After installing bbpress I have a set of forums.

Every forum is presented using a php template in my child theme.
The php template has the filename bbpress.php.

I’d like to create a php template that applies *just* to the individual forum pages. Not the forum topics or singles. Or anything else.

I’ve been looking at this:

Template hierarchy in detail

The heirarchy seems to suggest that you can use ‘single-[forum].php’, which suggests that ‘[forum]’ needs to be substituted with the name of the forum.

… which is great. But I want one template to be applied to all forum singles and nothing else.

Just to test, I copied my existing bbress.php to a file called ‘single-forum.php’.
bbpress did pick this up and use it for my forum singles.
But the page didn’t present the actual forum. Where the forum should have been, there was just empty space.

So… how do I create a template that gets applied to all forums and nothing else?

[@robin-w Moderator 3 years, 6 months ago]

you would I think do better amending the files that display the forum

the hierarchy for these is

SINGLE FORUM

bbpress 2.6.6\templates\default\bbpress\content-single-forum.php
lists sub forums (if needed) using loop-forums.php
calls
loop-topics.php
calls
form topic.php

bbpress 2.6.6\templates\default\bbpress\loop-topics.php
does topic list headers

calls loop-single-topic.php

bbpress 2.6.6\templates\default\bbpress\loop-single-topic.php
lists each topic in the forum, last post and freshness

lists topic content.php

My standard text for how to amend bbpress template files is below with loop-single-reply.php as an example

find
wp-content/plugins/bbpress/templates/default/bbpress/loop-single-reply.php

transfer this to your pc and edit

and save

create a directory on your theme called ‘bbpress’
ie wp-content/themes/%your-theme-name%/bbpress

where %your-theme-name% is the name of your theme

Then transfer the file you saved above and put in in the directory called bbpress that you created above, so you end up with
wp-content/themes/%your-theme-name%/bbpress/loop-single-reply.php

bbPress will now use this template instead of the original