I’m something of a novice when it comes to bbPress, sorry to say. And although I have spent a fair amount of time searching for how to do what I want to achieve I can not find a way that I can follow!

I am using WordPress and have installed the bbpress (version 2.0.2) plugin and I want to alter the layout of it.

I was looking at this link: http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/15/getting-started-with-bbpress/

and currently the layout I see very much looks like this:

http://media.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/sm-bbpress-forums.png

but I very much want it to resemble this (not exactly):

http://media.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/sm-bbpress-dropbox.png

Sorry if this seems like such an obvious thing to do, but I really am at a loss of where to start.

Thank you kindly in anticipation of any help.

[@redrudolf Member 12 years, 6 months ago]

Hi!

Dropbox’s forum is quite nice, I am also trying to make a look-alike forum.

You have to play with the css

[@briggsy326 Member 12 years, 6 months ago]

Thanks for your response.

At the moment I think I need to create a ‘child theme’ of the bbpress so that any changes will not be affected by a future update – after which, it is time to play with the css. How? I’m not quite sure (yet).

[@redrudolf Member 12 years, 6 months ago]

I think you have to copy the bbp-twentyten directory from:

/wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/

to:

/wp-content/themes/%nameyourdir%

then you can activate the new theme from Appearance after this you can edit the style.css at /themes/%yourdir%/style.css

[@briggsy326 Member 12 years, 6 months ago]

Let me try that just now and I will get back to you if it works (or if it doesn’t).

[@briggsy326 Member 12 years, 6 months ago]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you on that. I did exactly what you suggested, redrudolf, but all that did was create another ‘bbPress (Twenty Ten) 1.2 by WordPress and bbPress teams’ theme. Thanks anyway.

I have been trying other things too but can’t seem to work out what I should be doing – I think I need someone to walk me through it step by step. lol

[@bookespana Member 12 years, 6 months ago]

In WordPress, there’s a chance to pick out the template for every page (dropdown on Edit Page and Edit Post pages).
bbPress forum root, forums, topics and replies are custom post varieties.
It would be smart to check in bbPress the flexibility to line the default layout for every of those.
Dropdown (like the one on Edit Page page), whereby the admin will choose the layouts from among the active theme’s layouts shall be ideal.
(I perceive that if once this the admin decides to alter the theme, he can got to choose the default layouts for bbPress custom posts once more – similar to he has to do therefore for traditional pages and posts