Initial instructions

[Michael Eisenwasser]

We don’t have a full tutorial section for this new mobile only theme yet, but that is coming soon. In the mean time here is a quick intro explaining how to set up this theme.

You can run it as your main theme, but we expect many people will want to target it directly at mobile devices and run another theme for desktops. You can easily set up targeting using the Mobile Smart plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/mobile-smart/

Just set whatever theme you want to use on desktops as the current theme, in Appearance > Themes, then set BuddyBoss Super Mobile to target phones and tablets in the Mobile Smart settings.

Some caveats:

1. Customizer: Whichever theme is currently running will take over the Customizer settings. So if you want to edit the colors and other customizer settings for BuddyBoss Super Mobile, you will need to temporarily set it as your main theme, make your edits, and then switch back. The customizer settings are stored in the database, so once they are set they will work.

2. Widgets: The widgets provided with the theme will only work if BuddyBoss Super Mobile is set as your main theme. If you are targeting it to mobile devices using a plugin like Mobile Smart, then your main theme’s widgets will be the only ones that display, and even then, only on the desktop view. This has to do with how WordPress works – you can’t push widgets into two themes at the same time.

[Alyssa]

@style960 FYI

[Paul]

@tjchester Yeah just spotted this, had a quick play with the demo, will be buying today. Super fast support, thanks!

[angslycke]

The idea of a mobile only version of BuddyBoss is great! I think your mobile theme is your unique selling point and I’m very impressed by it. However, the desktop styles are not as great looking yet and this is what’s keeping me from switching even though I’ve already bought the BuddyBoss theme.

One big problem with the setup with two different themes using the Mobile Smart plugin is the widgets problem mentioned above. I tried using two different themes and ended up without widgets on mobiles. That’s not gonna work for me unfortunately.

[Alyssa]

@angslycke Welcome to the BuddyBoss community! Perhaps another theme switcher plugin might work, I’ve heard good things about this one: https://wordpress.org/plugins/multi-device-switcher/ but I’m not sure if the same issue exists.

[angslycke]

@tjchester Thanks! Perhaps, but @michael says above that because of how WordPress works, it’s impossible to push widgets to two different themes at the same time, so probably not.

[Alyssa]

@angslycke perhaps you can program them in manually through the theme? Just a suggestion, no idea if it will work.

[Paul]

@tjchester @angslycke The FAQ in this plugin deals with serving different widgets to different themes, not tried it myself yet – https://wordpress.org/plugins/device-theme-switcher/

[angslycke]

@style960 Wow, that looks really promising! Thanks! Looks like it’s easy to use either the same or different menus and widgets for the respective themes using that plugin. Perhaps “Device Theme Switcher” is a better plugin to recommend for BuddyBoss Super Mobile?

[Alyssa]

@angslycke let me know how it works out for you. Would love some feedback.

[Nicola]

the plugin Device Theme Switcher mantain the widget settings of main theme?

[Paul]

You could try the Device Theme Switcher plugin I’ve noted above. I haven’t tried the particular function myself yet, but that does allow for pushing the same widgets to different themes. Have a look at the instructions on the plugin’s page on WordPress.org.

[Michael Eisenwasser]

Thanks for posting about that plugin. Yeah, you can use any theme switcher plugin with this theme. But they all present the same problem, including Device Theme Switcher, that you can only have one set of widgets (the ones that load in your main theme). The main theme is the one that has widgets set for it in the database. Their suggested solution is to replicate the exact same widget functions in your mobile theme (same widgets exactly), so that the widgets work in both. It’s probably the only solution.

[angslycke]

My site is now live using the Device Theme Switcher plugin and the BuddyBoss Theme in mobiles only. Loving it so far!

I didn’t succeed in loading the same widgets/sidebars to the BuddyBoss theme so I ended upp adding a new sidebar which is for mobile only. Works well for me since on mobiles the theme is in a one-column view anyway.

This is what I inserted into bp-custom.php in the /plugins/ directory of WordPress:

function sidebar_mobiler() {

register_sidebar(array(
	'name' => __('Sidebar mobiler'),
	'id'=> 'sidebar-mobiler',
	'description' => 'Visas bara i temat BuddyBoss Child på mobiltelefoner',
	'before_widget' => '<div id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
	'after_widget' => '</div>',
	'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
	'after_title' => '</h2>')
);

}
add_action( 'widgets_init', 'sidebar_mobiler' );

and then I added this to footer.php in my BuddyBoss Child Theme Directory:

<?php dynamic_sidebar('Sidebar mobiler'); ?>

The sidebar shows up in the normal widgets area in wp-admin and it’s easy to add widgets there. I’d also like to recommend the excellent plugin Dynamic Widgets which lets you use different widgets for logged in versus logged out users, among many other functions. Link:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/dynamic-widgets/

I might have left something out, been working with this in my spare time for a couple of weeks. Let me know!