bbPress layouts call style.css so your theme is responsive then bbPress too
Yes, certainly, bbPress works well in responsive themes. An example is the Skeleton theme: http://demos.simplethemes.com/skeleton/
It might need some additional CSS to make it actually look the part, but it should look *okay* enough to start.
We’ve had success with making bbPress look great via child themes across a wide variety of Responsive Theme Designs.
Our most popular, of course, are based on Emil Uzelac’s “Responsive” theme (the #1 downloaded theme in WP repository), but it also works great with all of the WooThemes, Elegant Themes, and others.
You can see a sampling (with demos) here: http://labzip.com/product-category/themes/responsive-designs/
If you have any questions on how to make it happen, reach us at help@labsecrets.com
Cheers!
spence
So let me get this straightened out. I have a wordpress site that has bbpress integrated. Do I need to use a different theme – a responsive one? or could I just stylize the current bbpress theme to make it responsive?
You can use bbPress with any theme. The trick is to implement some CSS and other formatting in a child theme to ensure it adopts the style of your underlying theme. We’ve been doing this globally for all the woothemes, and many others…it works well.
The CSS required will vary slightly, or greatly, depending on the theme you use. What are you using? Have a link?
The trouble is, by default bbPress has a lot of bells and whistles (features) that will quickly clutter a small screen.
So it’s a lot of work to clean up the clutter and remove unnecessary design elements, borders, etc. Convert “px” to “em” and percentages. Use something like Flowtype to resize your text.
Here’s an example of what you can do: http://linkedexpertsalliance.com/forums/
I spent about an hour just cleaning up the boxes and borders bbPress draws around the text editor, which makes all of your editor buttons too small to press on a phone. You want that text editor to use up the full width of your device. I tried to make those buttons responsive but the problem is you need those buttons to be big enough to tap, like the “bold” button is tiny. In the end, decided to go with a fixed viewport. It’s just lots of little tradeoffs here and there that makes it frustrating.
G’day;
I have spent a lot of time reading and trying to understand the various confusing and sometimes contradictory comments made about whether or not bbPress is a responsive design or not.
As best I can figure out from that material, bbPress is not a responsive design. Rather it relies upon website themes being responsive. However, even if a theme is responsive, that does not mean that a bbPress forum will be responsive.
People have posted information about lots of problems they have had trying to use a responsive design forum with bbPress. Some people have also posted various technical workarounds to at least some of those problems (which I can’t understand).
So, the bottom line for an ordinary person like me, is that there is no point in using bbPress as a responsive design forum.
Have I understood the situation correctly?
Cheers,
Hugh
