- What is BuddyPress?
- Why WordPress BuddyPress Themes?
- Top 20 Buddypress WordPress Themes in 2020
- Tips for Making a Top-Notch Community Website
- End of the Line
BuddyPress Themes! Social media is a relatively new form of mass communication. Social media helps people share knowledge, experiences, opinions, news, videos, photos, music, website links, etc., as well as establish and develop contacts. Each member of this community is flexible in changing his or her role as either an author or an audience.
The potential of social media is extremely high. And although most of the active web users stay loyal to such giants as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, there is still a demand for creating new innovative social networks (even though they will never outcome the current “giants”).
Creating your own social network is easier than people imagine. If you own a WordPress website, a free BuddyPress plugin is all you need. Could you guess that the formula is so simple?
BuddyPress Themes Table
BuddyPress Themes | Short Description | Price | Buttons |
HashNews - Magazine & Newspaper WordPress Theme | HashNews is a news portal WordPress theme. It was designed to look like a modern American news channel and has many features that allow you to present a lot of information in the best possible manner. And due to its style, your website will be eye-catchy.We also know that you’ll have to edit your website and this is why it was built with Drag and Drop Page Builder. It is fully responsive and works on all devices. It also includes full documentation and a mini cart. | $98 | View More Demo |
Vloglab - Blog & Magazine WordPress Theme | Every business is represented online nowadays. It is an obvious necessity to find new clients. And if you want to promote a magazine then you definitely need a website. Even more, nowadays the press is mostly based online. This is why we developed the Vloglab WordPress theme. It is elegant and clean. And most importantly you can edit it as you wish to perfectly suit your business. And due to Elementor Page Builder, you can do it in no time.It also has 3 pre-developed home pages, a child page, and multiple minor features like Off-canvas Menu and google fonts. | $72 | View More Demo |
ANIMAG - Anime and Manga Magazine WordPress Theme | Anime is a very popular modern art. And if you want to create a website you need a special website. It has to be attractive, easy to navigate, and well-structured. And most importantly it has to highlight anime style. So, if you want to create an online magazine that writes about anime and manga you need the ANIMAG WordPress Theme. It has a clean design, partially tributed to famous Japanese NewType Magazine. It also has Black and White color Modes. And due to multiple column types you can easily create blog posts and decorate them with images. It is also a multipage website and you can create separate pages for each anime. | $85 | View More Demo |
Kustrix - Fashion Blog Magazine WordPress Theme | When we speak about blogs and magazines it is hard no to mention fashion business sphere. Fashion magazines now try to be active online. And fashion bloggers are popular nowadays too. Yet, it is necessary to be online if you want to present all your content in one place and gather your community. And it has to be a website developed specially for the fashion press. Like Kustrix WordPress theme. It has an elegant design with soft color tones and you can use various custom widgets. And of course, it has a top-notch gallery. And due to well-optimized coding this your website will be SEO-friendly. | $45 | View More Demo |
MediaTel - Youtube/Vimeo Video News Aggregator Magazine WordPress Theme | We all know how important and popular is video content nowadays. This is why it is not surprising that our developers made a website theme specially for YouTube and Vimeo aggregator Magazine. And such a website definitely needs a BuddyPress plugin to increase social options features. This WordPress theme has a creative design and you can easily edit it. There are many widgets, font icons, and useful pre-developed pages.Designers also made sure that MediaTel has a well-developed structure that can include a lot of information and videos. It was also optimized to work with video files without issues. | $72 | View More Demo |
What is BuddyPress?
BuddyPress plugin adds social networking features to the core WordPress functionality. For example, by adding an advanced profile features to a blog, it can easily turn a regular website into a full-fledged social network. Most of the BuddyPress features have no analogs in other plugins, which pretty much explains its vivid growth in popularity during the past few years.
BuddyPress Components and Features
BuddyPress extends the WordPress website functionality by adding the following components:
- Activity Streams - users can monitor the activity of their friends or group communities;
- Advanced Profiles - the built-in WordPress user profiles are nothing compared to what BuddyPress offers as an alternative. You may include friends, groups, activity feeds, recent user entries, biography, and contact information to your profile — and these are only the default settings!;
- Friendships - users can add each other as friends to facilitate communication and to track their posts;
- Private Messaging - exchanging private messages between users;
- Groups - users can create and join groups of any subject.
- Blogs - using WPMU along with multisite WordPress 3.0, BuddyPress will let you organize a fully functional WP blog. The blog will be integrated into the activity feed, and users will be able to post there using their own account.
Depending on your needs, these functions can be turned on / off in the control panel.
Why WordPress BuddyPress Themes?
Aside from the functionality of your future social network, there is one more important detail to consider - your website design and how convenient it is for a user. Not everyone has good knowledge and skills to develop a unique design for their network. In many cases, it makes sense to use a ready-made and well-established web solution.
As you may guess, I mean paid and free BuddyPress themes. It’s worth noting that not every template is a good fit for building an effective social platform. Apparently, the sphere of social communication has its own specific requirements; thus, such themes and templates have to be BuddyPress adaptive.
Best Buddypress Themes: What Are They?
So a high-quality Buddy Press theme will have an attractive and flexible design to ensure its maximum compatibility with mobile devices. It should also be optimized for fast downloads since the website speed is an ever-increasing factor in visitor engagement and search engine ranking.
Other features include:
- Custom page templates for user registration, login, and password;
- User profile pages and the ability to easily edit your profile info;
- Live notifications;
- Search parameters;
- Feed activity;
- Private messaging.
If you are just taking the first steps in this direction, you can get tempted by the available BuddyPress free themes. From one side, it’s a good way to learn more about the plugin and master your user experience without resorting to excessive financial costs. But from another side, I really doubt one can build a solid social media platform based on a free BuddyPress theme.
At least, you don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for a paid template. The average price ranges from $50 to a maximum of $100. Just visit one of the largest marketplaces for some BuddyPress template examples to make sure yourself.
Top 20 Buddypress WordPress Themes in 2020
Now let's take a closer look at the top 20 WordPress Buddy Press themes you will benefit from in 2020. The templates below will help you create social and public websites that encourage visitors to participate. Read carefully about each of these themes and view the demos to pick the right one for you.
Vulitin - News & Magazine WordPress Theme
Vulitin is a creative, clean and modern responsive news & magazine WordPress theme. It’s perfect for any news/magazine or any category like sports, fashion, science, soccer, politics, videos, blog, travel, style, beauty, health magazine sites, etc.
With the help of WP Bakery Page Builder, you can change site colors / other settings from theme settings. Only single click demo data/strong will be installed. If any issue arises during installation, our reliable support team always ready to give support.
Other useful features are:
- 8 unique demo homepages;
- 2 Contact page layouts;
- Unlimited color options;
- One-click demo installer;
- SEO friendly;
- Off-canvas menu;
- Redux framework;
- Revolution slider;
- Detailed documentation.
Spectr - Magazine & Blog WordPress Theme
Spectr Newspaper WordPress theme is a perfect solution for news portals of all kinds! No matter what topic you want to highlight, you get a wide selection of attractively-looking headers and page templates that are created with a drag and drop page builder.
Spectr is built with powerful and intuitive drag and drop Visual Composer page builder and brings over 50 custom-made elements/shortcodes. The theme contains comes with unmatched flexibility. It has an elegant design, unique demos, and no coding skills necessary and much more! You can choose one of the 4 pre-designed headers or create your own ones.
Other useful features are:
- 100% responsive and retina ready;
- Visual Composer plugin;
- Post Formats (Standart, Video, Audio);
- 7 blog post pages and 5 blog post formats;
- Ajax contact form;
- Drop-down menus;
- Extensive documentation;
- Great tech support.
HashNews - Magazine & Newspaper WordPress Theme
Hashnews WordPress theme is a modern and sophisticated WordPress theme for news, newspaper, magazine, and lifestyle or review site. Hashnews includes 3+ homepages with plenty of included pages along with a professional MegaMenu. The template is built based on KingComposer with numerous handcrafted elements and tremendous page builder features. In addition, 40+ KingComposer addons and 20+ Hashnews add-ons are available for you. This neat, clean and simple design offers unlimited header, footer, and color variations.
The list of features includes:
- 5 different categories of layout;
- Easy theme customization options;
- Header and footer settings;
- Multiple Shortcodes and KingComposer elements;
- Ajax Contact Form;
- Featured news, top news, and twitter feed.
MediaTel - Youtube/Vimeo Video News Aggregator Magazine WordPress Theme
MidiaTel is an awesome media magazine WordPress theme for video content. The theme has a lightweight and robust engine optimized for high load and designed specifically for media resources, online video magazines, Youtube and Video video aggregators and video bloggers.
Plenty of customizer options and news-oriented widgets make it really easy to run, install and update the website.
Main theme features are:
- Unyson framework;
- Bootstrap framework;
- One-click demo install;
- Visual page builder;
- Optimized for video;
- Fast and responsive;
- Google Web fonts/maps integration;
- Font icons;
- Multiple widgets;
- Advanced customizer options;
- Great documentation;
- Tech support.
Exho - A Responsive Blog WordPress Theme
Exho is a responsive WordPress blog theme. It features touch-ready selective post sliders, most viewed trending post slider, standard post loop with pagination on Homepage and widget ready sidebar on every page. Suitable for travel, lifestyle, fashion, photography blogs, and more.
Exho theme is developed and designed from scratch & easy to customize with live editing options.
The theme major features are:
- Fast and responsive design;
- Gutenberg editor;
- Live Customizer;
- Image Sliders;
- Widget ready;
- Google fonts;
- Share integration and Instagram feed;
- Contact Form 7;
- Detailed documentation.
Vinews - Modern Media Portal WordPress Theme
Vinews is a modern media portal WordPress theme designed for news agencies, video sharing services, municipal portals, fashion magazines, and other news and media related spheres. The theme is very flexible and has lots of options allowing you to customize both page content and general look and feel.
Vinews features:
- Flexible widgets arranged along the Bootstrap grid;
- News categories, single posts, and news feeds;
- Sample Data Installer;
- Visual Editor;
- Retina-ready;
- Search engine friendly.
Mafiaso - Blog WordPress Theme
Mafiaso is a modern WordPress blog template. The theme uses a Visual Page Builder to create pages that help to create fast & easy Pages. The theme is perfect for blog, recipes, interior design, personal, writer, designer, architect, freelancer, coder, fashion, business, non-profit, hand-Made, SEO, video, and others.
This template features the following:
- Fast and responsive;
- Bootstrap framework;
- WPML-ready;
- Sample Data Installer;
- Visual Editor.
SocialVideo - Viral Youtube And Vimeo Video Magazine WordPress Theme
SocialVideo WordPress theme is built primarily for online video magazines and blogs, viral video websites, and news portal websites. The theme is an easy to use and cost-effective solution for those dreaming of launching online video magazine, bringing an existing one to another level.
Multiple widget areas will help you create pages of your website according to your own vision, so their layout is now totally in your control. Everything you might need in order to fully customize your website is already in the theme in the customizer menu, and you can make changes to your site in live preview mode.
Other features include:
- Working Twitter widget;
- UNYSON support;
- Bootstrap framework;
- Meta box plugin;
- Contact form 7;
- Custom widgets;
- Support of Mailchimp;
- Free fonts and icons;
- Excellent tech support.
Elena - Responsive Blog WordPress Theme
Demo | Download | Hosting
Elena is a stylish and highly customizable WordPress blog theme. It is clean, modern and simple and it’s perfect for fashion, art, lifestyle, travel or personal blog. Also, you can create a magazine website using this theme. Installing and customizing this theme is very easy. All required information is provided in the documentation.
Elena features:
- 12 different home layouts;
- Post Carousel;
- Contact Form 7;
- Widget ready;
- Google fonts;
- Unlimited Colors;
- Responsive Design;
- Live Customizer;
- Sticky Navigation.
Science News Portal & Magazine WordPress Theme
Demo | Download | Get for Free in ONE Membership
Globera WordPress theme was designed to support science-oriented online journals with a complex content structure. At first sight, Globera seems basic, yet it has elaborated blog functionality to take advantage of. This includes integration with social media and email marketing via various forms, buttons, and widgets meaning there is no need for additional plugins to connect with your social accounts. Versatile layouts enhance the capabilities of your blog offering readers related and featured publications.
Globera main features are:
- Licensed GPL;
- Live Customizer;
- Search engine friendly;
- Bootstrap framework;
- Retina-ready;
- Fast and responsive;
- WPML ready;
- Effective tech support.
Glossy Look
A daring look of this template sets out from other BuddyPress WordPress themes will make your customers want to sign up and to come back to you. The powerful imagery makes it a great option for those who have great and potentially converting photos related to their business.
Monstroid2
This is a multipurpose theme which has almost hit a level of 2K sales. It lets you switch designs even after you’ve set your website up and running. It is also worth mentioning, that while working with this representative of social wordpress themes, you will also have a diversity of design choices as opposed to a usual theme.
BitNews
If you need to complete a news website project, you may consider using this template. It may also be considered as a powerful social media WordPress theme, so you’ll be able to build a strong social media community. Your website visitors will be happy to return to this bright and intuitively understandable design, which makes the content on the website so easy for perception.
LifeHealth
The next thing that you notice after a smile of the model on the hero image is flat design banners. It allows you to segment the information that you’re going to put on the website wisely. Looking at this type of best BuddyPress WordPress themes, one may easily imagine how his or her project will look with this design.
Callum
If you are a fan of a Pinterest-like layout and looking for the best WordPress community themes, you will definitely enjoy this design. It could become a great portfolio with a small community of fans, photographers, architects etc. Have a look at the demo and see if it meets your requirements.
Dating
Flat design is a king, and this is another proof of this statement. Social network WordPress themes need to have no clutter in its design and the hidden menu placed on the right side of this template helps keep it clean.
Callista
This template could be a great solution for those who try to make the world a better place. A charity non-profit WordPress template may gather a huge community of those who care. Make sure you know well how your perfect website needs to look and see if this design fits the image.
Richard Nelson
Politics divides people, while your purpose is to unite them. Using a political WordPress theme like this could help you do that - create a community of like-minded people.
Senior Home Care
A senior home care WordPress theme may be enjoyed by those who need to convey the mood of calmness, good health and being covered. Finding some great BuddyPress themes for WordPress like this and building a community in this type of organization would only make your brand stronger.
Open Heart
The very concept of charity projects implies having a strong community. This template would be perfectly compatible with a BuddyPress plugin, making it even closer to your audience. Don’t miss out, have a look at it.
Tips for Making a Top-Notch Community Website
Choosing the perfect theme for your community website is just the beginning. Once you have set up your Buddypress website, it’s time for a promo. You should encourage visitors to join your community and at the same time provide appropriate security measures to keep it safe and free from spammers:
1. Make sure it all works
Before the official launch, make sure all the functions operate properly. Let’s be honest, promoting a website that doesn’t work the way you planned is a failure. Go through the registration and login settings yourself and think about inviting a couple of beta testers to go through the same process. Post a few status updates, upload a document, try sending a private message. Just check it all!
2. Add a feature of social login and registration
More and more websites started to use social login features. Since most of us already own numerous logins for various purposes and platforms, registering or logging in using Facebook or Twitter simplifies the procedure. Users will definitely appreciate the fact that you’re somewhat saving their precious time.
3. Protect your registration pages
Unfortunately, any type of public website seems like a magnet for spammers. Consider adding a plugin that stops spammers right from the start by asking anyone who wants to register a simple math question. You can also try CAPTCHA, but keep in mind that some people may quit on this stage.
4. Promote your community
Use your current social media profiles and blogs to promote your own! Think which pleasent bonus you may gift exclusively to the members of your community. Along with online promotion, use stand-alone promotion methods. Those are writing a website link on your business cards or creating custom magnets and cups as an additional promo method.
5. Encourage user interaction
As a leader in your community, your work should encourage users to participate. It is crucial to be active and participate in a community on a daily basis. During the first few weeks, try to be as active as possible by publishing useful content and interacting with the audience. You can use daily polls, answer user questions, etc.
You can also create a contest that requires user participation to win a small prize. Later, when users get to know your community, they should be more active and start conversations on their own.
End of the Line: BuddyPress Themes
Hopefully, you have found something that fits your project among these best WordPress community themes. If you haven’t, however, you may check out the full list of WordPress themes that are compatible with BuddyPress. Also, you may look through the best free BuddyPress themes on the official WordPress website.
Create a strong community and may a high conversion rate be with you!
BuddyPress themes FAQ
BuddyPress is a WordPress plugin that adds many new social option features to your website. For example, it helps you create communities and monitor them. You can also create groups, add advanced profile features on your website, exchange private messages, and so on.
Since this plugin enriches your social option features it boost your communication options. This is why it is a good addition to any business that wants to be in touch with clients. For example university campuses, bloggers, news portals, magazines, and so on.
First of all, make sure that developers included social options. Then keep in mind, that it has to be designed in an attractive way. No one wants to chat on an ugly website. And most importantly it has to be a fast website theme. Since no one likes freezy websites. Including webs search algorithms.
Try to find hosting before you choose a website theme. It is more preferable to choose a hosting platform from your country or region. It will decrease the time of response delay. And it is important for website speed. And if you need reliable hosting that works constantly do not use free hosting services. Or at least make sure that they are reliable and will be safe for your data.