Before installing other BuddyPress themes it’s worth first learning how you can customize the social network side of your site, using the BuddyPress Default theme, by adding widgets to your front page.

Intro to BuddyPress Default theme

The  BuddyPress Default theme front page is a two column theme with a blue and white color scheme.

By default the left column of the BuddyPress Default theme is a blog post homepage and the right column is where you add widgets to customize the appearance and social aspect of your site.

Here’s what BuddyPress Default theme looks like with a blog post homepage:

Changing BuddyPress Default theme to display network wide activity

You can change the BuddyPress Default theme to display network wide activity in the left column as follows:

1.  Go to Pages > Add New

2.  Create a new page — this will be used as your post page

• In this example the new post page will be called News

3.  Go to Settings > Reading

4.  Change front page displays to Static page, select Activity from drop down menu for Front page and select the location of your new Post page (in this example News)

5.  Click Save Changes

Adding Widgets To Your BuddyPress Front page

BuddyPress comes with several widgets designed to promote the social network side of your site. Each provides easy mechanisms for your members to access the social pages of your network.

1.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your dashboard of your site.

2.  Click on the Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets).

3.  To add a widget, drag it from the Available Widgets or Inactive Widgets areas on the left into the Sidebar area on the right.

4.  Drop the widget when you see a dashed line appear – this indicates the widget is in place.

5.  The widget will automatically open — just configure, click Save and then Close.