BuddyPress.org

My approach is kind of weird.

First:

I needed a custom BP framework. So I started looking at the old Skeleton Theme. The first thing I noticed is that I didn’t want a fixed layout BP theme, so I removed all sidebars in each template file and wrapped the content inside a function.

This means that every template file of my BP theme was something like this:

<?php

/* my license ... GPL2 of course  */



function this_file_content() {

?>

just the content of the page, without sidebars

<?php

}



my_layout_generator( 'this_file_content' );

The magic is in my_layout_generator, which defines the html layout of each page. This includes sidebars and other stuff. The sidebars are fully widgetized, and I have custom widgets like “BP Options Bar” and “BP User Bar”, etc. Their content is also managed through actions.

my_layout_generator can mimic any WordPress theme, you just have to write the “skeleton layout” of your target theme.

Second:

This BP framework must be integrated with the WP theme. I setup the framework as child-theme and the original WP theme as parent theme.

Considering this, my_layout_generator has the following body (simplified from the original):

function my_layout_generator( $content_func = '' ) {

get_header();



?>

<div id="container">

<?php

if ( !empty( $content_func ) && is_callable( $content_func ) )

call_user_func( $content_func );

?>

</div>

<div id="sidebars">

<?php // your sidebars code ?>

</div>

<?php



get_footer();

}

This uses the original theme headers and footers. I just need to provide the correct markup in the content!

There are other things to care about, like page title. Probably the header of the original theme uses wp_title instead of the BP title. Luckily, wp_title can be filtered! This is actual code from my framework:

add_filter( 'wp_title', 'gs_wp_title' );

// we need to put the current page title on the wp_title filter, so thesis will catch it

function gs_wp_title($title, $sep = '', $seplocation = '') {

if ( bp_is_blog_page() )

return $title;



global $bp;



if ( !empty( $bp->displayed_user->fullname ) ) {

$title = strip_tags( $bp->displayed_user->fullname . ' — ' . ucwords( $bp->current_component ) . ' — ' . $bp->bp_options_nav[$bp->current_component][$bp->current_action]['name'] );

} else if ( $bp->is_single_item ) {

$title = ucwords( $bp->current_component ) . ' — ' . $bp->bp_options_title;

} else if ( $bp->is_directory ) {

if ( !$bp->current_component )

$title = sprintf( __( '%s Directory', 'buddypress' ), ucwords( BP_MEMBERS_SLUG ) );

else

$title = sprintf( __( '%s Directory', 'buddypress' ), ucwords( $bp->current_component ) );

}



return $title;

}

Now we have an integrated BP theme framework Mine is integrated with Thesis, I think other themes will be much easier to integrate because you can directly copy their layouts from their template files.