BuddyPress Theme Development is a book written by Tammie Lister. This book illustrates that you shouldn’t be afraid to jump into creating BuddyPress themes, because it’s not as scary as some might think! You will learn everything from BuddPress basics to some advanced BuddyPress functionality and of course you will will learn how to create your own BuddyPress theme from scratch.
WebDevStudios co-founder Brian Messenlehner, was a technical reviewer for BuddyPress Theme Development published by Packt Publishing.
Here is what Tammie said about her book:
When I started writing BuddyPress Theme Development, I had 4 goals (along with providing a good resource for creating themes):
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Blow away the myth that creating BuddyPress themes is hard.
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Encourage readers to tailor their experience, choosing which components are critical to their success.
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Raise the quality of BuddyPress themes and highlight good theme practices.
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Encourage people to get involved with the BuddyPress project.
In true WDS fashion, we are going to be doing a giveaway for this book! We will be giving away 3 copies of BuddyPress Theme Development.
Rules For Entry:
- Comment on this post about why you’re interested in the BuddyPress Theme Development book. Make it interesting and give us a little back story on your involvement (or hopeful involvement) with BuddyPress.
- The giveaway will run from Wednesday, 11/27/3013 until Monday, 12/16/2013.
- The contest will begin on Wednesday the 7th, at 10am and end on Monday the 16th at 1pm EST.
- At 2pm EST on Monday the 16th, we will pick who we think is the well deserving winner of the book! (Make sure your email is attached to your comment in some way so we can contact you if you’ve won.)
We love doing giveaways because it’s an opportunity to give back to the WordPress community! We look forward to reading all about your BuddyPress experiences and what you’re hoping to accomplish with it. If after the contest, you do not win a copy of the book, you are always welcome to purchase it from Packt Publishing. Good luck!
I like free things. Seriously though, I’m currently working on my first MultiSite website and that was scary since all I’ve ever done is single-site WordPress themes. It’s not so bad but themeing wp-signup.php is proving to be a damn chore. Anyway BP is something I’d like to explore later on down the line especially since I’m gaining familiarity with MultiSite now and I think the book might mike that jump a little less daunting.
I am building communities for the last years, and I need a new solid base to build the best Buddypress themes as possible. So this is a huge opportunity to me.
I’ve been using WP/BP with K12 students for about 6 years now. In that time I know I should have buckled down and learned how to create a theme, but it’s something the community always provided. In the BP1.2x days, it seemed that any time you strayed from the default, plugins would break functionality or throw off formatting. It was always easier to maintain a child of the default. I didn’t stray too far past a custom header, or maybe a small CSS tweak.
When theme compatibility came along, this changed so that any well developed theme could be used, but I knew that I was missing out on some of the advanced customization I could pull off if I built a theme that was intended for BP, and not just able to display it correctly.
I develop (I use that term loosely, because much of my development relies on plugins that I merely activate) a site for K12 students at http://commons.hwdsb.on.ca and think it’s time to up my game and create something special and unique for that community.
I really liked the sample chapter available on the book page and now I am even more thirsty to win the entire book.
I have never used BuddyPress, but want to jump on. Of course I’ll need my own theme :). Excited to learn both basics and advanced functionality. Plus I like to read. And WordPress. So pick me? Do it, you won’t. Maybe? Please! I’ll be your best friend.
In all seriousness, love you guys.
I’ve used buddypress before, but I really felt lost… I’m eager to learn how to make it more appealing and functional on what my site needs
BuddyPress does look really good, I’ve installed and hacked about with it locally but, I must admit it does look a little scary at times. We have a couple of private UK schools on our books and BuddyPress looks like the ideal solution for those type of clients, teachers, staff, students, parents, groups etc. I’m just not confident about knowing I’m hacking it the right way or not. This book could prove very useful to me!
I’ve tried to develop BuddyPress theme but honestly didn’t feel as comfortable as I am with WordPress development. Primary reason is that the BP community isn’t as vast as it is for WordPress. Its been 2 years since I’ve started WordPress development however, I regret to say this that when only 1 time that I picked up BuddyPress to develop – I felt that I was going no where.
This book would help me a lot as much as WordPress Development book by Brad helped me. If I get this giveaway, this would be my first & only Christmas gift (primarily because Christmas is not celebrated as much in India ). I know I’m late in commenting .. almost at the end, but I really hope you guys select me.
A long long time ago in a land far away, there was a WordPress project. But this WordPress project had a terrible, terrible affliction. One that would blight its life for the rest of its days. Yes. This poor, sad, project had…
…scope creep!!!!
By day, the project had the appearance of simplicity and contentment. By night, however, the project turned into the nightmare project-beast from hell. It was trapped. Under a spell. Cursed!
Day after day, week after week, month after month, the project grew in ugliness. Until, one day, The Creator decided that something had to be done. The Creator had spells of his own. But some were untried! Some were written in unintelligible, foreign tongues. One such spell promised to help break the project free from the curse. This was the BuddyPress spell.
The Creator had never uttered the incantations of BuddyPress. He was unfamiliar with the runes and symbols written.
But there was no other way. He had to try.
And try he did. The words were spoken.
Only…he didn’t get them quite right. The project grew less ugly and less complex. But The Creator couldn’t help feeling that the spell’s effect was not complete. Something was missing. The spell’s power was tainted.
He needed a new spell book. One without faded runes and tattered edges. One that would help him break the project free from the curse once and for all.
—
Yes, this sounds like a fairy tale. But I did run this project. It did start off as plain WordPress, experience scope creep, turn into BuddyPress and then become full of poorly implemented BuddyPress code because, frankly, I didn’t know what I was doing.
The site is pretty amazing. It’s a closed community of people with a public face that runs on a heavily customized BuddyPress platform. It has a private, BuddyPress back-end with some, selected content, being moderated (through a custom front-end) and automatically posted (as categorized posts) to the WordPress front-end. Users can submit posts by email and SMS text message. Users get emailed digests of selected content both daily and weekly. Users are all over the world, have public profiles, and appear on a Google map with links to their profiles. The site’s front-end even has a WPML-based dutch translation!
But the site needs some serious redevelopment. The scope continued to creep after launch and I’d added some hooks that were changed in a more-recent version of BP that meant that I couldn’t upgrade without some serious thought and changes in the code that the client can’t really afford.
I can’t help but feel that, had I had a book about BP development, I’d have done things the right way from the outset and not ended up in the pickle that I’m in now with clunky, legacy code hooked into the wrong places.
I’d love to use BP again on future projects, but I feel I have a half-knowledge of BP theme development. A book like this would fill in the gaps, and help my next job to be far more professional, maintainable, slicker and generally better.
In the words of a certain donkey from a certain fairy tale film: “Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!”