[HistoryHouse]

If someone could just guide me please (I’m returning to bbPress after a confused time with it pre-plugin days).

Plug-in installed OK and it was easy (thanks!). The forum is using my blog page layout which has a widget controlling the right sidebar (my own theme design adapted from blankslate).
http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/historynews/

The test page works fine (apart from it’s too wide – but I can solve that.)

Problem is I want it to have its own unique page template (not using the sidebar widget). Probably something like this template I created.
http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/historynews/history-of-ashen-my-ancestors

In my stumbling I thought a child theme may have been the answer so I looked the below page but the bbpress version number is not the same. Besides it didn’t seem to work for me.
http://codex.bbpress.org/legacy/step-by-step-guide-to-creating-a-custom-bbpress-theme/

So in a nut shell. How can I make it use the template in my second example?

Thanks in advance and be gentle with me 😉

[rsanchez1]

You are not using a unique page template yet?

What bbPress does is that it looks for certain template files in the theme’s directory. If it finds them, it uses them. If it doesn’t find them, then it uses default fallbacks. The template file for the forum front page is “forums.php”. You could add this file to your theme and have it not include a sidebar. When you install the bbPress plugin, it has twentyten-compatible template files that would be a good starting point to look at.

[Stephen Edgar]

@HistoryHouse The codex document you linked to is for the old ‘legacy standalone’ version of bbPress, not the new plugin version.

This is what you are looking for (I think) https://codex.bbpress.org/theme-compatibility/

[HistoryHouse]

Thank you to both of you. The suggestion of forums.php has worked and it is now clearer to me what is needed and what is going on. I’m afraid the documentation on Theme Compatibility was not clear enough for people like me who are bumbling around with WP. Perhaps more of an idiot’s guide and explanation is needed for those over-whelmed at first when trying to get to grips with it?

But despite this, this is much better as a plug-in than it was when bbpress was first started.

Thank you again.