bbPress 2.0 – Theme Compatibility
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A few questions have cropped up already, so lets funnel the discussion here.
bbPress 2.0 introduces a radical new approach at integrating robust new functionality into existing WordPress themes. If you’re an average user looking for a turn-key forum solution, this works out pretty awesomely – If you’re a talented developer trying to beat your own drum, it’s all probably a little bit confusing.
Theme Compatibility
bbPress comes with a child theme of TwentyTen, titled (you guessed it) bbPress – TwentyTen. This theme includes all of the custom bits that bbPress needs to function, broken up into template parts to allow them to be used in several places, like template files, shortcodes, and widgets.
- MOST COMMON – If you’re using any other conventional WordPress theme (TwentyEleven, BP-Default) and find the default template layout of bbPress acceptable, you don’t need to do anything at all – it should just work.
- DO NOT put any custom themes in “/bbpress/bbp-themes/” as they will get wiped out when you update bbPress.
- CUSTOM – If you want to build your own theme or make changes to the existing template files, you’ll need to do the following:
Copy Files
- If this is not a custom theme under your control (meaning you are not the author) you’ll want to copy the contents of the “/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twentyten” folder into your “wp-content/themes/%YOURTHEMENAME%” folder, where %YOURTHEMENAME% is the name of your custom Child Theme of whatever your current theme is. This is so theme updates don’t wipe out all your hard work later.
- If you are the author of this theme, then you can copy all the files *out of* the “/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twentyten” folder into the folder of your theme, and make your own edits from there. The files to copy include the single-*, archive-*, page-*, and anything in the subfolders.
- In neither case should a new folder with the name “bbp-twentyten” exist. You are not copying the FOLDER, you are copying what’s IN the folder.
Add Theme Support
Now that you’ve got the files copied over, you’ll need to tell bbPress that you are in control of the theme situation. You do this by adding this to your functions.php file:
add_theme_support( 'bbpress' );
By doing this, you’re telling bbPress that your theme has its own template files to handle all of the new functionality that bbPress adds. This method gives you a single on/off switch to either use the standard theme compatibility, or use your own.
In the future, specialized template compatibility themes can be created either as plugins or child-themes to work like “add on packages” to existing themes, without requiring elaborate edits to existing themes, moving files around, etc…
Shortcodes (as of May 23, 2011)
Whether you rely on theme compatibility, or decide to go the custom route, we’ve included a few standard shortcodes to let you output specific forum content on any post or page in your forums. This is accomplished within an output buffer, so they won’t interfere with any of your existing page or post content. Note that if your theme specifically removes the shortcode functionality, these will not work, and will instead the actual text of the shortcode will appear on your site.
- [bbp-forum-index] – Show the root forums
- [bbp-single-forum id="A forum ID"] – Show a specific forum
- [bbp-topic-index] – Show all topics
- [bbp-single-topic id="A topic ID"] – Show a specific topic
- [bbp-topic-tags] – Show all topic tags
- [bbp-topic-tag] – Show topics of a specific tag
- [bbp-topic-form] – Show the new topic form
- [bbp-reply-form] – Show the new reply form (not commonly used)
- [bbp-single-view id="A view slug"] – Show the topics of a registered view
In the future, we’ll be adding more shortcodes as the needs arise.
That’s it for the first round of explanations. I’ll edit this post as more questions and answers come through.
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That would be nice, and I’ll most likely research something similar to this after 2.0. The problem is there is no way to add an additional theme path check on top of the parent theme and the child theme locations. Even then, that doesn’t make the single-, archive-, and page- templates match the HTML structure of your current theme, which means manually editing them anyways.
As annoying as it is to add theme support for bbPress and not have the files there, that’s also the easiest way to communicate ability between theme and plugin. If you add theme support for post thumbnails, and then don’t use post thumbnails in your theme, you just don’t have post thumbnails.
That would be nice, and I’ll most likely research something similar to this after 2.0. The problem is there is no way to add an additional theme path check on top of the parent theme and the child theme locations. Even then, that doesn’t make the single-, archive-, and page- templates match the HTML structure of your current theme, which means manually editing them anyways.
As annoying as it is to add theme support for bbPress and not have the files there, that’s also the easiest way to communicate ability between theme and plugin. If you add theme support for post thumbnails, and then don’t use post thumbnails in your theme, you just don’t have post thumbnails.
@SHope – You’re okay.
It sounds like you’re using the shortcodes correctly, but that something else isn’t working. I think I’m going to build in a shortcode helper, because I realize finding the ID isn’t the easiest thing to do.On the pages you’re using the shortcodes on, does anything appear where the shortcodes should be?
@SHope – You’re okay.
It sounds like you’re using the shortcodes correctly, but that something else isn’t working. I think I’m going to build in a shortcode helper, because I realize finding the ID isn’t the easiest thing to do.On the pages you’re using the shortcodes on, does anything appear where the shortcodes should be?
The addition of shortcodes will most certainly make it easier for users to embed the forums as they please and see fit….
One thing I would like to see though is the addition of a shortcodes icon within the page/post editors for ease of use, this could be extended to allow you to select the specific forum to build a shortcode string.
When used within a multisite environment it would also lower the amount of confusion as it would most likely also do in single installations. Although shortcodes are simple enough, not everyone is so web savvy.
Simplicity with a forum shortcode insert button would certainly make it much easier and eye pleasing without to much more code. Please!!!!
Thanks for all the great work here!
The addition of shortcodes will most certainly make it easier for users to embed the forums as they please and see fit….
One thing I would like to see though is the addition of a shortcodes icon within the page/post editors for ease of use, this could be extended to allow you to select the specific forum to build a shortcode string.
When used within a multisite environment it would also lower the amount of confusion as it would most likely also do in single installations. Although shortcodes are simple enough, not everyone is so web savvy.
Simplicity with a forum shortcode insert button would certainly make it much easier and eye pleasing without to much more code. Please!!!!
Thanks for all the great work here!
@anointed – In a word, no.
WordPress custom post types only know to look for their files in the root of the theme folder, and the same goes for page templates as well. For now if you want a totally customized theme, those files need to live in the root. I did my best to minimize the number of files in the root, and instead split them up into template parts in the /bbpress folder (because I want the same thing you do.)It might be possible to hook into the template loader, see what the request is, and force it to look into a different folder, but there’s no possible way to do it at all with page templates; it’s actually purposely disallowed to prevent the theme from having to scan every file inside every subfolder to find them.
@anointed – In a word, no.
WordPress custom post types only know to look for their files in the root of the theme folder, and the same goes for page templates as well. For now if you want a totally customized theme, those files need to live in the root. I did my best to minimize the number of files in the root, and instead split them up into template parts in the /bbpress folder (because I want the same thing you do.)It might be possible to hook into the template loader, see what the request is, and force it to look into a different folder, but there’s no possible way to do it at all with page templates; it’s actually purposely disallowed to prevent the theme from having to scan every file inside every subfolder to find them.
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