Creating a social network on WordPress. Plugin for VKontakte and Facebook comments on a WordPress blog. WordPress social network using the BuddyPress plugin

IN Lately, bloggers are increasingly creating social networks. This is due to the fact that the engines used for this have become publicly available to everyone. For example, let's take a fact from history when Mark Zuckerberg used one such engine and created a popular social Facebook network, then the programmers accused him of plagiarism and said that it was they who came up with this system. But this time has already passed; now anyone can create a social network.

In 2009, information appeared that now in WordPress system You will be able to create your own social network. It didn't take long for an engine called Buddy Press to be launched. From now on, any user can go to the official Internet portal of this system and download the program. You can create a social network on WordPress using the already popular Buddy Press extension.

Buddy Press Company once operated under WordPress Guide and created plugins for them to add to blogs necessary functions, which made them even more accessible and convenient to use, and professional bloggers accepted these innovations with a bang. In 2009, the company that owned WordPress bought absolutely all rights to Buddy Press. The result was one large-scale project, which generated many functions.

It is worth noting that the company did not begin to deal with the procedure of complicating the creation of a Social network on WordPress; everything remained at the level of using a standard blog. In this case, you can use the same functions as on Facebook, there is no difference.

The creators of Buddy Press made it and aimed it not at creating a new social network, but at reworking and expanding the functions of an already made blog, plus the developers are provided with a list of necessary plugins. Let's just say that this system has everything that will help create a multi-user social network on WordPress, which will consist of many blogs. Let's see how you can create your own social network using Buddy Press.

It’s hard to call Buddy Press a plugin, it’s so rich in functionality. but it's still a plugin.

Today, in many countries, many specialists have appeared who are improving the Buddy Press system and regularly adding new functions to the plugin, in a word, they are improving it. To create a social network on WordPress, you can take ready-made templates.

The plugin is easy to use, it has many settings that will help you set up the social network. To download latest version Buddy Press programs can go to the official website.

What functionality does social media have? network created using Buddy Press

1. Activity feed – makes it possible to monitor the popularity of the social network, check the number of visits by participants and the work of groups. This information can be obtained from RSS feeds and Email.

2. Advanced profiles are fields that users can edit themselves. The page has all the participant’s groups, like in the VKontakte social network. At will, the user profile can be open or closed.

3. Friends - any user has the right to submit requests to be added as friends, remove from the list or add, monitor their activity by viewing the news feed.

4. Personal correspondence is the main part of social media. Buddy Press network, it allows users to exchange messages online.

6. Groups – nowadays it is popular to create a group that reflects interests, hobbies or simply communicates actual news, so we developed such a function. In addition to creating a group, a member of the social network. the network can use already created communities.

7. Forum in groups - all users have the right to communicate in groups, discuss given topics and make suggestions.

8. Increased plugin for Buddy Press - many different plugins to create a social network on wordpress have the ability to complement standard settings Buddy Press. This is a huge advantage, because half of the add-ons are distributed free of charge.

Plugins that can be used to create a social network on WordPress:

§ BP Profile Privacy – helps hide page viewing from other users.

§ BuddyPress Links – allows you to exchange links with friends.

§ BuddyPress Gifts – allows you to give gifts to each other.

§ BuddyPress Album – creating photo albums.

§ Tweetstream – allows you to connect twitter with social media. network.

§ Facestream – connections to Facebook.

§ Invite Anyone – allows you to invite friends by email.

§ Captcha – captcha to register or leave a comment.

How to install and configure the Buddy Press plugin so that the social network on WordPress can start working?

The main thing is not to be afraid to start, everything is quite easy to do.

First of all, download the latest version of the plugin from native language then add it to your plugins and activate it.

Visit the settings section and familiarize yourself with them, at first you can take the standard settings, as you master this plugin, configure it as you wish.

In the future, for improvement, you can use various plugins that were listed above.

Adding buttons for social networks to your site when WordPress help plugins, you choose simple and effective way increasing the number of reposts. You can place buttons with social media icons at the top, bottom or sides of posts, and also add counters that will display the number of shares.

But before we get started, let's take a look at some very worthy premium plugins.

Easy Social Share Buttons

Description | Demonstration

This premium plugin is available on CodeCanyon.net for $19. This is one of the most versatile plugins this kind of, thanks to one simple fact - the plugin allows you to place a bar with buttons for social networks absolutely anywhere you might need it.

We think this is the best plugin for social buttons, so we decided to install it on our blog. Below this post you can see an example of social buttons from ESSB.

Using the plugin, you can add a floating icon bar, place buttons at the top/bottom of the post, create a static or even a floating icon bar for the mobile version. You can also use triggers to add pop-up and fly-in functionality, for example.

It should be mentioned that the plugin has more than 25 various templates, from which you can always choose the option that will best match the design of your site.

Monarch by Elegant Themes

Description | Demonstration

Monarch is a paid social media plugin that comes with Elegant Theme's Developer and Lifetime Access plans. These plans include over 85 premium WordPress themes and all other plugins from this developer. Unfortunately, the company's policy is that you cannot buy just the plugin itself separately. You pay in full tariff plan and get immediate access to all premium plugins and themes from the developer.

Monarch is a responsive plugin that will allow you to place eye-catching floating bars on the sides of a post or static horizontal bars at the start/end of a post. Monarch provides more than 20 icons for social networks, image-sharing, pop-up and fly-in functions, as well as many settings for layout and design.

Social Warfare

Social Warfare is an interesting plugin from Warfare Plugins. It's not as versatile as the previous two options, as it only allows you to add a floating bar to your site that sticks to the bottom of the screen. But this disadvantage is compensated by excellent price options and a huge amount other functions.

The plugin provides analytics, the ability to show the number of reposts only after a certain number of people have shared the post, and there are also more than 75 different design options. You can use a plugin to add click-to-tweet functionality to your posts.

Free social media plugins

Now let's move on to our list of the best free plugins to consider in 2016.

SumoMe Share

The SumoMe plugin is primarily known for its traffic-boosting tools, but you shouldn't be surprised that we included it on this list. The free version of the plugin includes the SumoMe Share app, which places a floating or static bar for social sharing buttons anywhere on your site.

SumoMe Share Pro comes with additional features. For example, here you can remove SumoMe branding from your bar, you can track UTM tags to find out which social networks are bringing highest traffic etc.

GetSocial

GetSocial is a free responsive social media plugin. It allows you to place a floating bar on the side of your post or a static bar on the top/bottom. IN demon paid version you will also find various options for registration.

The developers also presented a premium version of the plugin (with a monthly fee). In it you will find a function for adding a floating bar for mobile versions And additional options design, there is a click-to-tweet function. In the paid version, you will also have the opportunity to remove the counter from the buttons, which is responsible for the number of reposts.

AddToAny Share Buttons

AddToAny Share Buttons is one of the most popular WordPress social media plugins with over 200,000 active installations. This plugin places simple floating bars on the sides of your post, as well as at the beginning or end of it.

With this plugin you can change some functions, for example, set the size of icons for social networks, set the distance between the beginning of the page and the bar itself, etc. One of the most pleasant and almost unique features This plugin is that it allows you to add icons for over 90 different social networks, communities and services.

Custom Share Buttons with Floating Sidebar

This plugin also allows you to add social media floating bars on the sides, at the beginning and at the end of posts. Is not adaptive plugin and its customization options are limited, but nevertheless, it is an excellent alternative.

Premium version provides additional functions, such as responsive design, the ability to hide the floating bar with social network icons on home page, adaptive contact form with a lightbox function that appears when the user clicks on the Mail icon, etc.

Sharify Social Share Buttons

It's not the most well-known plugin, but its responsive and slick design makes it a top contender on our "Best" list. free plugins 2016". This is a simple plugin with a really great, neat design, the result of which will look harmonious on your site.

The main disadvantage of this plugin is that there is no ability to create floating bars and you cannot add bars to the sides of the post. There are also not enough bars for mobile devices, so if necessary, you will have to install additional plugins on your site.

Conclusion

Regardless of which social media plugin you choose, first of all, make sure that its design matches the design of your site, and that the icons will look harmonious next to the post and will not distract attention from the main content.

What plugins for social buttons do you use?

We all know that we can’t live without social networks. And every blogger and almost every customer wants to link them to their website (in one form or another). Here I am once again faced with such a need. But the problem is that not all topics provide social buttons ial networks, and Russian-language social networks are generally not popular among WordPress theme creators. So I started looking for a social buttons plugin for WordPress.

In general, I looked through kilotons of information, including from foreign sites. And in the end I found the plugin. I haven’t seen any analogues to it, no matter how much I searched - it’s really amazing and really very comfortable.

The Social Icons Widget by WPZOOM plugin allows you to add almost any icons to your site, not only those related to social networks. Let's take a closer look at what this amazing plugin is.

Installation

Here everything is as usual - go to the admin panel, go to the page Plugins > Add new, into the search we paste the previously copied name of the social buttons plugin we are interested in, namely Social Icons Widget by WPZOOM. Next, click Install, and then Activate.

Adding a widget

Once the plugin has been activated, you can go to Appearance> Widgets. Then everything will depend on the theme you use. IN in this case I have basic Twenty Seventeen, which provides 3 options for placing widgets - sidebar (aka side column), basement 1 and basement 2.

First of all, in the list of widgets (which is on the left) we find our social buttons plugin Social Icons by WPZOOM. We click on it and get a drop-down list with a list of blocks in which we can place these buttons. Once you decide, press the button Add widget. After that, it will appear in one of the blocks on the right, and then you can carefully study the offered options of this wonderful widget by clicking on the arrow to the right of its name.

Widget setup

So, the first thing we are offered is to write a Title for our buttons. English-language sites mostly write Follow us, while Russian sites tend to simply write Social Networks or not write anything at all. So, if you are one of those people, you can simply erase the default inscription.

Next we have Description - a short description that will be displayed above the icons, you can use HTML. To be honest, I've never had a need to display any text above the icons, so I usually leave this field blank.

The next two points ask whether you want to show icon labels (Show icon labels?) and whether to open links in new tabs (Open links in new tab?). The first item is disabled by default, and the second is just the opposite (which, in general, is understandable). If you check the box next to “Show icon labels?”, then fields with labels that can be edited will appear under the icons below:

As for me, this is also not necessary; in principle, all social network icons are quite recognizable. But the developers are quite thoughtful guys, they have foreseen everything, so if suddenly you want to add the inscription “Well, come in if something happens” to the VKontakte icon, you can definitely do it with ease.

Let's move on. Icon Style. It’s also very convenient - icons can be made as close in style as possible to your site. This social buttons plugin offers 2 options: colored background and white icon or a colored icon and transparent background. I personally find the first option more interesting, since in this case you can use the next option, namely Icon Background Style. There are already three options: rounded corners, circle or square.

After you decide on the labels, styles and sizes, you can move on to the icons themselves.

Editing icons

By default, the widget has icons for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can leave them, you can delete them, or you can edit both the icons themselves and the link to which they lead. To add new icon need to press a button Add more(Add more). Under the button in small print it says that in order to add an icon with an email address, you must use the mailto format: [email protected].

So, let's say you decide to remove the existing icons and add the ones you need. To begin, click the trash can icon to the right of each link field, and then click the button Add more.

Then, as you prefer, you can immediately add a link and then edit the icon, or you can do the opposite. The link interests me the least at the moment, so I’ll immediately click on the “+” sign in place of the icon. After which a pop-up window with icon settings will appear.

Here you can choose the color of the icon, as well as the set of icons that will suit your needs. We are offered the following sets: Socicons, Dashicons, Genericons and even Font Awesome. When it comes to social icons, I personally use the Socicons set because it really has big choice icons of various social networks, such as Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, Facebook, 500px, Vimeo, Youtube, Behance, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, as well as icons for Drupal, WordPress, Windows, Xbox, Wikipedia, Apple, Android and many others. Overall a very convenient set.

And so - choose any set you like or combine everything and enjoy.

After choosing a color and icon, click Save(Save) and it will appear in the widget. Then press the button again Add more and repeat the procedure until you add all the icons you need. After which it is important not to forget to press the button Save on the widget itself and that’s it, social network icons will appear on your website.

I hope this article helped you solve the problem of placing social network icons on your website.

Leave comments, subscribe to our blog and join our group

7 votes

Good day, dear readers. Today we will talk to you about how you can simply, quickly and without harm to your own body, increase the popularity of your blog.

The method that I will now tell you about will not take more than 20 minutes of precious time. Does it work and will it help to significantly increase the flow of readers? I am sure that at least this decision will not make things worse. Test! Someone else's experience is good, but your own is more valuable.

Don't doubt it prematurely. Try it, grab every opportunity to increase traffic, check and create your own impression of all the methods that life offers you in practice!

Don't be the person who dismisses any offer just because you're too lazy to spend 10 minutes on something new and in a year you'll have a thousand proven opportunities! Some will pay off, and some will not, but the main thing is that you try and can say that you are making the most of what the Internet offers you ().

About the networks that help us build and live

Surely you are on Odnoklassniki, Facebook or Vkontakte. Even if you're one of the few who "don't really go there," you can't deny the fact that these are some of the most popular sites on the planet. It would be stupid if a developer did not use the power of social networks.

Ideally, I would recommend that everyone who is thinking about thinking about groups, but I understand that this is a rather complicated and tedious process. If you are a beginner, then it’s difficult to burden yourself with learning this as well. In addition, first you need to understand one goal, and then take on another.

You can not only get an influx of new visitors, but also slightly reduce the budget for purchasing links. The site will begin to receive them naturally, which means the citation index will increase. And this without your intervention!

Of course, I do not promise you that people will begin to spread the good news of your existence throughout the world. I'm not trying to deceive you. But if you doubt it and think that this will bring absolutely nothing, then please have more confidence! In any case, you don’t lose anything, what if?

A plugin that will allow you to increase the pace of website development without your participation

When it comes to websites, any task that you set for yourself can be solved in several ways. Regarding the buttons, everything is the same. So, first, let's look at the simplest method, for which you do not need any special knowledge or skills. I speak .

Go to the WordPress admin panel. We find the “Plugins” section, hover the mouse cursor over it and click on “Add new”.

Enter the name in the search bar Uptolike and press enter on the keyboard. By the way, am I the only one who’s a little annoyed that there’s no button to send a request using the mouse? Write in the comments. Your opinion is very interesting. Maybe we can start a revolution?

Focus on this beautiful picture. We need this plugin. Click “Install”.

Ready. All that remains is to activate it.

This is how your panel on the left should change. There will be a new application UpToLike.

How to make it “beautiful”

Naturally, you can add buttons in such a way that they do not stand out from the overall design and look beautiful. To do this, click on the UpToLike application in the left panel.

The “Constructor” section has opened, which is what we need.

We select the social networks and buttons that we need to add. Don't choose everything. If there are too many of them, it will negatively affect the site design. Add wisely. Less is more! For example, it seems to me that the main ones are Contact, Odnoklassniki and Facebook.

Focus on your target audience. Think about where the person who will read your blog might sit. Are you sure he even knows about the existence of 4Talk?

Click on “Adapt for mobile devices” and then “Customize” under this entry. Now I'll show you why.

Also, thanks to this application, you can automatically invite people to your group using a pop-up prompt.

Hover your mouse over the question next to the parameter and a tooltip will appear.

Next comes the design work. Where the menu will be located: in the sidebar or inside the content, what the icons will look like. Your choice is visually displayed on the left, so I don't think this choice will cause you any doubts or difficulties.

You can choose not to show people the counter, display it private (for each network), or make it public. I recommend the last option. People are more likely to share if they see it. a larger number. We remember Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his book “The Little Prince”.

Adults love numbers. I’ll add on my own behalf that big numbers they love it even more and if they see that so many people have already shared the post, then most likely they will also want to be in trend! Laws of the pack, what to do.

The size and appearance of the counter, which we have already discussed.

Ready. So, at first my test site looked like this.

But now everything is different.

Additional features

Once you've done everything, go to the Settings section. Here you can select the pages on which social network buttons will be displayed. Do you want to post them on the main page or in announcements, show them on static pages or on some specific ones?

You decide.

Don't forget to save your changes.

And of course, statistics! Where would we be without her? You don’t have to go through every article and see how many reposts you received. . You just need to enter your email address, wait for the letter with the code and enter it into the form on this page.

Adding social media buttons without a plugin. Method for advanced users

Of course, you can do without a plugin. If you have at least some knowledge of code and a great desire, then you can use the help of Yandex and your own skills. So, let's go to the site https://tech.yandex.ru/share .

Let's scroll down a little and see this form with a set of services. Select the necessary social networks.

Now we select the appearance of the block.

Ready. We need this code. By the way, this method can also be used if your site runs on Joomla, or even without it.

Now let's go to Personal Area on hosting, as you can see, I use Timeweb . We need a file manager.

If you, like me, do not remember and do not sign folders correctly, then first you need to decide which section you will work with. Go to the “Sites” section. There is a list of domains, and next to them are the names of the folders. Everything is very easy and simple to find.

Opening the desired folder. To change the design, you will have to work with the theme. All that remains is to find her. Let's move forward. Double-click on the public_html folder.

Found. We need the themes folder.

But then there’s the rub again. There are two topics here. This is exactly what I have installed on the test site. You may have more or less. If you are faced with the same problem, do not despair, now I will show you what to do.

Go to the admin panel of your engine. Move to the “Appearance” - “themes” section and look for the name of the active one.

We figured it out. They are called the same. Go ahead.

Typically, social media buttons are placed in the footer. This is not necessary so that my article does not turn into a book on css, I will only show you this technique. If you don’t particularly understand the topic, but really want to, then you can take the free course on html and css Evgenia Popova, everything is described and explained there in detail. What, where and why to insert.

And over time, as it drags on... and in Online University go and get it modern internet profession.

But, if you don’t want to study for a long time, and you like my version (the result can be seen at the end of the publication), then we are looking for the file footer.php

He should be here. At the bottom. If you don't see it, look for it. Open the footer.

Paste the code that Yandex concocted for you into this “sheet” before the closing body tag.

All. The necessary icons appeared at the bottom of the screen. Ready.

Why make your own social network

If you want to do new Facebook or VK - forget it. It’s simply not possible to promote a large social network now, no matter how much you might want to. But nothing prevents you from creating a small, niche portal for fans of some hobby.

Of course, in this case you will have to fight with groups in existing social networks. networks. But a niche social network has two advantages:

Focus. How many messages in your VK or Facebook feed are really interesting? Among the dull statuses, memes and advertisements for online games, there are few of them. But in a specialized social network there will be no such garbage, which means interesting posts there will be more. And it will be easier for you to monetize the site.
Functionality. For example, on a social network for cat lovers, your profile may have separate fields for names and descriptions of pets.

How to make your own social network

There are three main options.

Your own social network from scratch. To do this you will need a team of programmers, several years and a lot of money.
Social network on an existing engine. There are several solutions available on the market.
1. Boonex Dolphin. good, convenient system, but with poor support. If you have experience working with a CMS other than WordPress, you can try Boondex Dolphin. The license cost is $40.
2. Elgg. Crooked, askew, almost abandoned. But it's free. I do not advise.
3. PHPFox And Social Engine. Two commercial CMSs that were originally designed for creating a social network - and you can feel it. In terms of functionality and ease of use, they are comparable to turnkey projects. The problem is the cost - $300 for a license without support, and the authors strongly recommend at least a VPS.
Social network on WordPress. In the last few years, WordPress plugins have finally reached the point where they can be recommended for commercial projects. They can even run directly on the hosting service, further reducing costs.

We will naturally use WordPress.

Which plugin is better

There are two popular plugins for creating a social network on WordPress - BuddyPress and PeepSo.

BuddyPress

BuddyPress is owned by Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, WooCommerce and other large WordPress projects. And you can feel it - the system is very convenient and intuitive, everything works smoothly and reliably. But monetization significantly prevents you from trying all the features of the product.

Functional

To fully experience Buddypress, you need to install the Boss theme - for which the developers charge almost $200. However, if you thoughtfully sit over the settings, you can get an acceptable result even with some free themes. For example, Rura Academic.

Available in Buddypress:

User profiles.
Groups.
Feeds (both user and group).
Private messages.

The result is a fairly convenient and cozy (albeit slightly primitive) social network that can be expanded with free plugins.

Add-ons

For example, you can add:

Blogs for groups
Present.
Forums.
Galleries.
And much more.

I really liked the BuddyPress Default Data plugin, which fills the social network with bot and fake accounts. This allows you to test all functionality without large number testers.

On the other hand, dependence on plugins is not good. Already now in the repository you can find plugins for BuddyPress that are not updated and do not work with current version systems. It's not fatal, but it's unpleasant.

PeepSo

PeepSo was released several years later than BuddyPress and the authors of the plugin were clearly trying to learn from the mistakes of their competitor. Alas, it turned out as always.

Functionality and add-ons

In the free version of PeepSo, even the ability to add another user as a friend is not available.

Moreover, there is not even the ability to unlock the so-called. full version. You can only buy official add-ons. $20 for the "Friends" system, $20 for galleries, $20 for videos, $30 for personal blog, $100 for notifications to users, etc.

The cost of all add-ons is more than $800. But PeepSo will meet you halfway and give you an incredible discount of up to $664. For this money you can buy a license for PHPFox or Social Engine, which are many times superior to PeepSo in functionality and ease of use, and you’ll have a few months of server rental left..

In addition, despite the authors' promises not to fragment the platform and not allow add-ons to become obsolete, I was never able to import data from BuddyPress. Cause? Outdated plugin for data transfer that does not support new version PeepSo - 1.7.4.

Verdict

Between BuddyPress and PeepSo, I choose BuddyPress. It is cheaper, more convenient, more functional and more interesting.

How to install and configure BuddyPress

First, we need a WordPress site. It is advisable to do a fresh installation, but you can try with an existing site.

BuddyPress core is now installed and running on your site. There are registration and login pages, there are feeds, groups and much more. But users don't know about this because these pages are not yet available to them.

First, you need to enable registration.