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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i got mine working almost without effort. i literally read the sticky at the top of this thread and it worked.
a couple of things to note, that people are stumbling over:
1) READ THE STICKY. don’t peruse it. READ IT.
2) the sticky actually says the same thing twice. COPY the CONTENTS of wp-contentpluginsbbpressbbp-themesbbp-twentyten to YOUR theme’s folder, whether it be a child theme or not. in my case the path was wp-contentthemesSuperTurboTheme.
3) it’ll ask it you want to overwrite ‘style.css’. don’t. just let the OS rename it to ‘style(2).css’.
4) ditto for the ‘functions.php’ file. it should, temporarily, be ‘functions(2).php.
5) MERGE the two functions.php files. i just copy/pasted everything from ‘functions(2).php’ to the bottom of the ‘functions.php’ file. just like in the sticky. i didn’t merge the ‘style.css’ and ‘style(2).css’ files. but i DID make sure the ‘Tags:’ line in my ‘style.css’ file included ‘bbPress’ as the first item, just to be sure. it was an old requirement that doesn’t seem to have been deprecated anywhere and i’m a belt-n-suspenders boy…
6) at the very top of your newly expanded ‘functions.php’ file, add the line ‘add_theme_support( ‘bbpress’ );’ to the very top. just like in the sticky. EVEN THOUGH THERE IS A SIMILAR LINE IN the bbPress’ functions.php file, YOUR functions.php file MUST HAVE THIS LINE as well. EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE MERGED.
7) reload.
don’t get clever. don’t reinvent. don’t assume anything. just follow the steps and you should be fine.
your only challenge now is figuring out how to do your CSS. the ‘style.css’ will control the WordPress portion of the site. it CAN handle the bbPress styling as well, but i prefer to leave it to bbPress.css (located in the ‘css’ folder you copied over) to handle the forum styles. its a bit of a headache sorting out the bevy of tags that get generates, but hey, it works. and i DO mean headache.
not to beat a dead horse, but the real challenge IS sorting out the secondary CSS. i recommend Firebug to help you drill down the the styles. the byzantine class structure can make your head spin. try using the elements that are relatively easy to spot. and REMEMBER THIS: NOT ALL CLASSES ARE IN THE STYLESHEET. this can really toss a wrench into things. they are added for future slice-n-dice, but seems overkill to me. low-order CSS has proved easier for me. i can’t foresee a reason to slice the site up so finely…but it’s futureproofed to the wheel-wells!
good luck. hope this was useful. i apologize if i missed anything. i tried to be thorough AND simple.
feel free to correct me if i stepped wrong somewhere. this is what worked to me.
WR!
as you like. my blogs and forums are all working. no need to be offended! i just found that after reading this thread *most* people’s questions came from not reading the sticky all the way through. and you are correct: the sticky doesn’t mention merging files. i read that elsewhere (i’ll try and recall where). does it matter? regardless: what i outlined works.
as for duplicates, they override eachother. there’s duplication, overriding and modifying all over the place in WordPress and bbPress. this is nothing new. all that matters is precedence at the end of the day.
nitpicking is pointless and unhelpful. take it or leave it. don’t really care. all i’m interested in is helping people sort this out. my way works. end of story. if you can indeed write a new plugin, then by all means give ‘er!
yours might be the halcyon we’ve all been hoping for! that’s the beauty of all this stuff! 
WR!
I´m also having problem with this. I´m getting the forum to work, but I have problems getting access to css and template files.
I have created a child theme from the bp-default theme, which doesnt seem to support bbPress-templates, but still displays everything nicely somehow. Within this child-theme I change css and templates belonging to the bp-default theme and that works fine.
Now I would like to be able to modify the bbPress part of the site from this child theme aswell, but I cant because the theme has no template files for the bbPress installation (even though it presents the forum very nicely). I can change the css-part by just copying the css from the bbpress.css into my styles.css (it get´s priority). But there is no template-files to copy except those from the bbp-twentyten theme, and if I do, the appearance just breaks
What I want: The forum to look exactly like it does from the default bp-default theme, but with access to template files so I can remove and add stuff on my own.
Can anyone help me with this one?
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