New BuddyPress Standalone theme for buddypress.org

[espellcaste]

Ticket to start a conversation, and planning, for the next theme of the .org sites.

Things to address:

• what sort of theme to build? (block-based themes, regular themes, etc)
• for what sites? (developer, codex, homepage, etc)
• where to host? (WP themes directory?, wp trac?, etc)
• New design?!

[espellcaste]

I plan on resolving all tickets with fixes or improvements related to the bp.org sites, and point them here. I don't think we should spend resources on those tickets since we have plans to build something new.

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We don't need to have all worked out in this ticket, but we should at the very least plan on what to build and how so that we can get some traction. Baby steps. =P

[johnjamesjacoby]

Also important to understand what exists today and why it is the way that it is.

• Shared CSS, HTML, & PHP that is 99% identical between bbPress.org & BuddyPress.org
• Root sites
• Codexes
• Forums
• Trac header & footer using its template system
• BuddyPress language sites (largely decommissioned)
• Profiles.WordPress.org child theme
• BuddyPress Profiles (could/should be decommissioned for above, so there is only 1 central profile)

It ends up being a non-trivial amount of abstraction to have the same CSS & JS running on top of everything, so that header & footers stay identical, so users aren’t confused by unique designs/navs/links.

It isn’t even currently 100% perfect in that regard, and it’s always been very close, but nobody’s bothered to get it the rest of the way done.

I am 100% in favor of modernizing everything, and I’ll happily review & deploy it anytime! Just know going in that what exists currently is already as little code as necessary to make it work the way it needs to!

[johnjamesjacoby]

Since Profiles.WordPress.org is primarily where BuddyPress is used (Profiles, Groups, Activity) most of the interesting BuddyPress-specific stuff will end up living in that theme.

BuddyPress.org and bbPress.org are basically marketing sites, with Codex/API/Developer docs as subsites with their own unique page templates to support the layout needs of those kinds of pages.

For historical reasons, bbPress.org is also still a single-site install of WordPress, and Codex.bbPress.org is on the BuddyPress.org network. This could be either separated or merged, but it’s never been a priority because we’ve worked around it successfully using themes 😅

[imath]

Thanks for creating this ticket.

As we're a small contributors team, I renew my suggestion to kill many birds with one stone:

• Use a theme that demonstrates BuddyPress for users (hosted on WP Themes directory)
• Renew BuddyPress.org appearance.
• Make it a Block only Theme (it should be ​https://github.com/buddypress/buddyvibes imho)

[emaralive]

I'm not going to get involved with this one. Whatever the rest of the team comes up with is fine with me.

[vapvarun]

Just a wild thought: To save time, we could use the ​BuddyX Theme, which already includes profile and bbPress support. We can create a child theme for our header/footer-specific customizations. Starting from the default WordPress theme would be time-consuming. The primary goal is to bring BuddyPress and bbPress sites up to current standards, and since BuddyX is available on WordPress.org, there won’t be any issues. We can fork it or easily make any changes to it.

We will concentrate on BuddyVibes for a versatile BuddyPress theme. This theme will offer a customized community appearance and experience for BuddyPress users. It will be a long-term solution with full block support, but there are still many pending tasks for BuddyVibes, which will require some time to complete.

We can easily create a development copy of our existing site and test it with BuddyX, which could provide an immediate solution. Due to the nature of BuddyPress and bbPress sites, they require a hybrid theme with support for templates and block support for new posts and pages.