Updating

View the Release Notes to see the updates and changed files from every release.

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Automatic Update

Just log into your admin and click on Dashboard > Updates and you should see the most recent version of your product available as an automatic update. For themes, if you have made edits to your main theme, please make sure to back it up! Auto-updating will completely override you main theme. We recommend adding all custom edits into your child theme to make it super easy to implement updates.

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Manual Update

Downloading the theme

While logged in, click the “My Account” link under your profile icon at the top of the site, and then go to your Downloads tab, to download the current version. Using this method you will have two separate downloads – one for the parent theme and another for the child theme.

Implementing theme updates

1. Download the current version of the theme.
2. Back up your website files before proceeding! This plugin helps.
3. View the Release Notes to see the list of all updated files.
4. Copy over all updated files to your website via FTP, or upload the entire theme folder via Appearance > Themes (only if you have not edited code in your copy of the theme).

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Editing Styles

Basic

For most people’s needs you won’t have to edit any code at all. Just head over to Appearance > Customize.

Advanced

For those of you who want to really customize your site with your own CSS, you should never edit the core styles in the /css/ folder of the parent theme as we often edit these files to fix issues or add features in theme updates. We strongly encourage you to avoid editing the parent theme and use a child theme instead.

If you plan on editing any CSS, we recommend adding all of your edits to /css/custom.css in your child theme so that you can implement our theme updates without losing your edits. Any styles added to this stylesheet will override styles set in the parent theme’s /css/ folder. Read more on this subject in our guide to building a BuddyBoss child theme.

If you want to disable the front-end CSS output of the admin options (theme customizer) entirely, you can add this function into your child theme:

// Remove customizer CSS output
add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'remove_buddyboss_customizer_css') ;
function remove_buddyboss_customizer_css() {
remove_action('wp_head', 'buddyboss_customizer_css');
}

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Child Themes

As mentioned above, if you plan on editing your theme at all you should strongly consider using a child theme. A child theme allows for much easier theme updating as you can safely overwrite all of the parent theme’s files. Read our guide to building a BuddyPress child theme.