BuddyPress.org

If you’re new to BuddyPress then chances are you haven’t been down this road before, but I’d advise you to check out some of the stickies and FAQ’s here and spend some time getting educated on all the subtle nuances.

This question has been answered quite a few times, so I’ll give you a hint and if you still can’t figure it out, come back and we’ll see what we can do.

HINT: Check the functions.php included in wp-content/themes/bphome/ and compare it to the functions.php in the theme you're trying to use.

What is your install configuration like honewatson?

I had a related problem which I resolved temporarily by renaming the ‘bpmember’ directory in wp-content/bp-themes to ‘default’:

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=2835#post-17511

Well this is what I get in the list:

WordPress Classic (1.5)

WordPress mu Default (1.6)

WordPress mu Homepage (1.6)

Are you sure that you’re looking in the proper spot? The theme list you provided is what you see when you go to “Site admin > Themes”. These are the themes from which you can choose your home theme.

To choose your member theme, you need to go to the BuddyPress menu grouping all the way down at the bottom of the menu column. So, as Burt indicated, you would go to “BuddyPress > General Settings > Select theme to use for BuddyPress generated pages”.

You choose the member theme from the combo box. With a default BP install you should only see two theme choices: BuddyPress Default Member Theme (1.0.1)–this is the one you want–and, Skeleton BuddyPress Member Theme (1.2).

Are you saying that instead of those two themes showing up in the “BuddyPress > General Settings” menu area that you have the home themes you’ve listed above?

I moved bp-themes into /wp-content/ as directed but still got the error message.

Under the “Select theme to use for BuddyPress generated pages:” in general settings the option for using the ‘bpmember’ theme was not appearing. I could only select the default wordpress mu themes. I selected the ‘Default’ theme and then renamed the ‘bpmember’ folder to ‘default’ to get this working.

Eg:

..wp-content/bp-themes/bpmember/

Renamed it to this folder:

..wp-content/bp-themes/default/

It shows up on the list like that because that’s where bp is looking for it’s themes. In the /wp-content/themes dir. It shouldn’t be. It should be looking in /wp-content/bp-themes.

Do you have any kind if aliasing going on for the dirs?

I’m looking at the code that does the theme hijacking and can’t understand how it’s failing.

Permissions on the /bp-themes dir strange?

Go into the wp backend Buddypress > General Settings

Select theme to use for BuddyPress generated pages > Buddypress Default Member Theme 1.0.1

Make sure that is selected and Save the settings

The latest version (v1.2.1) of the Skeleton Component for BuddyPress plugin developers can now be found on the WordPress plugin repository

Just so we can say we tried this:

1. Please delete BuddyPress from the plugins folder. You can keep the bphome and bpmember themes in their proper places.
2. Then deactivate all other plugin
3. Log out of WPMU and clear your browser’s cache
4. Redownload BuddyPress
5. Remove the themes folder from the download as it is not needed–you already have the themes installed (we’ll assume for now that they are in good shape)
6. Upload BuddyPress to /wp-content/plugins/
7. Optional Step: Go outside and turn in a counterclockwise circle three time. Circumference of circle is not relevant.
8. Fire up WPMU, log in as site admin and go to the plugins menu
9. If it is visible, try activating it sitewide

Let me know what happens

Okay, several more questions?

Did you manually install BuddyPress or use WPMU’s plugin browser to install BP?

Did you restart the web server after making changes to the rewrite rules in the configuration file?

In your OP, you state that you have moved the bphome theme into /wp-content/themes/. Did you also move bpmember into /wp-content/bp-themes/?

Also, look near the bottom of this installing WPMU codex article for suggestions on Lighty rewrite rules: https://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WPMU

You need to learn more about CSS, specifically how to float and position elements. Here are a few resources to get you started:

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/

http://www.brainjar.com/css/positioning/

Also, I highly recommend that you use Firefox with the Firebug Add-on.

This is not a good way to do it, you should learn some CSS as tables are not the way to go for layout purposes.

Well, we really don’t have enough information about your environment to specifically offer assistance. Here are a few questions to get this started:

1. Which version of Lighty are you running?
2. Which version of WPMU are you running?
3. Did you install WPMU as a directory or subdomain install?
4. If a directory install, is it in root or in a subdirectory
5. Was WPMU functioning properly before installing BuddyPress?
6. What permalink structure do you have setup in WPMU?
7. Which version of BuddyPress (BP) are you running?
8. Please provide a list of any errors in your server’s log files.

Also, how much experience do you have with installing and configuring Lighty? I ask this because I’m guessing that your issue is more than likely a server configuration issue having to do with permalink rewriting.

Was WPMU functioning properly before you tried installing and activating BuddyPress? In other words, could you create posts? Did they show up on the default WPMU theme? Could you navigate to them when clicking on their link? Did you receive any errors? You should not attempt to install BuddyPress until your WPMU setup is functioning perfectly.

People successfully run WPMU on LightTPD and Nginx web serving platforms. These two platforms do not support, do not use, .htaccess files. They cannot use .htaccess files. But, they can be configured to properly rewrite permalinks. The .htaccess file is not essential, not required, for WPMU to run properly. What is required is a facility to rewrite permalinks.