Re: Widgets Intro
seanx820, I’m pretty experienced in PHP, WP, and am now diving into BP (since it works on non-WPMU installs). I’ve done a lot of theme mods, including making changes to the navigation links, both in standard WP themes and now in BP themes. My site http://xtremelysocial.com sounds similar to what you are trying to do in that your blog is your main focus, but you want to add social-networking type features on top of that.
One of the big challenges with BP is theme support. There are almost no BP themes out there and adding full BP support to an existing themes is very difficult. However, there are some resources for you to check out.
Your best bet if you want to keep your current theme is to use this plugin. Its very basic and won’t have the BP sections in your site looking sharp, but it will work.
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-template-pack/
Also, here are some more details on hacking themes for BP.
https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/building-a-buddypress-child-theme/
