How To Override Buddypress Template Files

With Woocommerce, you override Woocommerce’s default template files by creating a directory called ‘woocommerce’ inside your WordPress theme folder and placing all the template files inside that folder (preserving directories structure).

So is there a way where you can do a similar thing with Buddypress in order to customize how Buddypress looks on the front end? Luckily, there is.

The process is very similar. This is what you do:

1. The first thing to do is to have a folder named ‘buddypress’ in your WordPress theme root directory. With Buddypress though, you can also use the name ‘community’ for the directory instead of ‘buddypress’. Use whichever you prefer, but make sure there is only one exists at a time.

So your directory will look something like this:

/wp-content/themes/awesome-theme/buddypress/

OR

/wp-content/themes/awesome-theme/community/

2. Now, all the Buddypress template files are located inside the following folder in the Buddypress plugin:

/wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-templates/bp-legacy/buddypress/

Everything from here on is just like how you override Woocommerce template files. You copy the files inside the directory above into the ‘buddypress’ or ‘community’ directory you created in #1.

Example:

Let’s say you want to customize some text on Buddypress member registration page, you will be copying the file register.php which is located here:

/wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-templates/bp-legacy/buddypress/members/register.php

to here:

/wp-content/themes/awesome-theme/buddypress/members/register.php

Now edit the file as you like.