Buddypress Support

[miguael]

Hi Sayontan,

I don't get tired praising your theme... It's exactly what I needed and piece by piece I am switching over my projects... Thanks alot for all your hard work!

Now I am coming up with a request that I am sure is kind of brave: What about buddypress-support? That would be just awesome and you would be one of the first to implement this! Here are my thought about it:

- BP 1.2 beta is out now and it support single WP (doesn't need WPMU anymore), the theming is much easier than before - so why not give it a shot (you can test it on a single install...)
- I am thinking of an option in suffusion like "activate buddypress-support" and then maybe some more options or just the basic-functions. When clicking that, it activates the templates from bp-default theme (suffusion would work like a child theme in this case...)
- Here you find some article about making a child theme for BP (it sounds quite easy : http://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guid ... ild-theme/
- ps: I already tried the VERY_Simple way, but it didn't work. I don't know your theme or coding and theming in general well enough to tell why that is acting like that... See this thread for more: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=583

-->If you will play around with it I am more than ready to play with you and test some stuff... If you need a enviroment for testing, you could have my test-WPMU-install (just ask me and I will mail you the needed stuff).

Thanks already for just reading all of this

Greez, Michael

[sayontan]

There is a very simple yet fundamental difficulty with making Suffusion a child theme of BP - it will change the whole architecture and paradigm of Suffusion. Moreover I will not be able to release it as a WordPress theme at WordPress.org any more because WP does not release child themes. So I can safely toss that option out.

While going through your messages I couldn't understand which aspect of BuddyPress you couldn't get to work. Understand that making Suffusion a child theme is out of question, so your real options are to try the different BuddyPress plugins - are there any that should work and don't?

[miguael]

I didn't really think about making it a real child-theme... As far as I get it, it should be possible to draw the main template and functions from the default-bp-theme and still be able to work as a normal wordpress theme. So it would be just a child-theme, when it comes to buddypress (in my imagination, when activating the bp-option in your theme ).

It's hard to tell "which aspect". BP is a plugin, but works more like a whole framework. So I can't test just "different bp-plugins"... Buddypress relies heavily on the theme with many bp-specific templates and stuff. Without those templates it doesn't work. If you want, download just for fun the latest version from http://www.buddypress.org and have a look at the bp-themes folder >bp-default.
Now I would have to hack your theme completely and I don't think that it would make sense, because that way I loose almost everything I love about it...
Therefore my thought was to pull the templates by putting a custom child-theme-like css, but it didn't work.

Anyway... it would be great! I think it could work, to release it as a normal theme with a bp-option, but i guess it would be alot of work! Thanks anyway for looking into it

[sayontan]

I didn't really think about making it a real child-theme... As far as I get it, it should be possible to draw the main template and functions from the default-bp-theme and still be able to work as a normal wordpress theme. So it would be just a child-theme, when it comes to buddypress

As far as I understand, it is not possible to "draw the main template" the way you suggest. That can only happen if your stylesheet is called style.css, and defining a template there makes Suffusion a child theme.

Unless I experiment with BP at an excruciating level of detail, the kind of support you are looking for will not be there. I currently don't have the bandwidth to handle this.

[miguael]

I am totally sure that you have much more expertise than I do. So I guess it is not possible.
Thanks for your time looking into it and please don't get me wrong: I wasn't looking for a support - it was more of a feature idea, that for now cannot be done. I understand fully!!!

[sayontan]

Miguael,
Over the weekend I did some more research on this topic. Before I proceed I must admit that I have zero experience using BP and I have no clue regarding how to build a theme for this or make Suffusion compatible with BP explicitly.

Nonetheless, a search on the WP themes site revealed that there are precisely 4 free themes out of 1120 that claim to support BP and only one of them (Buddymatic) seems to be worthy of a look. I am sure there are other themes at the BP site, but I wanted to get started with something that has its roots in basic WP. This information is good enough for me to work with, though time continues to be a factor. I really want to get a few more things done with the basic theme related to layouts before starting with the next big round of features, so I don't think BP will get its fair look-in before March. When you consider the fact that this theme is only a hobby and I work on it during my free time, I guess the timeline looks good.

On another note, I was finally able to install WP-MU on my test instance. I am happy to report that Suffusion works right out of the box with WP-MU, so that is one hassle less.

Cheers,
Sayontan.

[miguael]

Wow sayontan -

that's really good news! I knew that your theme works out of the box, because I already use it with great success

About Buddypress and themes... I was with this project more or less since the beginning. So I know something, even though I am not a programmer and concerning themes I am more of a copy-paste-changer... :_)
BUT if I can help assist you with something - just let me know. That way I can give something back to you for the great gain with your theme!

First: It's short before BP 1.2 comes out (right now RC2). Practically everything has changed since the 1.1x versions. The theme is totally different (and much better/simpler) now. Don't start thinking from the wrong version As far as I know: Buddymatic is not yet compatible with the new BP. Themeing has become much easier with the new version!

Check out http://testbp.org for the running trunk-version (to get an impression of the default-theme).

I did some css-changes and a little child theme for it on my test-install. You can check it out here (still in progress): http://wp.graphic-studio.ch/network

So, let me now, if I can help in one way or another!

[miguael]

Hi

I just found that (was released today) and maybe this will help you, if you pick up the task :
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-template-pack/
This should help you to make an existing theme BP-compatible.

By the way: 1.2 final is released - so no trunks and changes for now...

Thanks again for a great theme!!!

[miguael]

I just tried this plugin with your theme and it lookes already pretty good!!! Amazing. I think it could be pretty easy to implement this as an option in your theme and tweek a couple of css-issues left.

Maybe

[sayontan]

Thanks a lot for the info, Miguael! I will look into this in a couple of days.