Hi, I’m on WordPress 3.8.1 and have just installed bbpress 2.5.3

I’ve set up a forum here: http://www.luciddreamingland.com/dream-journal/

The set up documentation was great, thanks!

It’s looking great except that there’s a white box covering the main part of the forum.

I’ve tried everything to get rid of it including turning off other plugins and moving to TwentyEleven without success.

Any suggestions on how to remove it?

Thanks so much.

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 10 months ago]

it’s coming from bbpress stylesheet.

there may be a quicker way to remove this, but one that should work is as follows.

I don’t think you have a childtheme, and now may be the time to consider having one, see https://codex.bbpress.org/step-by-step-guide-to-setting-up-a-bbpress-forum-part-2/ for more details

once done you need to navigate to

wp-content/plugins/bbpress/templates/default/css/bbpress.css

copy this file into a folder called css within your theme, so you end up with
wp-content/themes/mychildtheme/css/bbpress.css

where mychildtheme is the name of your childtheme

Then edit every line that has

background-color : xxxxxxx

change to

background: none repeat scroll 0 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4);

NOTE it goes from background-color to background
and it is only the background color that you’ll be changing, not lines which just have color: as that’ll be text!

eg

#bbpress-forums div.bbp-forum-header,
#bbpress-forums div.bbp-topic-header,
#bbpress-forums div.bbp-reply-header {
	background-color: #f4f4f4;
}

becomes

#bbpress-forums div.bbp-forum-header,
#bbpress-forums div.bbp-topic-header,
#bbpress-forums div.bbp-reply-header {
	background: none repeat scroll 0 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4);
}

This will make the background transparent, but with a darker tint shading that you have in your sidebar (the amount of difference is on the 0.4 bit, 0.1 is the lightest, 1.0 the darkest).

Come back if that doesn’t fix it, or for further help

[@domainhorizon Participant 10 years, 10 months ago]

Thanks so much Robin,

I had problems setting up a child theme and have ended up ditching that for the moment and just edited your code directly into the bbpress.css file.

It half worked! http://www.luciddreamingland.com/dream-journal/

I’ve tried fiddling with the bbpress.css some more but without luck.

If you have any more suggestions that would be great.

Really appreciate your efforts.

Thanks.

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 10 months ago]

ok, think the ones on the page link are around line 90 (my .css is different, so exact lines may vary) – look for

#bbpress-forums li.bbp-header,
#bbpress-forums li.bbp-footer {
	background: #f3f3f3;
	border-top: 1px solid #eee;
	font-weight: bold;
	padding: 8px;
	text-align: center;
}

#bbpress-forums li.bbp-header {
	background: #eaeaea;
}

and change background to the same as above.

They may be some others as you go through. Come back with any that are still niggling, and I’ll chase them down for you.

As you are making changes to bbPress templates, make a copy of the file onto your PC, and keep a list of what you changed, as any bbPress updates will override this file.

You should revisit child themes when you get some more time, as this is a better way to do it, but the way you’re doing will work fine (and was what I did in the early days!).