BuddyPress.org

Which theme are you using?

Do the posts appear correctly with BP deactivated?

Hook into the “bp_adminbar_random_menu” action.

function my_random_article() {
echo 'YOUR LINK';
}
add_action( 'bp_adminbar_random_menu', 'my_random_article' );

Add to your theme’s functions.php.

First problem… try using an activity stream loop on your main blog:
https://codex.buddypress.org/developer-docs/custom-buddypress-loops/the-activity-stream-loop/

You’ll need to add the activity stream loop to your main blog theme.

Make sure BuddyPress is activated network-wide.

@footybible –

Ok, I don’t know the theme, but it looks like the designer has ‘gotten lazy’ and coded in a hard link to register.php rather than the register slug.

You’ll have to get in there and find which template file it’s using, and change the link code to the register slug. The code you’ll be inserting is something like: http://pastebin.com/4n20tpx9

Might be worth asking the theme designer to make the change.

@footybible – What’ve you changed your slug to? What does the link point to that is failing? Essentially, they need to be the same thing.

Which page is giving you the problem? Is it a standard WP login screen as opposed to a BuddyPress one? Which theme are you using?

Based on this, you can just go in and edit the appropriate template file to point the link to the right place. You won’t have to touch ‘actions’ – certainly not ‘register_post’ … which is something completely different.

@janismo – do you mean widgets aren’t working in your sidebar? Or, do you mean specific plugins for displaying the widgets in tabs aren’t working?

If it’s a simple problem adding any widget, then try with the default theme, disable other plugins, and see if the problem still exists. [note: in general, if you have a widget / plugin that is supposed to be compatible, but isn’t working – it’s a good idea to strip back to basics and try to identify whether it’s something in your theme, or perhaps a clash between two of your plugins]

If you want to create tabs manually, you are best to look at some of the Javascript libraries, e.g. jQuery, that have components already built for creating tabbed interfaces. You would then edit your sidebar.php template file to ensure your components are added, and that the markup is correct for the Javascript tabbing script.

If you want to have a look at the Suffusion theme and go to the theme’s site there is a BP extension for the theme. One of the options in the theme is to have tabs in one widget area. You might like to look at the code if you are using another theme, or just use his theme. It looks nice, but some BP plugins need a little reworking to display correctly. There are some good help in the forums though. Maybe this will help.

@hitler – they are coming – I guess partly as a result of end users tearing their hair out – group forums has some interesting technical / logical reasoning behind it, but the user interface experience was far from perfect.

Check out @johnjamesjacoby post on the imminent new approach: https://buddypress.org/2010/08/buddypress-and-bbpress-the-future/

Note: now the presentation / interface features should be back in the hands of the theme developer. You can clutter / un-clutter as much as you like, use groups / not use groups, standalone / not standalone, etc. – it should be much more flexible, allowing you to craft better and more exceptional websites.

Does it work if you switch to the bp-default theme?
If so, the fault is in your theme. Give that a try, then provide more info on the error message.. can you register and login ok on your machine?

Your site open fine for me but there is nothing there just a default theme do have a backup of your database to retrieve your data and settings.

@toymaker try to register when you change to default theme

@crashutah – That’s right. But chances are that most of your modifications will only take place in a handful of template files, so it’s still way better than having to migrate changes over to a wholesale copy of bp-default. To give you a frame of reference, even a fairly heavily themed version of BP 1.2.x like on http://commons.gc.cuny.edu inherits something like 60-70% of its template files from bp-default.

@porscheheritage – exactly!

If you are happy with the content being produced by the template files, then yes, just create you own style.css (and other css files) in your child theme, and modify to meet your needs.

I quite like the bp-default folder structure for images and css files, so you might want to copy that.

@crashutah – that all depends how much you’ve specialised your child theme away from the default. It also depends if there are new features you want to take advantage of – in which case dig around and see how they are being used in the default, and ‘steal / adapt’ as necessary.

Remember for the most part, a theme is about presentation rather than underlying function / features. That said, this can be blurred as you dig into the activity loops and directory template files.

We typically derive our child themes from the bp-default theme, but make very considerable changes – chopping out big chunks of the over heavy markup, and making somewhat dramatic changes to the layout. By deriving, we do however get to make use of some of default templates especially within the social loops, etc.

For some of our newest sites, where you would struggle to know BuddyPress was even there, we are building our own themes from scratch.

@porscheheritage: have you read this article on child theme development: https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/building-a-buddypress-child-theme/ ?

That’s the best starting point.

You don’t copy the BP-default theme – instead in your child theme, you create new templates where you want to override the default ones, and simply inherit the others. A directive you add to your child theme’s style.css file identifies which theme is it’s parent.

Boone,
On BP updates, any files you add to your child theme you’ll have to compare against the update and manually update them with the new features right? So, if I overwrite header.php in my child theme, then when BP updates, I’ll have to compare my header.php with the new release to see if I should copy over any new features right?

However, like you said if it’s all just done with css, then you don’t have to worry.

@rogercoathup no I didn’t change the slug or the default text. I’m not a developer and wasn’t 100% sure how to change the slug. I looked at the wp-config.php but it looks a lot different than Andy’s example on BP org I read. Would I change it under wp-config still? Andy’s posting is from 09. I will go ahead and change the default text. I’ll do anything to keep those bot ******* away. lol. So far Ive been good with the two plugins even though it looks like overkill to my visitors.
Side note. I’m having a problem with viewing status on my activity feed. When someone joins the site or posts a notification and I go to click on view next to the notification, the page it takes my to has issues with the theme. I assume it has to do with my themes template file?. here’s the snipit of code View Any thoughts on how to fix it? Thanks.