How to make a social network out of WordPress. Buttons from API. Adding social media buttons without a plugin. Method for advanced users
Let's take a look at some WordPress themes made specifically for social media.
1. Mingle – Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
If you are creating your social network with using BuddyPress, you need Mingle with its features and design. Developed by the elite team at Parallelus, Mingle is tailor-made for the BuddyPress platform and comes with a ton of great features.
Features of this theme:
- contact field editor
- sidebar generator
- HTML5 + CSS3 support
- SEO-friendly code
- blogs
- portfolio
- slide show
- shortcodes
- many other features.
2. Salutation Responsive WordPress + BuddyPress Theme
With the release of Salutation, it's safe to say that Parallelus understands exactly what it takes to create good design. First of all, it is worth noting that Salutation is a 100% responsive product - your social network will work perfectly on different mobile devices with any screen size.
Additionally, Salutation has some cool features:
- Revolution slider
- drag and drop capability
- unlimited choice of colors
- popup login fields
- easy settings
- blogs
- widgets
- intuitive admin panel
- sidebar generator
- portfolio
- BuddyPress compatible
- shortcodes
- much more.
3. Woffice – Intranet/Extranet WordPress Theme
This theme has many features, a wide range of functions, among which we can mention high standards coding, regular updates and excellent support. You can use Woffice to create social networks, internal and external networks or communities for schools, workplaces, businesses and government agencies.
Features of this theme:
- BuddyPress feature support
- file manager
- icons
- chat and messaging
- forums
- Google fonts
- responsive design
- demo version
- documentation
- video lessons
- calendar
- shortcodes
- bbPress
- WMPL support
- clean code
- unlimited number of sidebars
- custom widgets
- user login pages
- online store.
4. Serpent – Responsive Social Network Theme
This theme has so many features that you will probably never need some of them. Serpent is a one of a kind WordPress theme that can take your website to the next level. new level. It's simply impossible to do anything wrong with her.
The developers of this theme are the respectable Cosmothemes team.
Main characteristics of the theme:
Price includes future updates and 6 months of support.
5. UnitedCommunity – BuddyPress Theme
UnitedCommunity is a multifunctional WordPress theme for social networks from the respectable team at Diabolique. This new topic, released September 2, 2015.
Its notable features:
- eye-catching, unique and responsive design
- more than 40 internal pages
- widgets on the home page
- ease of installation and configuration
- WooCommerce compatible
- custom widgets
- pop-up notifications
- WPML support
- Google fonts
- drop down menus
- much more.
6. Klein – A Nitty Gritty Community Theme
If you are looking for the perfect WordPress theme for your social network, pay attention to Klein. It provides users with the opportunity to work with a fully functional social network and has a wide range of capabilities.
Your users can send unlimited amount messages, share events, add contacts, discuss ideas on forums and create beautiful profiles users. You can take advantage of Klein's WooCommerce compatibility and sell products to members of your network. Additionally, Klein supports WordPress 4.4, bbPress and BuddyPress, giving you the ability to turn your WordPress site into a popular social network.
Other features include:
- visual editor
- custom colors
- Revolution slider
- WPML compatible
- responsive design
- intuitive admin panel
- SEO-friendly code
- 6 different headers + layouts
- support social media
- 1000+ font icons
- notifications
- many other functions.
To create using WordPress powerful social network, you need to think about more than just choosing a plugin and theme. You will also need to take care of choosing quality hosting, as well as promoting your site in search engines. Regarding working with plugins, try it first different variants, and then make your final choice.
Note
Creation of a social network on WordPress based- the process is simple. All you need is a business plan, a social media plugin, and a compatible theme. Remember, you can choose any theme and customize it to your liking, but social media themes will save you time by offering many options.
You could even say that traffic from social media. networks are much better and safer than search networks. But to attract him, you need to give site users convenient ways interactions through social networks.
Placing social media buttons on your project
The easiest way to add social buttons. networks to your website under WordPress management- This is to install a special plugin and place the corresponding widget. Unfortunately, there is no universal plugin capable of performing both regular functions (like, repost) and additional ones (voting, locking content). But this problem can be solved by installing several.
There are various plugins for them that embed a social widget. networks to the site, one of which is Easy Social Share Buttons. This is a lightweight and fast plugin that allows you to place buttons on more than 40 social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, VKontakte, Google+, and others.
Has a huge amount useful functions, among which:
- The ability to share images with friends, including through the Widget;
- Installation additional action after “reposting” to any social network. networks;
- The ability to send instant “tweets”, even through a widget;
- Many styles for visual design;
- Search and mobile optimization;
- Installing counters in the widget;
- Metrics.
Setting up Easy Social Share Buttons
Easy Social Share Buttons has a lot of settings that can be confusing at first. To prevent this from happening, the developers have provided a Quick Setup wizard, which goes through all the basic options step by step, allowing you to create a widget of ready-made buttons on a WordPress site.
- Template – choose a look from over 20 preset styles.
- Style – set alignment, padding and width.
- Selecting buttons – those networks that need to be added. Their order is swapped using a simple “drag and drop” of the mouse.
- Counters – enable the display of the number of “likes” or “reposts” in the widget. They can be either separate or general.
- Location – select the location (in posts or pages of the site).
- Positions are specific positions on website pages.
- Mobile settings - disable or change the location on mobile devices.
After completing all stages of the wizard, you will have a convenient and attractive way to interact with users on social networks, which will allow them to share content with friends, thereby creating conditions for new visitors to enter the site.
Buttons built into voting
By adding some provocative social media. voting on the site, you can attract attention large quantity visitors. This is a very effective way to generate traffic, so you shouldn't ignore it.
However, with this, everything is not so rosy for WordPress, since there are practically no plugins that implement this feature. There are only a few of them, the most functional is WP Social Votes. This plugin allows you to take part in voting through 5 social networks. networks such as Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and others.
In WP Social Votes you can display voting in any widget, article or page using a shortcode. It automatically resizes images added to the widget and also allows you to do it manually. The plugin has virtually no settings, but there is no alternative for Russian social networks.
Placing a button to block content
There are various plugins that you can use to add a lock to your WordPress content, but most of them only work with Facebook and Twitter. Support for Russian social networks (Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki) is only available in Sociallocker.
Using Sociallocker
Creating a lock here is quite simple, it is similar to publishing a new article in WordPress. The same text editor opens for you, only with additional options from Sociallocker. In it you will need to enter a description for the hidden block, its title, visual design. In addition, you can remove the lock for registered users, and also set the time before automatic opening.
Sociallocker has an imp paid version, created for testing. It has all the basic functions and can be used for an unlimited amount of time. Some of the described features are available only in the paid version.
Addition
In addition, there is another effective way attracting social. traffic is cross-posting, the so-called retransmission of content published on the site in popular communities. Crossposting allows you to get links from authoritative resources, as well as start the viral spread of materials from your site.
To automate cross-posting within a WordPress site, you can use the NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster plugin (SNAP for short). It supports auto-posting to most popular social networks, such as:
Crossposting SNAP on Facebook
Facebook uses a special protocol for checking authorization (OAuth 2.0), so to set up automatic cross-posting, you need to create an application, connect it to the site, and allow it access.
Creating an application
- First, you need to register on Facebook as a developer. To do this, you will need to fill in some information and also confirm your phone number.
- Next, you will need to create a new application by clicking “Create New App” and filling in all the required data.
- Immediately after creating the application, you need to copy the “App ID” and “App Secret”; they will definitely be needed later to implement auto-posting.
- Below, you need to select “Website with Facebook Login”, where you enter the address of the site from which cross-posting will be carried out. When filling out the “Basic info” section, you need to focus on the data from the SNAP settings. In addition, be sure to check the “Disabled” checkbox in the “Sandbox Mode” option, otherwise auto-posting will not work.
Connection and authorization
Once the application is created, you can connect to SNAP Facebook account, to which auto-posting will be carried out by clicking “Add new account”. When adding you need to indicate Page URL on Facebook, and also paste the “App ID” and “App Secret” copied when creating the application.
Crossposting SNAP on VKontakte
VKontakte also uses the OAuth protocol for login, therefore, it also requires the creation of an application for auto-posting to work.
Creating an application
- You need to go to the VKontakte developers section and create a new application.
- Enter its name, and be sure to select “Standalone Application”, otherwise auto-posting will not work.
- Confirm phone.
- Copy the string "Application ID"
Connection and authorization
The connection occurs exactly the same as the previous one. SNAP adds new account VKontakte, fill in the address of the page where auto-posting will go, and insert the application ID.
Authorization on VKontakte has some differences; after clicking “Update Settings” and “Authorize Your vKontakte Account” a line with a long URL address, which must be copied to “vKontakte(VK) Auth Response”. Auto-posting of articles on VKontakte using SNAP is ready.
Conclusion
By using these on your resource effective ways attracting traffic from social media networks you can promote your project very quickly. In addition, it will definitely raise the authority of the site in the eyes search engines, which will increase traffic from them. Thus, social The network is becoming one of the most important things in increasing traffic to any resource. This fact cannot be ignored if you want to achieve some great success.
The idea is to organize an Internet platform to unite people with common interests in order to subsequently receive good traffic and implement the system paid subscription, attracts many. To achieve this goal in short time a social network built on WordPress template compatible with BuddyPress and bbPress plugins. They provide the full functionality of the social network: creating profiles, exchanging messages, adding friends, communicating on the forum, collaboration above files and other options.
10 templates for a social network site on WordPress + BuddyPress
1.Sweet Date
A template for a social network, offering 2 demos for a dating site and 1 for a site for finding travel companions. The site on Sweet Date may use a paid subscription system and control access to content. The theme's fully responsive design ensures that when visiting the site on any device, visitors receive the same user experience.
2. Thrive
Template for intranet and online communities. It is a universal platform that combines the functionality of a social network, forum, messaging systems, event organization, project management and file sharing, e-commerce and e-learning (if you purchase the Learndash plugin).
Selection on the topic:
3. Buddy
The theme, developed for Buddypress and bbPress, helps you create a social network with a modern design. Buddy uses responsive Retina Ready layout and icon library Font fonts Awesome. The template allows you to easily add widgets to your site such as: “New/popular/active users”, “New/popular groups”, “Calendar”, “ Latest topics on the forum", "Statistics", "Online users".
12 Forum Templates on BBPress.
4. Socialize
The template makes the most of Buddypress's capabilities, making it a good basis for a community or social network. Socialize has completely changed the design of bbPress, bringing it closer to the classic forum style. So that the webmaster can achieve the desired type content display, the template includes 4 layout options for the main page, 9 for categories, 6 for posts.
5. Klein
An innovative theme designed to work with BuddyPress and bbPress, made with special attention to the details. Suitable for those who need an online community or social network powered by WordPress. Ideal for sites with a large number of registered users. By connecting to community members.
Selection on the topic:
6. KLEO
KLEO has earned the title of best-selling BuddyPress themes this year because it really lives up to expectations. The template offers a simple one with verified secondary elements. The theme uses built-in search, which is not included in any other template, and allows you to avoid installing special plugins, which has a beneficial effect on the speed of the site.
The potential of social media is extremely high and, despite the presence of such giants in this area as Facebook, Twitter or VKontakte, the demand for the creation of similar, albeit not so global, networks does not weaken.
Thanks to Wordpress and its free plugin creating your own social network has become quite simple task. However, there is one more important detail - appearance your network, ease of use and user comfort. Not everyone has necessary knowledge, skills and simply talent to create a unique design for your social network. And this is where it makes sense to build a design based on a ready-made and well-proven product.
You already realized that we're talking about O themes for Wordpress, but the topics are somewhat specific, since the sphere itself - social communication and means of communication - presents its own specific requirements. Accordingly, the required themes must be adapted to work with the BuddyPress platform.
If you are just taking your first steps in this direction, then best choice will free products- you will be able to study and master this issue in more detail without resorting to unnecessary financial costs.
Evolve WordPress Theme
Evolve- a multi-purpose theme that is highly flexible and perfect for websites of various types, including social networks based on BuddyPress. The design is very good, every element can be customized or changed as you wish. And for beginners there is a unique settings panel that completely eliminates the need to dive into studying internal structure Topics.Farben Basic BuddyPress Theme
In no way inferior to the previous topic - Farben theme. Same rich functionality and flexibility, different message types, built-in CSS editor, an eyedropper (color selection tool) and a great slider. And full support various media content and image galleries.Price: basic version- for free; single license - $69; subscription - $99 per year
Quest
Quest is a newcomer to the large family of WordPress themes, but has already earned user recognition due to its rich functionality and careful design. Theme source codes are distributed under open license, however, you don’t have to study them - the theme has a powerful drag-and-drop editor that can completely save you from manually editing the code.The theme design and font selection are impeccable. Quest can perform in a variety of areas, including in conjunction with BuddyPress, so you will undoubtedly be satisfied with it. If basic functionality is not enough, you can purchase Quest Plus (from $49.99)
Arcade Basic
Very popular topic with BuddyPress support. Quite easy to use and set up. Allows you to use different types of media materials, has an excellent set of fonts and, of course, design.
Ward
Another great theme that will completely suit your needs if you are looking for free Wordpress theme with BuddyPress support. Created on the basis of Bootstrap and fully reveals all its capabilities. It includes a good jQuery slider.
Make
The topics discussed above are certainly good, but among them Make occupies a special position. This unique diamond in our collection has more than 340 thousand downloads and enjoys well-deserved popularity. Drag-and-drop editor allows you to design pages using various options mesh, side panels, banners, all kinds of media materials and more.
You can create any website on WordPress. In this material we will tell you how to create a social network based on this CMS.
What you will need
- WordPress - installed locally or on hosting;
- Social network plugin— we will list some of the best WordPress plugins;
- Theme for social network— we recommend installing a special theme for the social network.
WordPress
WordPress has many great features. In this article, we'll look at how to set up a platform to launch and manage your own social network.
After you install WordPress, let's add social networking functions: no matter how powerful a platform WordPress is, by default it does not contain functions for launching social networks. To do this, we use one of the special plugins that we will consider before creating a social network.
WordPress Social Network Plugins
This section will help you choose perfect plugin social network.
BuddyPress
The BuddyPress plugin allows you to run any type of social network on your WordPress site, with member profiles, feeds, user groups, messaging and much more.
BuddyPress boasts 100K+ installations and excellent ratings users. So it is a suitable social network engine.
The plugin is easy to integrate, but if you get stuck on anything, don't hesitate to take help from the huge BuddyPress community ready to support you.
Installing BuddyPress
Setting up BuddyPress is easy. Setting up social network settings is easy. Login to the panel WordPress administration and go to the section Plugins > Add New. In the window that appears, find “ BuddyPress“by entering this phrase into the search. Click the "Install" button. Then activate the plugin.
Minimal BuddyPress setup
Before you create a social network from scratch, go to the section Settings > Permalinks and check the box for the "Record name" option. Go to section Settings > BuddyPress to configure Extra options at your own discretion.
Also on this page you can activate all the necessary modules. Go to section Appearance > Menu and create the necessary menu. To expand the functionality of the social network being created, you can install additional BuddyPress widgets. To do this, go to Appearance > Widgets.
All the functions you may need are available as plugins, add-ons or extensions. And you can start with BuddyPress plugin storage and forums.
HaloSocial
HaloSocial gives you the opportunity to build the social network of your dreams. And just like on Facebook, when you hover your mouse over a user's profile picture, a panel will pop up on the screen with basic information about them:
There is also an excellent support forum. HaloSocial offers three plans: free starter pack with basic functions, professional package with some additional functions for $99, as well as an agency package costing $149 with full set functions.
Peepso
This is a kind of work of art. It was developed by the creators of the social network template to compete with BuddyPress. Right out of the box, Peepso has a beautiful and modern design that you can safely use even without installing a custom theme.
After installation, this plugin adds to the main menu WordPress new item - "Peepso". You can use it to set up a social network.
By default, Peepso creates six pages: “Home”, “Activity”, “Users”, “ User profile», « Password recovery" And " registration on the site" In addition, Peepso provides an intuitive interface and several useful features.
The plugin is very compact. Most users rated its quality in the range of 4.4-5.0 points. With all its features, you can create a social network on your WordPress site in just a few seconds. In addition, the developer offers a premium tariff plan with more advanced features.
WP Symposium Pro Social Network Plugin
Plugin WP Symposium Pro Social Network rated by users at 4.4-5.0 points. This is a plugin containing everything you need for a social network on WordPress.
Its functionality includes activity feeds, profiles, email newsletters, forums, shortcodes, maps, friending, chat, profile security, image/video attachments, galleries, and notification bar.
The plugin comes with detailed help documentation and videos that will help you set it up quickly and easily. Although in reality, documentation is unlikely to be required, because WP Symposium is easy to install, configure and use.
Before creating your own social network, go to the WPS Pro main menu > Settings and set the social network parameters. In addition, the plugin is compatible with most themes and WordPress plugins, easy to set up and supports multiple languages.
My pick: Of the four plugins described above, I would choose BuddyPress or Peepso, although the latter requires a financial investment to access certain features. At the same time, BuddyPress is completely free, which is a big plus.
I would put WP Symposium and HaloSocial in third and fourth place, respectively. There is another plugin known as WP Mingle, but the authors haven't updated it in over two years, so I haven't considered it.
Now that we have the plugins we need to create a social network, let's look at a few specialized ones. WordPress themes.
Mingle – Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
Before you can create a social networking site using BuddyPress, you need to install Mingle. It contains a number of useful functions and creates an aesthetic appearance. The theme was designed specifically for the BuddyPress platform to add a number of great features.
You get almost everything you need at your disposal: drag-and-drop layout builder, designer contact forms, sidebar generator, pure HTML5 + CSS3, SEO optimized code, blogs, portfolios, slideshows, shortcodes and much more. Mingle boasts more than five thousand satisfied customers, with customer ratings ranging from 4.31 to 5.00. All this will cost only $64.
Salutation Responsive WordPress + BuddyPress Theme
After checking out Salutation, it's safe to say that Parallelus has a great sense of style and was able to produce a design that would be the envy of most WordPress themes. And you must use it to create a social network on WordPress.
Salutation is a 100% responsive theme. This means that the social network will look great and work fine on various devices and screen sizes.
In addition, Salutation contains a number of interesting features, such as Slider Revolution, drag-and-drop layout manager, unlimited color options, full localization support, login forms in a pop-up window, blogs, widgets, intuitive admin panel, sidebar generator, portfolio and other features and shortcodes for BuddyPress.
Salutation is compatible with BuddyPress 1.5+, WordPress 4.3+ and major browsers. The theme has a rating of 4.50 - 5.00 and costs $64.
Woffice – Intranet/Extranet WordPress Theme
Extensive capabilities, wide range of functions, high quality source code, regular updates and excellent support - this is what captivates Woffice. You can use this theme to create social networks or communities for schools, companies, businesses and government agencies.
This theme includes full compatibility with BuddyPress, Wiki, file manager, Font Awesome icons, forums, Google fonts, adaptive design, demo content, documentation, video tutorials, calendar, shortcodes, bbPress, WMPL support, Trello integration, breadcrumbs, unlimited sidebars, custom widgets, custom pages entrance, e-commerce and much more.
Serpent – Responsive Social Network Theme
Before you create a social network yourself, let's consider one more option. This is a one of a kind WordPress theme that will take your website to the next level. It's like the theme you've always wanted to have; With her, you simply can’t go wrong.
The theme provides us with features such as responsive layout, Facebook-style like icons, login and registration form lightboxes, keyboard navigation, user profiles, tooltips, Facebook comments, slideshows, social media icons, sidebars, widgets, drop-down menus and more.
UnitedCommunity – BuddyPress Theme
Colour, warmth and energy is the way of UnitedCommunity, a rich feature set of social media WordPress theme. First introduced on September 2, 2015, UnitedCommunity is a relatively new topic.
Its distinctive features include a unique and responsive design, more than 40 internal pages, chat, ease of installation and configuration, WooCommerce compatibility, custom widgets, pop-up notifications, WPML optimization, Google fonts, drop-down menus, Contact Form 7 and jQuery Masonry blog. You can purchase UnitedCommunity for just $64.
Klein – A Nitty Gritty Community Theme
If you're looking for the perfect WordPress theme for the social media template you're creating, look no further. It is an excellent social media solution with a wide range of features that provide a great user experience.
Users of your social network will be able to send an unlimited number of messages, notify other members about scheduled events, add friends, discuss ideas on forums, and create beautiful user profiles. You can also use the power of WooCommerce to sell products.
