BuddyPress.org

dl the zip untill it’s added to the respiratory – Buddypress UX

I just uploaded a theme I created focused on enhancing the user experience – 3 column layout: multiple sidebars allowing for relative content to context, zebra activity styling, an enhanced logged-in widget and more.. The theme serves to be a base to work from and learn from whilst offering an alternative to the buddypress default theme.

A special thanks to r-a-y, hnla, DJPaul, dwenaus, modemlooper and boonebgorges for helping me problem solve and furthering my skill set over the past two years. The theme is a ‘response’ to the post I read earlier today. Screw this..: people often forget that these people help us out of their ‘own time’, buddypress is community driven and we should, how ever we can, give back to the community. Sorry if I have left anyone out.

Let’s hope it gets approved. I hope to get feedback/criticism on how the theme could be improved. In the mean time you can read the below.

What’s been changed in the theme?

The theme has been customized for a better user experience, there are a lot of small changes and I will try to list them all.

-added multiple sidebars: home/index, activities, members, groups, forums, blog.
-added a smaller header and content padder for the following pages; so users can focus on the task at hand, also removed the sidebars: registration page, create groups page.
-added zebra styled activity streams for better readability*
note there is an issue with IE
-customized the logged-in widget with some added functionality, previously located in the buddypress default sidebar ( sidebar.php ). This was done to improve ‘user navigation’.
-customized the activity form ( what’s new *user* ).
-added a ‘change avatar’ link to a members profile, ( ../members/single/member-header.php ). This is only visable by the ‘profile owner’.

Themes intended purpose

This theme has been created to allow ‘new comers’ to Buddypress to have a bit more of a variety and a base to work from ( being a child theme of the buddypress default theme ) whilst maybe learning a thing or two – as the theme is well documented ( readme.txt ).
Along with the above, I have tried to create a theme where by the user experience is better enhanced, allowing for better usability and readability.

To do

-fix the issue with the zebra styled activity streams not showing in IE.
-fix a issue where by if the content area is ‘shorter’ than the sidebars ( being ‘taller’ from widgets ), the content boarder breaks.
-remove unnecessary ‘pages’ and clean up the css.