Starting a new topic as I don’t wish to clutter the VERY USEFUL threaded discussion here:

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-theme-compatibility

I’ve been over this topic a few times and can’t for the life of me get what I desire to work, or maybe it’s working and I’m missing something.

My current setup:

WordPress 3.2.1 (single site setup

**Child Theme**

BuddyPress 1.2.9 (disabled forums)

bbPress 2.0-RC-4

My goal is simple: I wish to use a different sidebar within my forum pages to display information that is forum specific, rather than my default sidebar’s contents and widgets.

I’m pretty fluent in WordPress, customizing things and the like. I understand how to display different sidebars and such within WordPress, depending on pages, etc..

My issue:

When I activated bbPress and navigated to my forum, everything displayed a treat. It was PERFECT (minus some CSS for colors and width, etc). I figured I would be cracking into the code just to get it to display correctly within my theme, but it put it right where it belonged within my theme.

When I decided I would like to take advantage of a different sidebar, things started to go out of place.

Following along with the discussion at http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-theme-compatibility, I:

1. Copied the files within wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twentyten/

into my child theme folder:

wp-content/themes/%child-theme-dir%/ – minus fuctions.php and style.css.

2. I added add_theme_support( ‘bbpress’ ); into my child theme’s fuctions.php file.

Upon uploading and refreshing, my theme was broken. The forums were being displayed above everything. At the time, this wasn’t much of an issue, as I figured I could modify the files I copied within wp-content/themes/%child-theme-dir%/ much the same way I modified BuddyPress templates to work within my child theme, but alas, these modifications did not work. In other words – any modifications I made to files from plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twentyten/ into themes/%child-theme-dir%/ did not work.

3. Instead of “merging” bbPress functions.php and css/bbpress.css with my child theme files, I copied bbPress’s functions.php, created a new file within my child theme, copied the contents of bbPress’s functions.php into this file and included it from my functions.php file. I used an @import clause within my child theme CSS file to import bbpress.css. This all seemed to work, as using Firebug confirmed bbpress.css was imported.

Again I uploaded and refreshed, but the theme is still broken, much the same way it already was.

So for now I’ve reverted everything back to the “vanilla” install of bbPress, and everything is back to normal, minus a unique sidebar.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[@travishill Participant 13 years, 3 months ago]

Grr, I forgot to give a url, in case anyone wishes to check it out:

http://skullclan.com/forums/

[@johnjamesjacoby Keymaster 13 years, 3 months ago]

Maybe an easier way to get a unique sidebar for your forums is to try this:

1. Make a file in your active theme called bbpress.php.

2. Copy the contents of your page.php into bbpress.php.

3. Instead of calling get_sidebar(), put your custom sidebar code there

4. Done.

Since you seem satisfied with everything else, this should be the easiest may to get by for now. I’ll take a look through the instructions again and try to put something more in-depth together soon.

[@travishill Participant 13 years, 3 months ago]

Thanks @JohnJamesJacoby. Your contributions throughout bbPress are greatly appreciated.

I may have jumped the gun with my initial post, as I’ve gotten it to work how I desire.

I had to edit more files than I at first realized, and everything is working a treat.

Thanks again for your continued support and development. It is truly appreciated.

[@travishill Participant 13 years, 3 months ago]

Marking resolved, as I’ve figured it all out.

Another good read from @theurbantwist regarding theme issues:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/hopefully-this-helps-someone-out-there