Hey there,
The answer might be a no brainer for others that have been using the plugin version of bbpress for a while, but just like you I just migrated from the standalone version and suddenly I felt completely lost as I was used to editing the php templates for everything. I probably missed this explanation as it’s been a while since I visit bbpress.org.
Here’s the deal. You need to use the shortcodes provided here: https://codex.bbpress.org/shortcodes/
That’s the short answer. What I didn’t know was that you need to add these shortcodes on the page you create in WordPress for your forums. So, say you have your forums at yoursite.com/forums. You need to create a page in wordpress called “forums”, after you have done that, you can add the shortcodes on the page to customize bbpress to your liking (others can correct me if I’m wrong as I just recently figured this out).
So adding [bbp-forum-index], will display your entire forum index. Then you would need to add [bbp-topic-index] to display the most recent 15 topics across all your forums with pagination.
What I still have not been able to figure out is that when you add the login tag [bbp-login] on the homepage (not the sidebar), there’s no option for login out once you’re logged in. If you find the answer for this, let me know. Hope this helps.
Thank you so so much fontadoni for the detailed reply. Works perfect fine. I had no idea what shortcodes were; my bad, should have read the documentation properly. Also, thanks for explaining how to use these shortcodes on the required page!
