Step Three: Tweaking your layout
Now that the template files are in the correct location, check out your site. (You can come back to the current page at any time, by visiting Dashboard > Appearance > BP Compatibility.) You should see a BuddyPress admin bar at the top of the page. Try visiting some of the links in the «My Account» menu. If everything has gone right up to this point, you should be able to see your BuddyPress content.
If you find that the pages are not quite aligned correctly, or the content is overlapping the sidebar, you may need to tweak the template HTML. Please follow the «fixing alignment» instructions below. If the content in your pages is aligned to your satisfaction, then you can skip to the «Finishing Up» section at the bottom of this page.
Fixing Alignment
By default BuddyPress templates use this HTML structure:
[HEADER]
<div id=»container»>
<div id=»content»>
[PAGE CONTENT]
</div>
<div id=»sidebar»>
[SIDEBAR CONTENT]
</div>
</div>
[FOOTER]
If BuddyPress pages are not aligned correctly, then you may need to modify some of the templates to match your theme’s HTML structure. The best way to do this is to access your theme’s files, via FTP, at:
/home/f/freeda/123/public_html/wp-content/themes/celebrityhq/
Open up the page.php file (if this does not exist, use index.php). Make note of the HTML template structure of the file, specifically the <div> tags that surround the content and sidebar.
You will need to change the HTML structure in the BuddyPress templates that you copied into your theme to match the structure in your page.php or index.php file.
There are two methods for making the necessary template changes.
The first method is to locate the following templates (leave out any folders that you didn’t copy over in Step Two):
/activity/index.php
/blogs/index.php
/forums/index.php
/groups/index.php
/groups/create.php
/groups/single/home.php
/groups/single/plugins.php
/members/index.php
/members/single/home.php
/members/single/plugins.php
/members/single/settings/delete-account.php
/members/single/settings/notifications.php
/members/single/settings/general.php
/registration/register.php
/registration/activate.php
Alternatively, you may find it easier to make copies of your theme’s header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php and rename them to header-buddypress.php, sidebar-buddypress.php, and footer-buddypress.php.
Then you can alter the structure of these new template files (header-buddypress.php, sidebar-buddypress.php, and footer-buddypress.php) to resemble your theme’s page.php (or index.php).
Once you are done matching up the HTML structure of your theme in these template files, please take another look through your site. You should find that BuddyPress pages now fit inside the content structure of your theme.
Finishing Up
You’re now all done with the conversion process. Your WordPress theme will now happily provide BuddyPress compatibility support. Once you hit the finish button you will be presented with a new permanent theme options page, which will allow you to tweak some settings.
