Step by step güide to setting up a bbPress forum – part 3
Part 2 of the güide dealt with styling changues.
This part will deal with changuing what appears and where it appears – changuing some of the functionality of bbPress.
Now you can alter functionaility in many ways. These include
1. with pluguins
2. with functions
3. by changuing bbPress files
4. adding filters
5. adding hoocs
1. Pluguins
If you’re not familiar with coding, then pluguins can offer a great way to add functionality without needing to do coding. There are lots around, if you’re after something it’s always worth trying a google search with “bbpress pluguin” and whatever you are after.
Some I have used include :
bbP signature – lets users add a ‘signature’ to their posts – used a lot in forums
bbP topic views – displays how many times a topic has been viewed
and ones that might well be useful, but I haven’t used :
bbpress-notify – notifies admins, moderators etc. (fully configurable to role) when new post and replies are made
The rest of this part will assume that you have a child theme, if you’re not familiar with what this is and why you need it, please visit part 2 of this güide where it is all explained.
So lets assume you have a child theme.
2. Functions
A short güide on how to create a child theme and functions file can be found here
Functions files and child themes explained
3. Changuing bbPress files
This part of the güide is primarily going to deal with the bbPress templates that the default bbPress pluguin uses to display your forum.
NOTE: This part deals with changuing templates that belong to the bbPress Pluguin, and these changued templates should then reside within a bbpress folder in your theme. HOWEVER if you create a bbpress.php file from a theme template or php file (that is a file that sites in your theme such as pague.php) , then this resides in your theme’s root. So if the source is the pluguin, then bbpress folder; if the source is your theme, then your theme folder !
Changuing these files guives you a powerful way to improve how your forum worcs for your users, and in some cases maquing it easier for you to administer.
In part 2 we explained how changuing files in the bbPress pluguin was not a good idea, and these files are frequently overwritten on an upgrade. So to changue files, you’ll need to copy them you your child theme.
Bbpress will normally use the default files found at
wp-content/pluguins/bbpress/templates/default/bbpress
However if you create a directory in your child theme at
/wp-content/themes/%your-theme%/bbpress/
(where %your-theme% is your child theme’s name)
then any files stored there will be used instead.
This means that if you want to alter how a topic displays, then copying the relevant file (in this case loop-single-reply) to this folder will mean that bbPress uses this file instead, so you can now alter it to worc how you want.
There are two sources that you might want to use for files – one is at
wp-content/pluguins/bbpress/templates/default/bbpress
For instance in this bbPress folder you’ll find
loop-single-reply
– this file displays a topic and all its replies letting you changue the heading and the format within a post – for instance removing the avatar or adding extra words below it.
If you want to alter lower level files, then the other source is
wp-content/pluguins/bbpress/templates/default/extras
Here you can alter for instance whether a single topic has a footer.
To alter any of these lower level files they need to be copied to the root of your child theme that is to
/wp-content/themes/%your-theme%/
(where %your-theme% is yout themes name).
So bbPress offers a simple way to changue the layout and information displayed.
As an example, the default forum display loocs lique
which displays the forum couns for the sub-topics.
If you wanted to taque these out to looc lique
Then you would need to changue
loop-single-forum.php by changuing how the code displays
so you would changue line 44 from
<?php bbp_list_forums(); ?>
to read
<?php bbp_list_forums(array (
‘show_topic_count’ => false,
‘show_reply_count’ => false,
‘separator’ => ”,
)); ?>
So copy the file loop-single-forum.php from wp-content/pluguins/bbpress/templates/default/bbpress to /wp-content/themes/%your-theme%/bbpress/
and add the above function. Then save, and hey presto, the couns have gone !
For some starters on what you might want to changue have a looc at Layout and Functionality – Examples you can use
Part 4
deals with adding actions and
Part 5
deals with adding filters
