Groups Forums integrates automatically with the active theme. It does not impose a specific look on forums, instead it uses the active theme to represent forums and topics, just like normal categories and posts are displayed.
If you would like to adjust the way things are displayed, you can use WordPress’ template system to customize how forums and topics are rendered.
In your active theme, add a groups-forums folder. You can provide template files in that folder for the type of page you want to customize, for example:
single-topic.php used to display a topic
taxonomy-forum.php used to display the topics in a forum
taxonomy-forum-support.php to target a specific forum, here for example the Support forum with the support slug
archive-topic.php for other forum archives
Default templates, which can also be used to derive your own, are provided in the plugin’s templates folder. Included are a single-topic.php and a taxonomy-forum.php template.
Help with theme-specific templates
If you need help with theme-specific templates and your theme is a free theme that can be downloaded, contact us on support at itthinx dot com with a link to where the theme can be obtained and ask for help on theme-specific templates for Groups Forums.
If your theme is a premium theme, do the same and provide access to a copy of the theme so we can test it. Make sure you are the theme author or the author has given consent to do this.
Once theme-specific templates have been created, these will be added to the Groups Forums Templates repository on GitHub.
Contributing theme-specific templates
If you want to contribute theme-specific templates, fork the Groups Forums Templates repository on GitHub, add a subfolder called groups-forums for the theme with the template files within it and issue a pull request.
If your theme is a free theme that can be downloaded, please add a readme.txt with a link to where it can be obtained.
If your theme is a premium theme, please include a link to where it can be obtained as well and provide access to a copy of the theme so your theme-specific templates can be tested.
For premium themes, make sure you are the theme author or the author has given consent to do this.
Pull requests for themes we can not test will not be granted.
Example: Assuming you’re using a theme called Foobar that is in wp-content/themes/foobar, add the theme templates in wp-content/themes/foobar/groups-forums. To have it added to the repository, fork it, add the foobar/groups-forums folder to the root of the repository and issue a pull request.
You should end up with the following folder structure:
groups-forums-templates (the root folder of this repository)
- foobar (a new subfolder for the theme)
- groups-forums (a subfolder for the groups-forums templates)
readme.txt
single-topic.php
taxonomy-forum.php