After reading the documentation on buddy press a new strategy has been used during the redesign of the community flats website.

Firstly I do not need to copy all the files from the buddy press default theme as I had assumed as we only need to create ones to override the default ones if the theme is created correctly.

So to start I created a new directory called theflat.  Inside this we create the style.css file which has a header this is the key into creating a theme that inherits from the default theme.  The header should look as follows:
/*
Theme Name: The Community Flat
Theme URI: http://www.redkiteweb.co.uk/index.php/category/projects/theflat/
Description: The Community Flat Theme for Buddy Press
Version: 1.0
Author: RedKiteWeb
Author URI: http://www.redkiteweb.co.uk/
Template: bp-default
Tags: buddypress, two-column, grey, dark
*/

This has the details of the theme.  A breakdown of these lines is as follows:

1. Theme Name: The name of the theme.
2. Theme URI: The location of the details.
3. Description: The description of the theme.
4. Version: The version of the theme.
5. Author: The Author of the theme.
6. Author URI: The location of the authors site.
7. Template:  This detail of the header is important as this is the details of the parent template that will be used.  In the above case bp-default is the buddy press default theme.
8. Tags: This is a list of features of the theme.  IMPORTANT if the theme is to be used as a buddy press theme the list of tags must include the tag BuddyPress.

Once this style sheet has been created we can start to change the theme itself.

The old posts have now been added to the site, along with the plugin “Category Sticky posts” this allows posts to be made features of categories.

So now the prep work has been completed I can start to make changes to the design of the site.

The first things to do will be to take a copy of the original theme and make a copy of if renaming it with a more appropriate name.

The header image will ge designed and uploaded ready for use.

In keeping with the old site there will be quite a few CSS modifications for colour changes as the old site was a dark theme we want to keep this new theme as a dark theme but the default design we are using is a light theme.

So the old site has now been backed up.  Word press installed along with the buddy press plugin.

There are still a couple of changes that need to be made first these being the restoration of previous articles into the word press site along with the upload of the images that were uploaded into the old site.

Once these tasks are completed the redesign can start to take place.

It seems it is time the community flat web site is updated.

This was originally a custom written .NET application by myself but I am going to move this site to a word press site with the buddy press plugin.

First things to do will be to take a backup of the current site so we do not loose any of the information or photos on the current site as some of these will need to be reused in the new design.  After backing up work can start on installing word press then the buddy press plugin.

And the the redesign can begin in earnest.