some might expect, especially among the crowd using WPMu and extending it with BP. In this case, there’s more to document.

I don’t intend to suggest, as some have, that BP developers need to rethink or revise BP’s scope and structure. That’ll probably happen anyway, as things start merging more, but it’s not necessary. I only mean that the adaptation of BP to an extant site is a nontrivial use case, and while there is forthcoming documentation as to how best to manage this, maybe the forum users and devs can spec out some general use cases and work on how best to develop their solutions.