Place to begin is in setting up a child theme and master stylesheet, described here in the docs somewhere:
https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/building-a-buddypress-child-theme/
If you are simply wanting to re-skin the default layout then you essentially set about overridding the default styles called into that child theme stylesheet. You will need to find the rulesets that govern the content area and sidebar and reset the widths stated for them to the values you want. As for the activity stream on the front page then you can do that by setting the reading options of the WP install to front page = ‘Activity Stream’ and creating a blank new page to hold the blog posts
Thank you for the reply but I’m not sure my original post was clear enough. I was hoping the image would show the complexity.
Yes, I agree that the theme would be a child-theme of the default (the header is just the default). I should have put that at the original post.
My basic understanding is that the theme would not require a simple adjustment of the widths because this is a mixture of activity, blog postings, and forum posts on the same page. Maybe I’m wrong.
Not sure it’s what I would term ‘complex’. In terms of sidebar items most can be probably found through available widgets, stock ones or plugin additions which may be placed in the sidebar.
I see the differences now. The image I linked has the activity stream to the right (the sidebar for the default). There is no sidebar plugin for the activity stream. Plus, I used the term complex to describe that there are spaces for a featured blog post, blog headlines, forum headlines and the activity stream on one page. I have not seen a design like this for BP.
Again, the idea is similar to http://buddypressthemes.org/theme-preview/BuddyPress+Corporate/ yet the right is not 2 sidebars but 1 with the activity stream in it …
Therefore, I’m thinking you might know something I don’t – and you are thinking that the activity stream is the frontpage and the sidebar is moved from right to left and widgets are added there…. I’m not sure what you really have in mind.
No there is no plugin per se for the activity stream, but I sometimes wonder why plugins are so often referred to. As such the activity stream is a loop much like the famed WP loop, in the simplest sense all one has to do is copy the code that calls that loop as is found in the activity/index.php and place it where you need it in your new page, conversely it ought o be straightforward to place that call in a widget I guess so that you could move it around without having to open files.
There are many routes to achieving what you want I suppose, create a new page include the default sidebar call re-structure the main content and sidebar elements to the size you want and position, sidebar on left should simply be achieved by reversing the default styles, which is the point of CSS well formed and semantically correct markup is supposed to be visually renderable through CSS without needing – necessarily – to effect changes to markup.
If you wanted to have controllable regions on that page then you can create widget aware areas and place them in the positions on the page you would like to output content, these then when suitably named will be available on the dashboard widgets page and you can drag widgets into them for display. You can also get clever with the main sidebar and create within that file new widget areas that you could wrap in conditional queries so that a particular widget area only appeared on a stated page such as ‘groups’ or ‘blogs’
As well I guess you could simply tell WP that your reading page is not the blog but the activity stream and then customize that page closer to what you require, which may be easier?
Very cool interface. Hope someone release the theme!
OK.
I’m making a little progress. (http://www.insanepolitics.com/). I have the activity stream now on the right side of the page and adjusted the widths of the blog postings area.
Next, I’ll have to figure out how to get a “featured post” and only show the headlines of the rest.
Thank you hnla for your help.
