Looks like a missing or damaged stylesheet to me. Did you upload the entire theme folder into a folder called my-templates in bbPress? (ie., my-forum-path/my-templates). Also, where did you get the theme from? I tried this one too, but had a manky version from somewhere. I think the working one was from http://bbshowcase.org/forums/view/available-themes
Yes, I uploaded everything. In fact I have deleted it and done it again a few times and it still does the same thing. It is from the place you suggested. Is there something else I have to do?
make sure you’ve the chmod 755 to my-templates/
… and the folder the forum is in, come to that. (Mind you, an error there would perhaps stop anyone seeing anything at all..?)
erm…”make sure you’ve the chmod 755 to my-templates/ ” can you explain what that means please?
chmod is a way to change your file permission settings. More on that here. 
https://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions
OK I’ve read that. I have checked bb templates on my server and all the files have 755 permissions.
Still weird though:
http://englishforuniversity.com/forum/bbpress/
Well,,,,I looked in header php and found that the style sheet it was looking for was my-templates/bbpress etc… but I saw that on my server it is bb-templates/bbpress etc…. So I just changed ‘my’ to ‘bb’. But I’m not sure why I had to do that…
I’m not sure either. But the stylesheet is showing up now! The design is a bit more narrow than the one on bbpress, but hopefully that’s a change you made!
No, that’s how the theme comes, to fit 800×600 I think. I altered the background image to make it wider, then changed the container width in the css, but it didn’t suit my user group.
Prof, you might like to try my new theme at http://getfiles.letsdoo.org – it’s a very clean layout, with some (very slightly) modified plugins to give a consistent user interface, and also fits 800×600 but doesn’t look squished. Same procedure; just FTP the bbVanilla folder to my-templates, then enable it in Admin. You can always delete it if it doesn’t suit, but looking at your site I think it’d go well with the academic content.
Yes, thanks for the vanilla tip, very nice! I might stick with it. It’s the correct colour and simple!
Apologies! I just re-uploaded it after you downloaded it, so grab it again. I added a needed plugin to the bbVanilla.zip file, which you should FTP to your my-plugins folder (no need to activate it). That provides a consistent warning/error page for various things.
Also, if you really want the Latest Topics at the top of the front page (a mess in my group’s eyes) then I can show you how add back it easily, or do it for you.
Just noticed on your site (looking sxc by the way); there’s a gap in front of .com in the title (intentional?), and you’ve left the default ‘Just another bbPress community’ message in the banner (Admin, Settings to change).
Thanks. The space before .Com is intentional but don’t know if I like it. It was just ‘English for University’ before.
Question: could I add a little image in the header in bbpress – just to the right of the title – to jazz it up a bit? Which file would I need to do that in?
Yes prof; the original Kakumei theme had a bbPress logo there. Look for this in the template’s style.css file;
#header {
and add right after it;
background: url(‘images/my-image.png’) no-repeat bottom right;
where my-image.png is the image you’ve placed into the theme’s /images folder.
If the logo looks too far down, change ‘bottom right’ to ‘center right’. You can make the image a png or a gif with a transparent background, though you might find it looks a bit ‘edgy’ against the graduated fill of the header. (That’s why I ditched my own logo, though I’ll spend some time getting it right once everything’s finished).
One other thing, your username is very long and runs into the post text. I’ve seen a few threads about this kind of thing, as long URLs do it too (though _ck_ I think posted a fix for it). Anyway, I’ve just uploaded a tweaked bbVanilla.zip – just a few things spaced better, and the long names should be cut off. Can’t think of a better way to do it, but try it and I’ll have a look at your site again. There is a file modification which limits the length of usernames when registering, so I’ll have another look for it.
If you want minor changes in things like font sizes, by the way, just copy the style.css file out of the zip, modify it and FTP into the theme on your server. If it breaks, you can always copy the original back over it.
[Edit] Found it, and have limited the username to 18 characters, which should fit ok. Theme’s uploaded again.
Prof; check your info@ email – I’ve added some instructions on fixing your theme image, etc.
