bbPress Theme Template Files

For those getting into bbPress for hosting your own forum, customizing your bbPress theme files can be difficult if you don’t know which page to load. Many of the bbPress theme template files contain enough clues to figure things out, but not every template file is used by default, or even at all depending on how you’ve configured bbPress. Themes may contain different template files, but the default “bbPress (Twenty Ten)” theme (included with version 2.1.1) may be considered a complete set.

In this post, I’ve listed all of the main template files for bbPress, so the mass of parts contained in the /bbpress/ sub-directory is not included here. Also not included are the JavaScript, CSS, and other self-explanatory files. To illustrate, here is a screenshot showing the files that are covered in this post:

bbPress “main” template-files (dark-blue background)

bbPress main template-files

This isn’t a template hierarchy, just a list of main template files included with the default Twenty Ten theme. Along with any important notes, an example URL be included for each file. So to view any of these files, edit the example URL to something similar that exists on your site. If you’re working with a new installation of bbPress, you may need to create some “test” forums, topics, and replies to invoke all of the different template files. So without further ado..

/bbp-twentyten/archive-forum.php
	the main forum page (lists all forums)
	http://example.com/forums/

/bbp-twentyten/archive-topic.php
	list of topics (from all forums)
	http://example.com/topics/

/bbp-twentyten/bbpress-functions.php
	the bbPress functions file

/bbp-twentyten/single-forum-edit.php
	used for editing single forums
	(also used by BuddyPress for group forums)
	http://example.com/forum/htaccess/edit/

/bbp-twentyten/single-forum.php
	single-forum view
	http://example.com/forum/htaccess/

/bbp-twentyten/single-reply-edit.php
	edit any single reply
	http://example.com/reply/test-post/edit/

/bbp-twentyten/single-reply.php
	view any single reply
	http://example.com/reply/test-post/

/bbp-twentyten/single-topic-edit.php
	edit any single topic
	http://example.com/topic/basics/edit/

/bbp-twentyten/single-topic-merge.php
	merge any single topics
	http://example.com/topic/basics/edit/?action=merge

/bbp-twentyten/single-topic-split.php
	split any single topic
	http://example.com/topic/basics/edit/?action=split

/bbp-twentyten/single-topic.php
	view any single topic
	http://example.com/topic/basics/

/bbp-twentyten/bbpress/single-user-edit.php
	edit any single user
	http://example.com/users/username/edit/

/bbp-twentyten/bbpress/single-user.php
	view any single user
	http://example.com/users/username/

/bbp-twentyten/single-view.php
	template for creating custom pages
	http://example.com/view/popular-topics/
	to see how it works, add this to your functions.php file:

	add_action('bbp_register_views', 'view_popular_topics');
	function view_popular_topics() {
		bbp_register_view('popular-topics', __('Popular Topics'), 
		array('meta_key'=>'_bbp_reply_count', 'orderby'=>'meta_value_num'), false);
	}

/bbp-twentyten/taxonomy-topic-tag-edit.php
	edit any tag
	http://example.com/topic-tag/test/edit/

/bbp-twentyten/taxonomy-topic-tag.php
	view any tag
	http://example.com/topic-tag/test/

Page templates:
(all of these template-files may be viewed/tested by creating 
a page and applying the tamplate-name from the dropdown menu)

/bbp-twentyten/page-create-topic.php
/bbp-twentyten/page-forum-statistics.php
/bbp-twentyten/page-front-forums.php
/bbp-twentyten/page-front-topics.php
/bbp-twentyten/page-topic-tags.php
/bbp-twentyten/page-topics-no-replies.php
/bbp-twentyten/page-user-login.php
/bbp-twentyten/page-user-lost-pass.php
/bbp-twentyten/page-user-register.php

I hope this helps! I’m not a bbPress expert so plz don’t stone me if I missed something obvious (or not so obvious). Cheers!

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Fullstack Developer. Book Author. Teacher. Human Being.