I am not sure I fully understand what you’re asking, but the BuddyPress theme is a great starting point. Users can still choose their own theme (provided you’ve installed and enabled them). On Testbp.org the user profiles use the BuddyPress theme while the blogs use the default WordPress theme.
The BuddyPress theme can also be deconstructed so you can integrate the features you want into a theme of your own to further customize your community’s look and functionality.
It’s just not working like that though. http://columbiahizzle.geekdc.com/
Is that just because he hasn’t logged into to create his home page?
Still not really clear on what’s not working correctly, though that blog you linked to has a different theme than the rest of the site. Is that what you were trying to do?
No, I was trying to figure out why the buddypress theme wasn’t working for his blog. I was confused about the whole homebase/profile/blog distinction. The problem is that some of the blogs were already created using their usernames.. so the homebases were all screwed up. Good to know.
Mental note: install BP on a clean install. (I know it’s been said before, but this is a good resaon why)
BuddyPress should work on existing installations, but the “buddypress” theme should not be used for regular blogs or enabled for people to use as their blog theme.
Basically the BuddyPress theme stays hidden, and is only used for home bases. Existing members can log in and follow the instructions on the “Create Home Base” tab that they will see once BuddyPress is installed.
As long as you have the “buddypress” theme in the /wp-content/themes/ directory, it should work ok.
The problem though, as I understand it, is that existing users already have a blog associated with their username… not their profile/home base. That’s kind of confusing, no?
Ah i see where you are coming from now.
It would be really confusing if their username was displayed or used anywhere in BuddyPress, but users are displayed using their full name. Once the tie to the username is removed from the messaging component, their username is basically irrelevant aside from logging in.
But you’re forgetting that most people use usernames across many sites as an online persona. To use myself as an example, I use nolageek everywhere. If I already had a blog as nolageek.dcgeek.com and now had to come up with a profile name… I’d want it be under nolageek – I dont have any other usenames/profiles/identities that I use on social networks. I’m just saying it’s confusing. (At least, for me!) 
That is kind of a pain isn’t it. I was a little lucky since most of my blogs on one of my installs were using domain mapping, so I just changed their blog names to something else if they were using their main username and then created the homebase for them with their username. That is why it is easier to start from scratch and import blogs if you don’t have many rather than transforming a huge install over. I am not sure what the solution is, but it would be nice to have the option to put the homebase into an extension URL like username.bloghost.com/profile/ rather than having to have its own blog, but still have the dashboard created for the blog at that extension. All and all it really is a slippery slope either way though…
Trent
The /profile/ wouldn’t be that difficult to do…
page template that’s part of the theme that looks up the owner & displays the profile +
hook the activation to create the page using the template.
There is only one theme going to be used on the site I’m working on so the loop code and profile code can coexist in the same template.
@ron_r. Do you mean you’re using the same theme to handle the main domain & the profile?
Yep. I check in the header to see if it’s a home base or blog and render accordingly.
@ron_r
Are you using
username.example.com/profile or
example.com/profile/username for the URL structure?
Anybody is working with the latter one?
Neither…
username.example.com gets the profile
blog.example.com gets the blog
Since the home base is an empty blog each url has to be one or the other. Bear in mind, I created my theme pretty much from scratch and am not using the BP theme.
My theme would work just as well on example.com/username/ & example.com/blog/
Will the home base database remain empty all the time and in future development? I plan to use the username.example.com as the default blog for each user, like the normal WPMU does, instead of using it as the home base. The social networking stuff will reside under the main domain. It will avoid confusing of having the blog & the user profile in the same level. I’ll examine budypress theme and look for some way to integrate it to the ‘home’ theme.
All I concern about now is, will it create conflict? I don’t really understand what those empty database are used for.
I have my site set to a regular home page, however I set my profile page under http://mysite.com/members
I do not want to use my homepage as the (buddypress homepage) member page, I want to use the member page, however, it is set as a buddypress profile page. I want that page to be the buddypress home page. However, there is not an option to change it under the profile admin somehow the design function is disabled. What are my solutions??? Thanks
Andy has tossed around a few ideas about having the solution you are looking at as an option. There is a thread in these forums that is pretty recent.
