BuddyPress.org

The bp-default and bp-parent-themes are theme frameworks for the BuddyPress plugin. They show what can be done with the BuddyPress plugin and I appreciate that a lot.

For a current project with WPMU as CMS plus BP for an organization, I went with creating a customized child theme using the bp-sn-parent throughout the site including all blogs for a consistent look and feel.

Aware of the time I could allocate for this project and my average skillset, creating a child theme was the path of least resistance during continuous trunk upgrades of WPMU and BP since I started this project late September for a tentative launch mid to late January. And I would say the time I invested in creating customized child themes was worth it, 10x over.

At this time, all I have to watch for in my child themes are code changes in the files from upgraded parent themes – header.php, footer.php, sidebar.php, home.php, functions.php, style.css, and some new page templates I created.

When the new bp-default theme came out for BP 1.2 trunk, I made a new child theme based on that for blog_id_1 (BP install) specifically because of the new forums layout My only question for the new bp-default parent theme is:

why is it that the only way I could find to avoid getting a white screen when I activate my bp-default’s child theme (with own home.php) is by consistently copying the code of bp-default/activity/index.php over bp-default/home.php ?