With the successful rollout of ‘Theme Compatibility’ in BP 1.7, the BuddyPress core development team has taken a decision to officially retire default bundled theme from the core application. And now BP 1.9 users are noticing that listing of default BuddyPress theme (bp-default) has been removed from the dashboard’s Appearance -> Themes screen (although it will still appear if you currently use the theme and updated the BuddyPress from the older version)
In this tutorial we will show you how you can enable that old bp-default theme to use in your new BuddyPress networking website.
As said by the BuddyPress core development team:
[quote cite=”BuddyPress Core Development Team” url=”http://codex.buddypress.org/themes/bp-default-theme-moving-forward-with-bp-1-9/”]In terms of future development of the theme, this will be limited to providing critical fixes and security updates where necessary but there will be no further development on the theme template files. The theme will continue to be physically bundled in the core download for the immediate future but it is envisioned that at some point the theme files will be removed altogether and hopefully be provided as a standalone theme downloaded from the WP theme repo.[/quote]
So no worries if you currently use the default BuddyPress theme on your website as the things will continue to work just as before.
BuddyPress update has a provision to check whether bp-default is active or any other theme has overloaded bp-default templates.
But whenever you will revert to another WordPress theme or start a new BuddyPress site, you will find that the option to select bp-default has been removed.
Don’t worry, as you can still change your themes and re-enable bp-default. All you have to do is add a simple one line code in your bp-custom.php file:
add_filter( ‘bp_do_register_theme_directory’, ‘__return_true’ );
Save the changes. Move back to your admin area dashboard’s Appearance -> Themes page and you will be seeing BP-Default theme is there.
Now you may activate it.
If you are still facing nay problems, feel free to use the following comment form.
What is bp-custom.php File? bp-custom.php is a simple php file that resides in your WordPress ‘plugins’ folder. It is used for add a bunch of custom code hacks and modifications to your BuddyPress plugin. It works like a custom theme functions file.
How To Create bp-custom.php File? Create a new file with following code:
<?php
// your hacks and code will go here
?>
Now save it as bp-custom.php in your WordPress plugins’s directory (your website’s root -> wp-content -> plugins).