Upgrading to BuddyBoss 2.1.1

BuddyBoss 2.1.1 is designed to work with the recently released BuddyPress 1.6 update. It may not work correctly with previous versions of BuddyPress. In the past, in order to update to a new version of the theme all you had to do was copy the files documented in the Release Notes. However BuddyBoss 2.1.1 is a complete code rewrite and thus the upgrade requires that you completely override your theme with a fresh copy of BuddyBoss 2.1.1. BuddyPress 1.6 was itself a major update (nearly a year in the making) and we needed to rewrite the theme for full compatibility and feature updates.

How to update

1. Backup all of your files from your copy of BuddyBoss! Backup your database!
2. Update to BuddyPress 1.6 via the WordPress dashboard, at Dashboard > Updates. Follow the onscreen instructions.
3. Download BuddyBoss 2.1.1 using the link in your purchase email. Upload it to your site and activate it.
4. Take any custom edits from your old site and carefully move them into a child theme.
5. Make sure to follow the updated general Setup Instructions for BuddyBoss 2.1.

How to edit styles

If you plan on editing your stylesheet, we recommend adding all of your edits to _inc/css/custom.css(introduced in version 1.1) so that you can implement our theme updates without losing your edits. Any styles added to this stylesheet will override styles set in _inc/css/default.css. So if you want to define a style that is already defined in _inc/css/default.css, simply copy the style into _inc/css/custom.css and make your edits there.

You should never edit _inc/css/default.css as we edit this file in virtually every theme update. Use_inc/css/custom.css, or a child theme (described below).

We recommend using Firebug for Firefox to inspect HTML and see how any element within the theme is being styled: http://getfirebug.com/

Use a child theme

If you plan on editing a lot of files in the theme, you should strongly consider using a child theme. A child theme allows for extremely easy theme updating as you can safely overwrite all of the parent theme’s files. Read our guide to building a BuddyPress child theme.