BuddyPress.org

You can use any WordPress theme for the home theme.

But, to have success integrating it with BP, you’ll need to copy the functions.php in /bphome/ to your new home theme’s functions.php file. Also, there are certain code elements in the header.php file of the /bphome/ theme that you’ll need to add to your own home theme.

You may then also want to design a custom member theme that takes the look and feel of your home theme.

Mcmc-

installed via simplescript at bluehost

This may be your issue. You really should not be installing complex software platforms like WPMU by using third-party installers. You should manually install WPMU paying careful, close attention to the readme.txt file that comes with it.

Also, search the forums for “BlueHost” to see the issue other users have when using simplescripts. Here’s one to get you started.

the redirection plugin (checked that already), avatar plugin, wordpress.com stats, akismet, statpressCN, Sociable, Author Avatars List, google analytics

To isolate WPMU and BuddyPress issues, you need to deactivate all plugins. This means that BuddyPress should be the only plugin running period. If your site issues go away, then you activate one plugin at a time, testing with each reactivation, until you get the problem again.

not aware of any relevant errors

The question asks for a listing of any errors in your server’s log files, it does not ask for you to decide whether or not they are relevant.

When providing a listing of errors, you do not need to copy into the thread the entire contents of each error file. A single error can be repeated many times. We just need a single instance of each, unique error. More times than not that is sufficient. If we need more info, we may ask to see the entire contents.

For those that want to use this solution with a theme like ‘default’ or ‘classic’, I think this is enough to get you going. For me, I find it a bit discontinuous to start from the buddypress theme home page and then bounce into the ‘classic’ theme of some individual user, and still think about it all as being the same site. I completely respect that that is a legitimate model & approach. It’s just not what I have in mind for my particular implementation.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite enough to just make the facebuddy theme default for all users. The ‘thing’ I want to ‘resolve’ is that for any user’s new blog, wordpress basically gives that user their own buddypress front page, that the user then needs to configure with their own widgets and stuff through the wordpress admin.

For my needs, I would like to make something that is more turnkey for new users, such that they only have to register & create the blog & start posting. I don’t want them to have to think about layout. I may offer them the option, but I want their blog home page to look polished off the bat. Furthermore, this ideal default setup would have a unified feel with the entire site so that as you went from user blog to user blog, a visitor feels like all the content look & feel is homogenous across all blogs in the wpressMU install.

Another way to put this idea is … when you go to the user’s specific blog page, there should more emphasis on the fact that it is a user of the main site discussing on some specific site topic, within the context of the site branding, etc …. rather than making the distinction that you are visiting someone else’s blog. Like a newspaper … only the by-line and the article content vary.

I have some ideas on ways I can approach this. If anyone else is interested in this, I’d be happy to share ideas and collaborate on knocking out a solution. Maybe someone has already solved this problem, but if they haven’t, I imagine it could be useful to a few other folks as well.

BuddyPress is just Awesome!

Trying to accomplish the same objective, I found this article: https://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic/1463

After following the setup directions, when I created a new user, created a blog, created a post, and then went to view the post, it appeared in the expected theme. As the user, I *did not* need to go to set the theme myself.

Towards the end of the thread, there is the following

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As of 2.7 this information:

….

===========================================

Lines 311 and 312 of wp-admin/includes/schema.php in the populate_options function.

add_option(‘template’, ‘yourthemename’);

add_option(‘stylesheet’, ‘yourthemename’);

===========================================

This is a basic WordPress question and not a BuddyPress question.

Pages cannot have categories or tags. If you want or need these, then you’ll have to use WP posts instead.

Here’s a link to a WP codex article on pages that will help answer some of your questions.

Now, you could use BuddyPress groups along with Burt Adsit’s BP Content plugin to accomplish your goal.

In order to have the buddybar appear, you need to do what is called “deep integration” between the platforms. It means including WordPress and BuddyPress, inside your bbPress process.

See this post.

At that point, the wp_footer() will load the BuddyBar, but you will need to pull off some styling tweaks to make it all play nicely together.

I haven’t looked at this directly, but I suspect this is due to the nature of the AJAX that is making the new post versus it being created in the WordPress admin area. This means that either BuddyPress needs a plugin to hook into whatever P2 is doing, or vice versa.

We do not have anymore details than you have read. Perhaps Andy will shed some light after he has recuperated from WordCamp SF.

In addition to that news, there was mention that WP.com will offer BuddyPress as well. So, as far as what this means for BuddyPress, your guess is as good as mine. Will BuddyPress be included as a simple “switch” to turn on? How about bbPress?

When will all this happen? The writer of that post speculates around WPv2.9. Who knows. Since this is such a major shift, to me it seems more like a version 3.0 event. But, this is also pure speculation.

I’m also on BlueHost and installing manually is as easy as installing with simplescripts. That said, I needed to install and reinstall fifty-million (ok, maybe eight) times to get things working right with forum integration, etc. What worked was breaking it down slowly slowly slowly. First WPMU, then buddypress and finally using these instructions for integrating bbpress:

http://theeasybutton.com/blog/2009/04/30/integrating-buddypress-10-wpmu-and-bbpress/

The reason I had to reinstall so many times is I had trouble with the domains/subdirectories and finally had to change it out manually:

http://welcome.totheinter.net/2009/05/06/changing-wordpress-mu-from-subdomains-to-subdirectories/

It’s still buggy — I had some problems when I had to change out domains to get my site showing up in the right place — but I have hope it’s at least mostly working.

http://www.openadoptionsupport.com

Would it be possible to extend this plugin to work for the members and groups sections in BP?