BuddyDev

Brajesh Singh in Buddypress Premium Themes 35 Comments

Hi All,

I am very glad to release our first premium theme for BuddyPress. The theme I am Introducing today is Bp Mag. Bp Mag is more than a normal theme you have seen for BuddyPress. It is a theme framework for the development of BuddyPress based sites. It allows you to customize your site in your very own way. I had put all the efforts to make it possible for customizing every aspect from child theme's functions.php than copying the template files and the feedback till now have been very positive. So, I am finally putting the theme here.

Introduction:-

BP Mag is a BuddyPress Theme framework for Building your very own special social network. It has the unlimited potential to extend up to any level. The main goal of bp-mag was to provide a basic framework and allow to extend it using child themes with very few lines of code. And it does. With a few lines of code magic, you can manipulate the whole layout and build almost any sort of layout on it. Further, It uses the current features available in wp 3.0/3.1(trunk) and leverages the core of BuddyPress.
And in case, you don't want to build the child theme, well bp-mag is itself a complete theme with many more flexibilities as shown below.

Basic Demo: http://bpthemes.buddydev.com/bpmag/

Child Theme demos:-

• Cosmic Buddy Pro[that's what we call it for now, name may change in future]
• BP Mag Classic Chile Theme with vertical menu
• Style Bp
• More coming in 1-2 days (I plan to have 20 child themes by end of Feb 2011)

Now, let us have a look at the basic features.

Features

• Unique widget enabled sidebars for almost all component
• Currently It has 18 widget areas, and at the time of release may have a few more
• Inbuilt Global unified search for BuddyPress
• Highly Customizable and Fully widgetized Home page
• Spacious forum pages
• Contains templates for Bp-gallery,branded login,global forums and all of our components
• Admin options to control the features
• Around 5-10 supplementary widgets for many features
• mag-blog child theme for seamless blog look and fel
• You can extend it using filters, there are around 30-40 useful hooks which will assist to develop new child themes based on the bp-mag

Basic Advantages:-

• Theme Framework:  Low maintenance for your theme development(I mean child theme development).
• Efficient hook/action System: allows developers to extend it in all the way they want.
• Most of the nifty features you want are included by default in the theme
• Cuts down your development time, as you can create unique child themes easily (It's not about just the color/background, you can manipulate the layout as you want).

Basic Site/Blog features:-

• Page Layout: 3 layout option for content orientation
  • 2 column layout (sidebar, Content)
  • Column layout (content, sidebar)
  • Single Column layout (no sidebar)
• 2 options for fluid/fixed width
  • Fluid layout(auto adjust according to screen size)
  • Fixed layout(1024px)
• Admin panel for easy customization
• You get two top menus[optional], can disable/enable from backend
• You get up to 13 unique widget enabled sidebars (you can enable/disable from back end)
• Widgetized home page [please see here]
• Localization supported[advance localization to allow reading the translation files from child themes too]
• Supports WordPress 3.0 custom menu
• You get 2 menus , you can enable/disable any of them
• Multilevel drop down menu
• Supports post thumbnail/Featured Image
• Posts contents can be changed by calling simple functions
• Templates for Custom Blog page
• Template for Single Column Full Width Page
• Themed template for Subscribe to Comments management page
• Support for wp pagenavi/Breadcrumb NavXt

BuddyPress Specific:-

• Global Unified search inbuilt
• Unique Widget enabled sidebars for each of the component
• Friends search On My friends Page
• Groups search On My groups page
• Enhanced Group Forum Page

BP Mag includes custom templates for Following Components

• Achievements
• ByddyPress Links
• Jet Event Sytem for BuddyPress
• BP My Home
• BuddyPress Group Reviews
• Bp Gallery
• Global Forum
• BP Branded Login
• BP Flickr
• Bp Youtube Feed
• BP Wire
• Blog Categories for Groups
• EventPress [with few glitches as eventpress template system is not well organized at the moment, we look forward to a better template system]
• .. If you know a major component which does not play well with Bp mag, please let us know in forums or using contact form or PM me and We will provide support for the component.

BP mag contains some codes/hacks to support following components too:-

• Bp profile search [ you will have much better search form ]
• Recent Profile Visitors
• BuddyPress Group Documents
• Invite Anyone
• BuddyPress Rate Forum Posts
• Subscribe to comment[ well themed front end subscription management page]
• Sitewide Activity Widget

Other than the above, we have tested it with the following plugins:-

• Oembed for BuddyPress
• BuddyPress Verified
• BuddyPress Member profile Stats
• Bp TinyMCE
• WP Super Captcha
• Wp Recaptcha
• Bp Moderation
• BuddyPress Like
• BP Group Hierarchy
• ..the list will grow with more test coming in next couple of days, I plan to support all the  plugins(I see it around 270), which claims to be BuddyPress compatible.

For Developers:-

• Bp Mag is a theme framework, so you have the option to create your own layout in minutes with minimal coding
• More than 200 action/filter hooks to customize everything
• Helpers for Custom post template support (you can define unique templates for say movies in "movies" directory of your child theme)
• Hook based home page, so you can customize it
• Hook based directory page[ you can changed from the list item to whole loop with functions]
• Hook based profile page, change the order of any element of profile page
• Hook based group page, change the order as you want
• and so on…the list is a little bit long to put here.

And don't forget there are a ton of other features.

For More information on how to Use the theme, Please take a look at the documentation section

All the above sections are discussed in detail on here, here and here.

Now, let us watch a couple of Screenshots.

Screenshots:-

Bp Mag 2 Column Fixed Layout:-

Bp Mag single column fixed layout:-

Bp Mag 2 column layout(fluid):-

BP Mag Fluid Width:-

Unified search:-

Single Blog Post:-

Blog Home page(This is not the site home page but the blog home page /blog):-

Profile Page

Category

Members Directory

Group Forum single topic

Admin Options(from current version, It may change when being released):-

Please read the detailed Admin Options here

here is one screenshot.

You can enable/disable individual widget areas. here is a screenshot of most widget areas enabled:-

A few Screenshots from Child Themes

Cosmic Buddy Pro Screen Shots:-

Home Page:-

Profile Page when User is logged In:-

Non Logged User :-

Bp Mag Classic Profile Page Screenshot:-

And a Couple of More Child Theme coming soon.

Download:-https://buddydev.com/themes/bp-mag/

Documentation:-https://buddydev.com/themes/bp-mag/documentation/

Please Note you must be a member of BuddyDev Premium to download this theme.

Happy Social Networking 🙂