I am new to both WPMU and BuddyPress. I want to create a site where BuddyPress is in a Community tab, like helloecoliving.com, and the rest of the site is static and controlled only be admin. Can someone direct me to instructions/tutorials on how to create static pages, and house BuddyPress within a section rather than have it be the root?

I followed another forum thread and set the static homepage to one page (root) and blog posts to blog page. But I need to know how to modify the homepage/root with a custom template.

I am also unclear whether or not I need to use only buddypress-compliant themes across this site, when buddypress is only one part of it.

[@andrea_r Participant 14 years, 11 months ago]

“Can someone direct me to instructions/tutorials on how to create static pages, “

Go to the admin area of the main blog, find the Pages menu, click Add New.

You only need a BP theme on the blog using BP. (in your case, the Community blog)

[@symm2112 Participant 14 years, 11 months ago]

Hmm. So like the helloecoliving.com site, you can set up wpmu and load buddypress on a subblog like community? I thought that bp had to reside on the root install. I apologize if I sound like an idiot for not realizing that, but is that the case? This might be the answer to my problem where I can have a standard wordpress site/theme for the root, but a bp enabled theme for the community blog.

[@djpaul Keymaster 14 years, 11 months ago]

BuddyPress can run on a sublog. All you need is this in your wp-config.php:

define ( 'BP_ROOT_BLOG', 2 );

Will make BuddyPress run on blog ID 2, for example. For other handy commands, see https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/changing-internal-configuration-settings/

[@johnjamesjacoby Keymaster 14 years, 11 months ago]

@katemgilbert

Are you using WordPress MU or normal WordPress?

If you are using MU, follow what DJPaul recomments; create a new MU blog (assuming you’ve selected subdirectory installation); then change the root blog to whatever that blog_id is. That will tell BuddyPress which blog will be the root of all of its features like profiles, directories etc…

If you are using single WordPress, that’s a little different. You could make traditional WordPress page templates for each BuddyPress page that you need, and copy the BP code into your custom WP template. That would allow you to mish-mash the page locations freely.

[@rogercoathup Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

@katemgilbert – just noticed this. We built helloecoliving.com.

For that site, BuddyPress is installed on the main blog, not a sub-blog.

It just takes a little bit of work in your theme to create a separate tab / page for the community.

For an example on a later version of BuddyPress, take a look at the site we built for http://bitsythis.com – there a dedicated community page (with accompanying theme template) aggregates a lot of the community activity.

Cheers, Roger