I'm transitioning from PeepSo to FluentCommunity at my main site - which theme?
I've disabled PeepSo, and FluentCommunity is working. Peepso uses its own theme called Gecko, which I'd also like to replace - which WordPress themes have FC users found to work really nicely with FluentCommunity?
TT25 :)
I just finished the switchover from PeepSo to FluentCommunity myself, actually coming back to FC about a year ago when I went to PeepSo.
The best actual WordPress Theme that I've found that just works, and is responsive so far is the Free Kadence Theme with the free Kadence Blocks. Kadence is a hybrid of a Classic Theme and a Block Theme, and it just works really well with FC.
David Fore Thanks David. I'm doing all the transitioning/migrating at a staging site, so I'll check out Kadence there. I've heard good things about it.
Tony Rockliff Your Welcome. I have 3 separate Community sites myself. One of them I rebuilt from the ground up when I started making the switch from PeepSo to FC, and that was a huge task. The next 2 sites I learned how to edit the File System and Database so that I could get my websites as "clean" to like-new as possible by deleting a bunch of stuff that PeepSo, wpforo, Wordfence, and a few other plugins left behind.
And this made the transition and rebuilding the last 2 sites a lot more manageable and easier. It's just a bit nerve racking, for me at least, to have to edit the file system and database to delete files, folders, and drop tables. But, I was able to get it done and my sites are all now WAY MORE mobile friendly and responsive just switching over from the PeepSo Block Theme to the Kadence (free) Theme, and from PeepSo to FC, and dropping Wordfence and wpforo totally.
I'm not looking back, I and my members are way more happier now, and it's only been a little over a week since I've done all of this. If I can help with anything, just reach out, I'm always around somewhere in someone's FC Community. 😀
David Fore Thanks very much for your kind offer. That's impressive that you became able to edit the file system and the database.
When I looked at what was involved in migrating all the users, their posts, private messages, and chats over to Fluent from Peepso, I decided on a different approach. I installed a WordPress plugin called NovaMira, which gives Claude Code direct access to every aspect of the WordPress site at the PHP and CSS level. It can basically do anything to a WordPress site that a server admin could do.
I just told him what I wanted him to do and he did it, even when both Peepso and other plugins were saying it was impossible. Claude just rewrote the plugins to make it possible. It saved me a great deal of time and work, as his understanding and depth of knowledge within the inner workings of WordPress far exceed my own.
Tony Rockliff Nice. I haven't used Claude Code yet, I've been using Google's Gemini lately. That sounds pretty impressive that Claude rewrote the plugins for that type of migration. The only concern that comes to mind right now is, what happens when an update to the plugins is sent out by the original plugin developers? Does Claude's edits remain or will he need to rewrite them for the update? That would be the only thing that would worry me.
And if you've ever worked with any type of file system on a computer like "File Explorer" on a Window's machine or the "Finder" on a Mac, editing your website's file system is pretty much straight forward if you just take it slow and make sure you have everything backed up in multiple places, just in case you delete the wrong file or drop the wrong tables from the database. 😀
For me, I learn best by "Trial & Error", I've learned more by screwing something up and having to fix it myself than I ever had just reading a "How To" on it. I've totally messed up my computers in the past messing with the core files, and bios settings and such; and even today by really messing up my websites. If there's one thing I've learned = BACKUPS! 😆
David Fore In Peepso my current theme is the Gecko theme, which is heavily customized. As soon as I switch over to Astra or Kadence, the site falls apart. What kind of problems and/or solutions did you run into when switching from Gecko to Kadence?
Tony Rockliff I just basically rebuilt anything that was off or messed up. When I just did this latest transition of my sites (I have 2 running Kadence Free, and one, our Academy site running the MasterStudy LMS Premium "University" Theme Template").
When I moved over from PeepSo back to FC, I was using the PeepSo Block Theme, and it really looked messed up all over because Kadence isn't specifically a "Block Theme" for FSE (Full Site Editing). Kadence is a "Hybrid" theme, meaning it uses blocks for page building but still also uses the classic wordpress theme customizer.
What I did was just put my site "Under Construction" and took the time (a day or two) to rebuild the pages and layout that isn't transferring over correctly. I used the free plugin "Under Construction". I sent out a public warning/notice to all Community members letting them know the site would be down for 2 days, and just focused solely on that.
But, since Gecko is a "Classic" theme, you should be able to open any page, click on the 3 dots in the top right corner and click on "Copy All Blocks", then create a new page in the site running the Kadence Theme and paste the copied page in there. This is what I did with some of my stuff.
Also, just a note. I'm not sure if your aware or not but, PeepSo has "Groups" and "Pages". FC has "Spaces" that are akin to PeepSo's "Groups", with the only caveat that only admins can create Spaces; whereas in PeepSo you can set it to where any community member can create a "Group" or "Page". FC doesn't have a "Pages" option.
David Fore thanks David. Yes I am aware about groups and pages. I never actually got around to using pages so I won't miss them.
David Fore thanks David, my pages are built in Beaver Builder. When you say blocks, I assume you're referring to WordPress blocks, which I don't use. I showed Claude Code a screenshot of one of the pages with the Gecko theme and one of the pages messed up by Kadence. He said it wouldn't be too much of a problem to sort it all out. This is a part of what he said:
"What you're really looking at is just CSS differences between the two:
- Dark background → easy global setting in any theme
- Purple/magenta accent colours → set once in theme colour palette
- Typography → one-time configuration
The Beaver Builder content (layouts, modules, all the actual page content) transfers perfectly to any theme — BB is completely theme-agnostic.
The things that would be work:
- Recreating the header/nav styling
- The PeepSo sidebar icons and community nav items"
Tony Rockliff That sounds about right based upon different things I've heard here and there over the years. I haven't used Beaver Builder, so I can't say anything about it, as I know nothing about it, except that it's a WordPress Page Builder. It seems that if Claude Code is as good as I've heard people say he is at writing code, then having him recreate the correct CSS for this move shouldn't be a problem for him, but again, I don't know because I haven't dabbled with Claude Code yet either.
I do know that the Header and Navigation styling inside the FC portal doesn't rely on your Theme's Navigation and Styling as the FC header/navigation/styling are built in (hard-coded I guess is what it's called) into the FC portal. I've heard that there is a way to greatly modify the FC portal header/navigation, but again, I've not messed with that, so I wouldn't have any idea where to start to do that.
Sorry, I'm not being any more help at this point with this stuff here, but maybe someone else in the Community can chime in about it. 😀
David Fore Yes, Claude Code had no trouble modifying the FC Portal page navigation bar for me. The nav bar it was referring to above was the main site nav bar.
Tony Rockliff Awesome!
David Fore I misspoke. It wasn't that he rewrote the plugins. It was that he created his own "must-use" plugin for all his additional code for the additional features that I needed. I've done much of the same as you: messing up in the real world and learning the vital importance of constant backups!