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