Plugin – BP Template Overloader

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bp-template-overloader/

When getting into the more serious end of customising BuddyPress, one of the options is to overload one or more BuddyPress Templates – see Changing the Default Behaviour of BuddyPress. To the novice and even to the more advanced site manager this can seem daunting – there are a great many files stored in multiple directories. There’s also the complexity that overloads are theme specific – change your theme and you need to move the overload files. If you run multiple sites, keeping track of exactly which overloads are in place can be a challenge.

There is also the hidden pitfall of overloading where overloaded files no longer get updated with any changes. Whilst these files do not change very option it’s an increased burden in terms of needing to keep an eye on changes to BuddyPress in order to make sure your site stays current.

In addition to this there is also the question of potential migration to BP Nouveau when it comes along. BP Nouveau is the latest box of tricks thought up by the BuddyPress team; a new theme for your BuddyPress pages! you will need to get to know this new theme, decide if you wish to implement it and if so what impact does that have on your overloads?

BP Template Overloader is an attempt to make the overloading process much more accessible and easier to manage, it provides a simple yet powerful interface which displays all available overload files along with their status, where overload files are detected it provides a viewer that compares the overload with the current BP master file. Template Overloader also provides the ability to migrate to a Theme Independent Overload. It’s also built to help you migrate to the forthcoming BP-Nouveau theme should you want to.

BP Template Overloader sets up a new page in the Admin>>Tools>>BP-Template-Overloader that provides a graphical interface showing all template files. As the page loads it scans for Template Independent Overloads in the wp-content/bp-template-overloads directory. It also scans for any Theme Dependent Overloads in the themes/current-theme/buddypress directory.

BP Template Overloader uses this information to provide a list of template files and overload status. These files can be viewed and compared. When Nouveau is released it will also allow it’s files to be compared with those of BP-Legacy.

With BP Template Overloader you can choose to enable either type of overload for a given template file, you can also migrate between one type and the other, in addition you can disable/restore any particular overload file.

Hopefully this will make BP overloads much more accessible since it allows each file to be easily inspected. It should also mke the process of managing overloaded sites a lot easier.