[Marion Peterson]

I am adding a member forum section to a church website. It is just for congregation members to communicate with each other once logged in. The group wants only one main forum in which all topics will be listed/added. I have added the (bbPress) Forums List to the sidebar widget area, but it does not show up. When I log in, I see “member login” with my user name and below that “recent topics” with all topics listed in the right sidebar. The “forum List” does not appear at all, making it very confusing to navigate the topic threads. I don’t know css and am totally lost here, so please be kind and very specific with your help. 🙂

My WordPress version is 4.1.1 and we are using the “Risen” Theme.
bbPress version is 2.5.4, I am also using bbl style pack and bbPress WP Tweaks 1.3.1
the site is http://www.uugrassvalley.org

[Dono12]

I’ve visited your site and I saw there was no side bar. Make sure your sidebar is active first (DASHBOARD -> APPEARANCE -> WIDGETS). Then pull The widgets you want to display in the Sidebar section. Give the Widget a Title, the title will then display in the Sidebar area. To style any element you can inspect the element by right clicking on it -> select inspect element -> a window will pop-up showing you the div class or div id of any element on that page. eg(#bbpress-forums div.bbp-the-content-wrapper textarea.bbp-the-content). This div comes from inspecting the elements on this very page. You can even change things in the right-side window of the inspector and see the changes happen instantly. Elements like background-color, text color and font size and so on.(TRY IT)
You can place this div inside your themes CSS file and change the elements within it. Example text color, font, font-weight. eg

#bbpress-forums div.bbp-the-content-wrapper textarea.bbp-the-content {
from width: 100%; to width:50% !important;
from margin: 0; to margin: 10px 10px 10px 10px !important;
from font-size: 12px; to font-size:14px !important;
}
the !important is used to override the styles already created within the plugins css

You can also see an entire page by using right-click -> view page source