I am glad to put an updated version of Bp Nicey today with the vertical navigation back.
Yes, It is for BuddyPress 1.2.x and this version brings back the vertical navigation. The good thing is, It not only brings back the vertical navigation for profile/group but for all the BuddyPress components. I have used some hack and I am sure if some theme developers look at that, there are going to be a flurry of themes with vertical navigation. There is one sweet hack to get it working on all the pages. I will leave it for you all to figure out the hack

Some Screenshots will be good, won’t it?

Screenshots:-

Header with login form

User Profile when viewing as Non logged In user:-

Self profile view for logged in user

Viewing Other Users profile:-

Group Page:-

and finally the members Directory:-

Features In current version:-

• 2 column layout
• Vertical nav for User profile
• vertical nav for group
• vertical nav for any BP component(Be it Achievements/links/events or anything)

Future Update will be mainly concentrated on refractoring the css and making it simple. Currently, the css may contain the remnants of BuddyPress 1.x era.

Hope this theme will of of help to a few of you who are looking for a theme with vertical navigation.

Download &Install

http://buddydev.com/themes/bp-nicey/

And before wrapping the post, I will like to extend my thanks to Ruchi from my team for working hard on the css and putting the fixes here and there. She will be contributing with other themes too and hopefully we will have a lot of new things coming in future. Please keep visiting the site, the week is not over yet, and I have to put a couple of new themes as I promised earlier this week.

Please do let me know your views/suggestions in the comments.

Related posts:

1. BP Nicey: a simple and clean child theme for buddypress
2. Introducing Bp Mag Classic: A Bp Mag child Theme with vertical nav for your BuddyPress Based Sites
3. Cosmic Buddy Rc2:Try the Updated cosmic buddy theme for buddypress now

I had many of you asking for the ways to make cosmic buddy theme work with the group blog. So, here is “CB Group Blog” a child theme of cosmic buddy to use with the group blogs.

What It Is:-

This is a theme which should be used with Group Blog Plugin.

How to Use:-

• Download the theme from here http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/cb-groupblog.zip
• Upload it to wp-content/themes
• Login to wordpress dashboard and make the theme visible from Site Admin->Themes
• Now go to Buddypress->Group Blog setup
• Select CB Group Blog as shown below and save.

• That’s it. From the next time a group blog is created, this theme will be activated automatically, giving a seamless look for group and group blog.

The current theme is 2 columned, so I miss the area for widgets, if you think the same and want a 3 column theme which will allow you to add widgets, please do let me know in comments.

PS:

Also, I will like to clarify regarding the comments you all left last week. I am sorry for not being able to reply them in time, some personal problems caused me  a lot of tiredness and was unable to reply the comments. From today onwards, I promise to reply in time.

Related posts:

1. Cosmic Buddy Rc2:Try the Updated cosmic buddy theme for buddypress now
2. Cosmic Buddy theme for Buddypress 1.2 available now
3. Introducing Cosmic Buddy Pro Theme for BuddyPress Based Social Networks

I am glad to present today another updated version of Cosmic buddy theme.

This is a major update and contains a lot of fixes/features enhancement.

Features Added/Enhanced

• Global Unified search support
• Enhanced Login form using the jquery tools overlay
• Post thumbnail support
• Better Comments
• Support for BP-Gallery
• Support for Bp Flickr Plugin
• Support for Branded Login Plugin
• Support for Username availability check plugin
• Plugin template for Group
• Some enhancement in formatting of text
• Single wp support
• Fixed registration page bug(which showed blog details form even if blog creation was disabled)
• Fixed top menu, Register Link will not show if registration is disabled
• Fixed time display of forum topic
• Page template for Blogs
• Fixed Left menu issue for blog create page
• Random members error on profile fixed
• And around 20 other small fixes/enhancements

one screenshot of login overlay

Go  ahead, download it, test it and let me know the further enhancements

Download

Updated: October 6, 2010

Most recent update: http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/cosmicbuddy-1.1.rc2%20update%201.zip

The above update fixes issue with two deprecated functions in groups-lopp.php and groups’s invite code.

Installation and Usage

Please read these posts for Installation and Usage

http://buddydev.com/buddypress/cosmic-buddy-theme-for-buddypress-1-2-available-now/

http://buddydev.com/buddypress/cosmic-buddy-the-free-theme-to-turn-your-buddypres-to-orkut-style-site/

Where to report The bug:

If you find bugs and want to help in making cosmic buddy better, please report bugs here

http://buddydev.com/bt/index.php/cosmic-buddy/

Plans for future

In recent future, I will be updating theme for better activity listing. This is on my list of todos. Also, We will rewrite the theme for Bp 1.3 to remove the bloating of codes which happened for Bp 1.2 support /upgrade. So the cosmic buddy for bp 1.3 will be completely rewritten keeping the same look and feel but coded for better performance. Also I am working on the documentation to show you how to create child themes of cosmic buddy and how to extend it.   So let us hope for the best.

Looking forward to hear from you all.

Thanks

Brajesh

PS: If you support my work, please do join BpDev.

Related posts:

1. Introducing Cosmic Buddy Pro Theme for BuddyPress Based Social Networks
2. Cosmic Buddy theme for Buddypress 1.2 available now
3. Cosmic Buddy : The free theme to turn your buddypress to orkut style site

Do you miss the wire of buddypress 1.x era. Yes, you can use the activity as wire. You might have seen it on buddypress.org profile.

Here is a screenshot from my dev btw

Thanks to Andrew for asking this question and here is the way to use activity as wire.

How to do it:

You will need to edit at 3 places.

• We will edit members/single/activity.php
• activity/post-form.php and
• functions.php

Step 1: Showing the form on other user’s profile

Let us start with members/single/activity.php

Since we want the post forum to appear on all the users profile, we will change a line in the members/single/activity.php

on line 39-41 in bp-default theme(or find the relevant line in your theme)’s activity file you will see something like this

<?php if ( is_user_logged_in() &&bp_is_my_profile()&&( '' == bp_current_action() || 'just-me' == bp_current_action() ) ) : ?>
<?php locate_template( array( 'activity/post-form.php'), true ) ?>
<?php endif; ?>

Now we need the form on other users profile, so change it to

<?php if ( is_user_logged_in()&&( '' == bp_current_action() || 'just-me' == bp_current_action() ) ) : ?>
<?php locate_template( array( 'activity/post-form.php'), true ) ?>
<?php endif; ?>

So, we have taken out the condition bp_is_myprofile() and now the form will be displayed on other users profile too.

But wait, did you notice that silly drop down below the form which will appear on other users profile as shown above.

No problem, let us tweak the form slightly.

Step2: Customizing the activity post form

Open bp-default(or your theme)/activity/post-form.php

on line no. 36 of the file(or please check the condition in your theme) you will see something like this

<?php if ( function_exists('bp_has_groups') &&!bp_is_my_profile() &&!bp_is_group() ) : ?>

Let us change it to

<?php if (  function_exists('bp_has_groups') &&!bp_is_member() &&!bp_is_group() ) : ?>

We have simply changed the conditional from bp_is_myprofile() to bp_is_member(), so the dropdown will not show on any user’s page. It should look as shown below.

If you have completed the above steps, you should pat on your back, ohh yes, you are 30% done

ok, ok, let us give the final touch.

Step 3: Handling the posting of message

What we need more is we need to handle the special case of using activity form to post on other users profile.

That’s easy. We will remove the ajax action which comes by default in bp-default theme and add our own to handle the update.

Add the following lines to your functions.php

/** all the credit to @apeatling, the code below is a modified version of apeatling's code for function bp_dtheme_post_update in bp-default/_inc/ajax.php */

//let us remove the default handler for activity posting

remove_action( 'wp_ajax_post_update', 'bp_dtheme_post_update' );
//add our own handler for activity posting

add_action(  'wp_ajax_post_update', 'bp_mytheme_post_update' );

/* AJAX update posting */
function bp_mytheme_post_update() {
global $bp;

/* Check the nonce */
check_admin_referer( 'post_update', '_wpnonce_post_update' );

if ( !is_user_logged_in() ) {
echo '-1';
return false;
}

if ( empty( $_POST['content'] ) ) {
echo '-1<div id="message"><p>' . __( 'Please enter some content to post.', 'buddypress' ) . '</p></div>';
return false;
}

if ( empty( $_POST['object'] ) &amp;amp;&amp;amp; function_exists( 'bp_activity_post_update' ) ) {

//this is what I have changed

if(!bp_is_home()&amp;amp;&amp;amp;bp_is_member())
$content="@". bp_get_displayed_user_username()." ".$_POST['content'];
else
$content=$_POST['content'];

$activity_id = bp_activity_post_update( array( 'content' => $content ) );

//end of my changes
} elseif ( $_POST['object'] == 'groups' ) {
if ( !empty( $_POST['item_id'] )&&function_exists( 'groups_post_update' ) )
$activity_id = groups_post_update( array( 'content' => $_POST['content'], 'group_id' => $_POST['item_id'] ) );
} else
$activity_id = apply_filters( 'bp_activity_custom_update', $_POST['object'], $_POST['item_id'], $_POST['content'] );

if ( !$activity_id ) {
echo '-1<div id="message"><p>' . __( 'There was a problem posting your update, please try again.', 'buddypress' ) . '</p></div>';
return false;
}

if ( bp_has_activities ( 'include=' . $activity_id ) ) : ?>
<?php while ( bp_activities() ) : bp_the_activity(); ?>
<?php locate_template( array( 'activity/entry.php' ), true ) ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif;
}

Now go, check others profile and write some message, check their @mention tab and feel good about the wire.

If you take a look closely, there is a catch still there, when you are on other users profile it still asks you what’s new mr. awesome ?, well awesome should be your first name, we need to change it to displayed user’s name, should not we.

So, we need to modify the activity/post-form.php again.

This time, we will modify the following lines(for bp-default, it starts on line no. 17)

<h5>
<?php if ( bp_is_group() ) : ?>
<?php printf( __( "What's new in %s, %s?", 'buddypress' ), bp_get_group_name(), bp_get_user_firstname() ) ?>
<?php else : ?>
<?php printf( __( "What's new %s?", 'buddypress' ), bp_get_user_firstname() ) ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</h5>

Change it to

<h5>
<?php if ( bp_is_group() ) : ?>
<?php printf( __( "What's new in %s, %s?", 'buddypress' ), bp_get_group_name(), bp_get_user_firstname() ); ?>
<?php elseif(!bp_is_home()&&bp_is_member()): ?>
<?php printf( __( "Write something to %s?", 'buddypress' ), bp_get_displayed_user_fullname() ) ;?>
<?php else : ?>
<?php printf( __( "What's new %s?", 'buddypress' ), bp_get_user_firstname() ) ; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

</h5>

And here is the screen shot again

Now your freaking awesome activity as wire setup is ready. Enjoy and feel free to leave your comments/suggestions for further improvement of this already awesome technique

For those of you, who want my modified codes/pages of default theme, I have bundled them as a child theme of bp-default here. You may want to use this wired Child Theme or just move individual files to their respective folders in bp-default(or the child theme for better future updates). Try The wired Child and experiment for more

Download Link:-http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/wired-child.zip

Related posts:

1. Here is the bp-wire for putting the Buddypress wire back to Buddypress 1.2
2. Show BuddyPress community(sitewide) activity on User Profile
3. BP Wire plugin updated

Hi all

Here goes the Rc1 of cosmic buddy for buddpress 1.2.
Please read more about this theme here http://buddydev.com/buddypress/cosmic-buddy-the-free-theme-to-turn-your-buddypres-to-orkut-style-site/

What it does not do

In current version it does not supports multilevel activity commenting

Download

Theme:  http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/cosmicbuddy1.1%20rc1.zip

Addon Plugins

CB Addons v1.1: http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/cb-addons1.1.zip

CB Slides: http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/cb-slides.zip

Bp Wire: http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/bp-wire.zip

For configuration etc please see the post here

http://buddydev.com/buddypress/cosmic-buddy-the-free-theme-to-turn-your-buddypres-to-orkut-style-site/

The only extra thing I have added is sitewide activity widget(since Buddypress has dropped it) and the Bp-Wire.
Be sure to put this line in your bp-custom.php

define("BP_DEFAULT_COMPONENT","profile"); //we want the profile view not the activity view as default

Demo

http://bpthemes.buddydev.com/comicbuddy/
Please let me know the bugs, improvements and anything you want to say about the theme here.

Thanks

Brajesh

PS: this theme supports Bp-Gallery, if you have access to bp-gallery, I have put the theme for gallery with cosmicbuddy, so you don’t have to move any template files.

Related posts:

1. Cosmic Buddy Rc2:Try the Updated cosmic buddy theme for buddypress now
2. Cosmic Buddy : The free theme to turn your buddypress to orkut style site
3. Introducing Cosmic Buddy Pro Theme for BuddyPress Based Social Networks

Date: 11/03/2010

Update : If you are looking for Cosmic Buddy Theme for Buddypress 1.2+, please download it from here

http://buddydev.com/buddypress/cosmic-buddy-theme-for-buddypress-1-2-available-now/

I will accept it, this theme is highly inspired from old orkut theme. Have you used orkut. You will love this clean and elegant adaption to buddypress.

here are the features

• Highly customized theme
• It is not dependent on any theme
• Easy to use

Have a look at the screen shots here(will be updated later today, we are just in the process of updating this site)
and yeh,

So don’t wait , grab this theme from the bottom of this page And turn your buddypress site to an elegant social network.

How to Use

Cosmic Buddy Theme has 7 widget areas.  Please have a look at the image below

• Welcome Section: This is for the home page. Use this section only if you want to show a welcome message or the Slideshow. If you don’t want to show a welcome message/ or slideshow, please do not add any widget to this area.
• Home page First section: if you want the left column of the home page to be a single column(not the double column in the left column),  add widgets here.here is a screenshot, to show what I mean.
• Home Page main col1 and home Page main col2, If you want to use the home page left column as 2 column, use these two widgets. Please note, if you use any of these two widget area, the widgets added to the “Home page First section” will be ignored.  I am using is_active_sidebar methods to test and mutually exclude the widgets. Here is a screenshot.
• Sidebar: This area is used for home page sidebar, registration page sidebar, activation page sidebar. So add what ever widgets you want here.
• Blog Sidebar: It is used for all blog pages(e.g blog home page, single page, page, archive, links, search etc)
• Profile Sidebar top: this area is the right column top area on Internal profile pages. You can use this to display ads. If you don’t add any widget here, this area will be ignored and rest of the right column will be displayed. Here is a screenshot

Cosmic buddy Theme extra addons

• Cosmic Buddy slideshow widget:- We developed this slideshow to make it easy for you to use slideshows with cosmic buddy theme. This widget uses featured content glider from dynamic drive to create the slideshow. Here is a screenshotYou can specify posts from which category/categories(a comma separated list of category ids) should be used as slideshow. The image comes from a custom field “slide-image” currently. So, Please enter the image url in the posts in a custom field “slide-image“. We will change this behaviour and make it easy in the next release. Also, we recommend to not enter the title for the slideshow in the above widget.
• Cosmic Buddy Welcome Widget: This is a slightly modified core welcome widget. It just outputs the widget title only once, while the core widget outputs it twice
• Cosmic buddy search widget: Since we don’t have a sitewide search integrated in the theme, so this addon, enables you to use sitewide search on any/all widget areas.here is a screenshot.
• Cosmic buddy Login widget: This simply puts a login form as a widget when the user is not logged in, when the user is logged in, this widget does not outputs anything.

What Widget Configuration we recommend

Again, It is all your choices , but we strongly recommend to use “welcome-section” only for welcome text/or slideshow.Please do not use welcome section for other widgets.

You should add the login widget to “sidebar”, blog-sidebar”,”profile-sidebar-top”.

Search widget is all your choice, but you can add it to sidebar/ blog-sidebar and profile-sidebartop if interested.

Now you either use “Home page first section” or  a combination of ” Homepage Main col1″  and “Home page main col2″.

Changing Logos

You can change all the three cosmic buddy logo  from theme options in the wordpress backend. Go to Appearance->Theme Options and put the logo image urls there.

here is a screen shot to show theme options.

Download

For Bp 1.2, please go here

http://buddydev.com/buddypress/cosmic-buddy-theme-for-buddypress-1-2-available-now/

For Bp 1.1.x

Download Slideshow widget here: http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/cb-slides.zip

Download other addons(search, login, welcome widget) here  http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/cb-addons.zip

Download cosmic Buddy theme here: http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/cosmicbuddy.zip

Demo Link:http://bpthemes.buddydev.com/comicbuddy/

Please note, the round corners will appear in mozilla, safari, opera, chrome but not in IE as we have used border-radius property for that. There are a few other glitches we know, we will be fixing them in the next release.

Also, this theme was not developed with localization in mind(a shortfall), so may be , there can be problems in localization, but I hope, there should not be many issues. We will be releasing the more appropriately localized version in the next release

I will love to hear from you, what do you think about this theme. Please suggest improvements and report bugs. Looking forward to your further suggestions..

Now it is your turn to let us know, what you liked , what you did not liked and what Improvements you want.

Announcement: Our next major release will be Buddypress Gallery component in next couple of days.  So keep yourself tuned and make sure you have subscribed to BuddyDev Premium before Christmas to avail our 1 Month Free membership on any of the membership plan you choose.

Related posts:

1. Cosmic Buddy Rc2:Try the Updated cosmic buddy theme for buddypress now
2. Cosmic Buddy theme for Buddypress 1.2 available now
3. Introducing Cosmic Buddy Pro Theme for BuddyPress Based Social Networks

Update Feb 27, 2010: Please download Bp-nicey for Buddypress 1.2 here http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/bp-nicey%201.2.zip .The activity needs some more work and there may be some other issues, please do report.

I am glad to announce here the release of  BP Nicey, a blue shade adaption of the default buddypress theme. It is a child theme which depends on buddypress theme bp-sn-parent.

Here are some of the screen shots to give you an Idea, how it Looks like.

features:-

• Easily Customizable
• Clean and Elegant
• Child theme
• Custom header and footer

What is more, we are actively developing it, So if you have any suggestions/improvements, point us and we will be glad to incorporate.

Why This theme:

Because we love buddypress much more and there has been a lack of theme for buddypress, so we are trying to fill that gap. Keep yourself tuned for more to follow soon.

yeh, our next free theme cosmic buddy will be available this week. I will be writing about it in my next follow up post

Screen shots:

Download Link:

Version 1.2.1(For Buddypress 1.2+)

http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/bp-nicey1.2.1.zip

Older version(For Buddypress 1.1.3)

Version 1.2(Feb 27,2010)

http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/bp-nicey%201.2.zip

Version 1.o(for bp 1.x)

http://buddydev.com/http//buddydev.com/public-download/bp-nicey.zip

Installation

1. Unzip bp-nicey.zip
2. Upload bp-nicey to your wp-content/themes
3. Go to SiteAdmin->Themes and Enable this theme or Go to SiteAdmin->Blogs, click edit and enable this theme for the blog on which buddypress is active.
4. Go to Themes->appearance and activate this theme.
5. Appearance->widgets and add/remove widgets, that’s it you are done.

Please help us to improve it more. Leave a comment with suggestions here or if you are a premium member, please post in the forum.

I will like to hear from you, what features you want in your buddypress theme. Do not hesitate to tell us. We are here to help you

Related posts:

1. BP Nicey theme for BuddyPress Updated with Vertical Nav
2. CB Group Blog: A child theme of Cosmic Buddy for group Blogs
3. Cosmic Buddy Rc2:Try the Updated cosmic buddy theme for buddypress now