[peter-hamilton]

Have you looked into changing the .POT file?

[peter-hamilton]

I had no knowledge of PHP when I started a few months ago and made it by cutting and pasting, copying and changing plugin codes, lot of topicsand tutorials read and many sleepless nights.

Deffo a lot of work but I hope it is paying off.

I have a dummy account for people who want to see members only functions like a “like” system and lots of profile functions

username : demo
password : demo

Now working on @media queries so it is easier to use on mobiles

[peter-hamilton]

Could you add a link to the test site?

[peter-hamilton]

@JJJ is on it, and I am looking forward to the future with a lot more confidence.

[peter-hamilton]

Hi all

A lot of changes have happened since I was last here, nameserver changed and hosting the production site on my-latest.com.

Activity Wall
Added a “like” system that actually works 99% (working to make it 100%)

Profile pages
Now have the buttons/links to change avatar and background on the actual image containers.

testdrive can be done here:

BBFacelook

Now back to styling the forums.

Peter Hamilton

[peter-hamilton]

Been a while, spent quite a lot of time looking for a solution for the “name” issue.

Wordpress registration checks if a “username” is already used, this is great.

Buddypress is the problem cause they also add a “Name” field to registration, and this can be duplicate creating issues when multiple John Doe’s appear in my forums and activity.

Solution

I created a dirty solution by changing the label for (buddypress) Name to Username, and added a line of text urging new members to fill in the exact same name as the did in the “Username” field.

Although people can type whatever they want there, I hope most will just copy the first name.

This way the @name and username should be similar on all pages.

Then I also removed the option to change this name in the profile edit.php through CSS so no longer can people change their nicknames.
Unless a code savvy member goes to change the CSS in chrome, then the box will appear and they can change their names.

Wishlist

A solution/function where Buddypress or BBpress copies the username and adds that in the nickname field by default.

Anyway, here is a link to my current register page:

BBFacelook registration page

P.H.

[peter-hamilton]

create a custom menu and put individual links to forums

[peter-hamilton]

I have read a few of the previous posts and saw lots of interesting topics come by.

First I have to make a statement and a thank you.

Statement: BBPress is exactly what I need in a forum, yes I think it is forum software and forum software only.

Also it is a wordpress plugin, not a standalone CMS so I can not expect it to have all functions I wish for, but then there are plugins for most of them.

As a non-professional developer I had my share of problems after the first install, and coming from phpBB (only for 5 months there) I missed a lot of funtions mentioned in earlier posts that come standard in stand-alone forum CMS like IPBoard and VBulletin.

Those two (IPB VBull) have been my inspiration and I wanted a forum with similar functions, after trying phpBB for a few months, which I really enjoyed as a learning curve, I decided to give wordpress/bbpress/buddypress a try.

I have now been experimenting and learning the wordpress syntax for about 1 year, and have only one thing to say:

BBPress is the better forum software for me.

I can now make a perfect profile page.

I can have forums with the right hierarchy.

I can have all the extras that make other forum CMS cool thanks to some lightweight plugins, even attachments/images in posts can be made to look better then many other forums I visit.

Of course all is not perfect, I am not alone in hoping to see better image management, private albums, better TinyMCE editor, moderator functions/pages and the all important “like” function, but all in all BBP is just as functional as many high profile forums.

being a wordpress plugin makes BBPress modular, user friendly enough and highly functional not to forget absolutely FREE, besides a few hundered hours of brain pain.

Anyway, back to my theme (BBFacelook) development.
Peter Hamilton

[peter-hamilton]

No problems here, are you using the bbpress widget?

[peter-hamilton]

🙂

[peter-hamilton]

your logo is a bit small!

And a forum with only spam is not good, you need to address this before all potential members get scared away.

P.H.

[peter-hamilton]

I like the site, but you need to make the forum look more like it, color scheme changes instead of the default light blue.
Also the text needs to be a bit more readable, perhaps larger font-size or color.

But I like the site so should be easy to make forum super cool.

P.H.

btw. sorry for the late reply.

[peter-hamilton]

Not bad, but perhaps a bit blend for a halo fan site, your site needs a stronger header or colorscheme, baby blue is a bit mild but that is personal.

Also would remove the HD from the menu links, people are already on your site so a link to HD Forum should just be Forum.

For the rest alright when looking for a basic phpbb look.

P.H.

[peter-hamilton]

I think it looks great, not boring.

[peter-hamilton]

Looks great, nice clean and easy to navigate, well done.

P.H.
developing the BBFacelook theme

[peter-hamilton]

With some elbow grease BBPress can look and work better then many forums, it does require some creativity and time but can be done.

have a look at the BBPress forum I am styling, I call the theme BBFacelook.

BBFacelook

[peter-hamilton]

perhaps

.bbp-breadcrumb p a {}

as well as

.bbp-breadcrumb-home {}

and

.bbp-breadcrumb-current {}

[peter-hamilton]

no problem, I have been trying to figure out both word and bbpress and am slowly getting to grips with it, but it is not easy mate I know.

Here is a link to the forum I am building for a client, I call the theme BBFacelook, if you would like to know how to add any of the features I have added just say so, but then you better make a new thread.

BBFacelook

Good luck with your forum.

Peter Hamilton

[peter-hamilton]

OK, the way I see it is like this.

There are two avatars cause the forum/topic list has two elements that use an avatar.

1. the avatar from the poster of the topic, this avatar is there with the topic title.
2. there is in the freshness an avatar displayed for the reply poster.

In between the topic title and topic freshness there is an element that handles reply, post and/or voice count.

This makes three elements inside this forum list, two with an avatar, hence two avatars.

The list itself is situated in an UL (unordered list in a bbpress php file called loop-single-reply.php).

This ul has three LI (list) elements inside it, the first topic-title, second topic-count, and third topic-freshness.

btw, you have a cache plugin that prevents s to check your CSS in chrome etc.

This line of code will put the avatars where they need to be, you just add this to your themes CSS file, and remove the display:none from your .avatar CSS.

#bbpress-forums li.bbp-body ul.topic {
border-top: 1px solid #eee;
overflow: hidden;
padding: 8px;
float: left;
width: 100%;
}

Here is how it looked for me after adding this.

good luck
Peter Hamilton

[peter-hamilton]

You have not created the css to align the elements inside the UL

Try to add a float:left on .bbp-topic-counts

Check Chrome and use the inspect element with right mouse, there you can play a bit with css.

Good luck
P.H.

[peter-hamilton]

Could you provide a link of the site it has to be compatible with?

Depends on that if I can do it.

I am currently developing a bb/buddypress forum for someone, here is a link

P.Hamilton

[peter-hamilton]

Site was offline due to problems at host servers, back online now and made few CSS adjustements.

BBFacelook

[peter-hamilton]

#content ul ul

needs padding:0

and list-style:none

Thats it mate

[peter-hamilton]

Thanks for checking it out, is there a way you could upload an image of how it shows, and what screen resolution do you use cause my @media css is not complete.

Yep I am redoing all CSS from scratch and added the essential plugins hardcoded to make them less bulky on code.

Again I really appreciate all input to make this a reasonable theme for all to use.

Peter Hamilton

[peter-hamilton]

Been busy making lots of updates on css, could use a few feedbacks to see if it is extremely slow or not friendly UI.

I made an useraccount to test if you like:

username: demo
password: deom

BBFacelook | Cultivators Forums

thanks in advance.
Peter Hamilton