[buddypress-trac] [BuddyPress Trac] #9193: New BuddyPress Standalone theme for buddypress.org

[buddypress-trac]

#9193: New BuddyPress Standalone theme for buddypress.org
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 Reporter:  espellcaste           |       Owner:  espellcaste
     Type:  task                  |      Status:  assigned
 Priority:  high                  |   Milestone:  Under Consideration
Component:  BuddyPress.org Sites  |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  early                 |
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Comment (by SirLouen):

 I have some updates on this topic. Yesterday I had a meeting with
 @johnjamesjacoby coming from the WP mentorship program, and we had the
 opportunity to discuss this topic more deeply and understand better his
 initial reluctance. I apologize for such a long post, but I've tried to
 put all the ideas that came into the meeting without missing much + some
 of the ideas I've been thinking afterward.

 First, and foremost, the idea that @espellcaste suggested about creating
 and using a public repo theme appears to be incompatible with how meta
 sites work because it seems to be considered a security breach. And
 obviously b&bpress.org domains DNS are pointing to such host, so any other
 alternative won't be ever viable (unless you plan to create a brand-new
 domain for this purpose).

 So if we plan to stay on the same domains, we need to go through the
 natural river bed which is the SVN.

 About the SVN, currently JJJ is the only member who has access there, and
 given that we cannot count anymore with @imath for a long while, it seems
 that, from the "Meta team" perspective, is going to be very complex to
 postulate any other member to submit commits there (given that you get
 permissions to submit commits to the whole meta networks, including all
 the wordpress.org sites, which happens to be highly sensitive from the
 meta team perspective). It's "somewhat easy" to get access to the
 administration interface of the sites to publish this and that, for things
 like editing content, but not to the core underlying files (commit
 access). At least for now.

 So if we truly want to make this change, we have to bear with these
 limitations. And at first, JJJ felt a little reluctant about the changes,
 and he expressed that there are 4 elements that should be sorted before
 stepping forward:

 == Main Meeting Topics

 1. Firstly, defining the most important one for him was: What is missing
 in the current site that is worth updating and cannot be updated with what
 we already have. This seems simple, but it's a very complex question, and
 reading through the previous answers in this topic I don't get anything
 clear, apart from the design aspect, which brings us to the second point.
 I've been thinking a lot of this, and now I'm bringing up a couple of
 topics in my ideas section.

 2. Secondly, the design part: how a new design could solve any problems
 that we might be facing now. For this, I have a very short answer: after
 the meeting, my partner asked me about it, and I told her that we were
 discussing the possible new site for the plugins and I gave her the URLs.
 As soon as she went into the pages, she showed surprise because she did
 not see a design like this since the year she finished her major (~2010)
 which happens to be by the time when these sites were built approximately.
 So yes, design is completely outdated and probably one of the main
 elements on why we are thinking about this, because of this
 [[https://i.imgur.com/GD9TiPm.png|this]] and
 [[https://i.imgur.com/aQ7Y1KI.png|this]].

 3. Thirdly, the technical challenges. JJJ was very concerned about the
 multiple integrations that current themes have. For example, as you may
 notice, this track header is the same template, as the buddypress.org
 header. This is just an example, but there seem to be a couple of
 technical complexities like this. And this leads to the fourth and last
 point

 4. Lastly, where is the need of switch the base-theme? He meant, why could
 we not simply add improvements, but over the base theme instead of having
 to "reinstall" a brand new theme from scratch?

 == My ideas

 Here are my conclusions to all these topics

 1. About the "what is missing":
 - Better docs site. Specially Handbooks. Buddypress is already doing a
 wonderful job with currently @emaralive in the had of this work. The same
 will be soon replicated for bbPress (I will take it for now, and hope to
 see someone to take over any time soon). Now, @emaralive is pushing over
 GitHub, which definitely is the way to go. This, added to the possibility
 of an integration as I explained in the previous comments, could make, a
 new template for developer.* or codex.* a massive addition for the b*press
 ecosystem.
 - JJJ as also commenting about the possibility of doing an effort and
 fully integrating bbPress and buddypress profiles with
 profiles.wordpress.org
 - Better news/events section, better Developer relationship section. And
 overall better developer onboarding protocol. I think that WP is doing a
 brutal job in this regard, something that bbPress has never flourished on
 (and I'm not sure about buddypress). Easy to compare this with this.
 - And anything you can add here in the future comments. The more, ideas
 the better to convince JJJ that this has to be done inevitably and asap.
 - The BIG question here is: Can't all this be done in the current theme?
 We need to evaluate this.

 2. About the Design. One of the topics that came during the meeting was
 the fact that the current b&bpress.org themes, were originally exactly the
 same as the wordpress.org theme [[
 https://web.archive.org/web/20130701041320/http://wordpress.org/|which
 goes back to 2013]].

 And WordPress.org has stayed with this base theme until 2022 when they
 finally changed it. And this leads me to think: Why shall we not follow
 WordPress team and simply use their current theme with the right accent
 for each site? Wouldn't it be the simplest way to readapt our sites and
 keep some degree of compliance with the Meta team at a lower development
 cost?

 3. And this leads to my last point: given that we already have some
 templating, why not simply rewriting over it? If we consider this
 WordPress theme idea part, it would be mostly migrating code from one to
 another and then adding any new features we have in mind to it, but
 respecting the current implementation, to tackle the technical
 difficulties more easily (since they are already implemented)
         1. So for example, if we happen to rebuild, just the header, it
 will be easily translatable to the Trac main header, since it will follow
 the same design patterns, but with a new design and menus.
         2. And also, instead of wasting a ton of tempo trying to
 communicate with JJJ who happens to be somehow difficult to communicate
 with, we could be tackling most of the technical elements, but they will
 be present in the current theme implementation, and we will be just
 writing on top of them without replacing.

 == Final Conclusions

 1. According to JJJ, first we need a plan and something to show, not just
 ideas or something fast and poorly cooked that could bring more problems
 than solutions. He is mostly reluctant because he feels that, if at some
 point we end leaving the project, he will be the one having to maintain an
 unfinished project where he has not participated. So he wants to have
 everything clear and in order, to be confident that, in the case this
 event happens in the near future, he could take the lead and keep
 maintaining it as he is currently doing with the current sites.

 2. We require ideas, specially on WHY we would like to move into something
 new and WHAT new we think we need. I've given some ideas, but anything
 extra will be relevant.

 3. We need to start moving the needle in some direction. I'm going to
 start researching on a draft based on what I've written here and see its
 viability.

 4. For now, the BuddyX Theme idea is discarded because it's too complex
 for a swift integration, and the blocks' idea, with Buddyvibes is not
 going to work either. Or we revolve around the current theme with a new
 styling proposed by anyway with design skills around us, or we consider
 the migration of the WordPress current theme idea as I have explained.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/9193#comment:23>
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