[emersonthis]

AHA!

This explains a lot! I had not copied the bbpress theme files into my wordpress theme directory. So now it makes a lot of sense that it would default to the page.php template. (I was editing the bbpress template file while they were still inside the plugins directory.) I’ll try adding the bbpress template files into my current directory. Thanks so much!

[emersonthis]

If you’ve installed BBPress as a plugin (as I have), I think this is the more or less the intended behavior. There doesn’t seem to be any documentation yet, but I assume it’s supposed to act like other plugins, which should piggy-back on the current theme for their appearance. The problem I’m having is that I can’t figure out how to control this.

Small update: through trial and error I’ve determined that the “page.php” template is what’s getting used for the forum page (no matter what is assigned to the page containing the shortcode). It seems like this is somehow hardcoded into the plugin, which is too bad. It shouldn’t be hard for it to check the assigned template of the page containing the shortcode.

[emersonthis]

My wp-config.php file is untouched.

There’s one leftover line of code from when I was running the free-standing version of BBPress:

define( ‘COOKIEPATH’, ‘/my/root/directory’ );

But I don’t think this should effect the theme at all.

[emersonthis]

I’ve done some more experimenting and it appears that page.php is the template file determining the appearance of the forum page. Is there a way to change this?

[emersonthis]

Correction. It doesn’t appear to be using the page.php template file however it is definitely piggybacking off the current wordpress theme somehow, because specific dynamic sidebars appear which are only called within my theme. It’s very confusing.

Although this question is highly related to the issue you’re having, I started a specific thread here:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/which-wordpress-template-file-gets-used-by-bbpress-plugin

[emersonthis]

I’m also running BBPress as a plugin to a pre-existing WordPress installation. After a lot of trial and error, I deduced that the forum appears on a WP page using the page.php template of the host wordpress theme.

I’ve tried manually assigning a different template file by using the BBPress shortcode on a specific page (created in wordpress) and then choosing a different template, but that option appears to get ignored, which is somewhat frustrating. I’m going to start a new thread for this issue, unless someone can tell me what I’m doing wrong.