BuddyPress Community Theme

All our BuddyPress themes are able to be used on non BuddyPress installations of WordPress and WordPress MU. However to get the full features of these themes you need to first install BuddyPress.

Installing BuddyPress

1. Make sure you have either a version of WordPress or WordPress Mu - all our themes will on their theme page tell you what versions are supported

2. Download BuddyPress from http://buddypress.org/download/ or you can search for it as a plugin and do an automatic installation if you have auto install / update set up on your site

3. Assuming you are uploading it yourself once you have the zip file unzip the downloaded file and upload BuddyPress to wp-content/plugins

4. Login to your admin panel for WordPress or WordPress Mu and go to the Plugins tab (if you are using WordPress MU make sure you activate it on the blog you want BuddyPress to appear on - usually this is your main blog). Once there click to activate BuddyPress

5. As of BuddyPress 1.2 you do not need to anything such as moving theme files the default theme will be there just like any other theme ready for you to activate

Installing a theme from WPMU DEV

1. Unzip the downloaded zip file

2. You should see several files and folders depending on the theme package

3. Upload the entire contents of the themes/ folder but not the themes/ directory itself to wp-content/themes/

4. Make sure your install path is correct for example: /www/var/site/wp-content/themes/thethemename not /www/var/site/wp-content/themes/themes/thethemename

*The next stages depend on if you want to have that theme available for all blogs or just for your main blog running BuddyPress and are using WordPress MU.

If you want to have it work for only your blog running BuddyPress you need to go to Site Admin > Blogs and locate the main blog or whatever blog you have installed BuddyPress on. Then you click Edit hovering your mouse over the domain name to bring up the action menu. Select your theme and click Update Options.

If you want to enable it to be available on all blogs go to Site Admin > Themes and set the theme to active.

The next steps are the same for any installation even if you are having it only show for your main blog or blog running BuddyPress

5. Login to your dashboard > Appearance and activate the theme

6. Your theme should now be activated and ready to use

Using a child theme

We also provide child themes with all of our BuddyPress themes which enable you to customise your own files without having those changes overwritten when we update a theme. To find out more about parent and children themes please visit our guide to parent and child themes. If you are using a child theme you need not activate the parent just activate the child theme. Remember to check each new version of the theme for any changes in your child theme that may have been done in the parent. Also when you update a theme just do not update the child only update the parent and all your changes will be kept.