WordPress is, without doubt, the most impressive content management system on the web. It facilitates people to build different genres and niches of websites from scratch within a matter of minutes. You can create anything, from a simple blog to an eCommerce site, portfolio or a community portal.
Yep, a highly engaging, interactive community portal can be built on WordPress.
The secret ingredient is BuddyPress - a beloved social networking plugin for WordPress that converts your site into a highly-interactive social networking /community site.
Whether you want to set up a social platform for family and friends, or want to develop a collaborative environment for workers and employees; you are (quite literally) free to use BuddyPress plugin.
You may also like the following articles:
Once installed and setup, the only thing left to do is add a beautiful BuddyPress theme and you are ready to start off your first/next social networking website.
A good BuddyPress-compatible theme will not just show off your social site in style, but also let you integrate added features and functionalities in a few clicks.
Today, we bring you the list of seven most powerful BuddyPress themes to help you get started with a fully-functional social interaction website for a rich user experience.
Please note that some of the links provided in this article may be affiliate links and we will earn commission if you buy their products through our links.
Boss is an incredible theme authored by BuddyPress team that can help you create a beautiful community website in minutes. This is their front runner theme so you can definitely trust this product.
It comes with an intuitive visual customizer that will allow you to unleash your creativity, without even touching a single line of code. It also empowers you to tweak the design of your logo, widgets, colour scheme, navigation, cover photos, and a lot more on the fly.
This SEO-friendly theme is a perfect choice for those who want to create a unique brand on the web. Plus, it comes with a responsive layout that works smoothly on different devices and screen sizes. On top of it, Boss theme offers full integration with the LearnDash and Sensei learning plugins that can help you embed LMS component to your site with ease.
The simplest answers are often the best. Boss is simple, suave, and reliable - a perfect choice for starters with long term plans for their portal.
Socialize comes packaged with a ton of exciting features that can help you integrate blogging section into your community site.
There are loads of beautiful options in terms of customization settings, the layout of different sections of the theme such as the homepage or the category taxonomies. Plus, you will get a decent selection of animation effects that you can integrate with multiple elements of your site to create a better experience for your visitors.
When it comes to the blog section of site, Socialize theme offers you six blog post layouts to choose from. Additionally, the theme is compatible (and in many cases, pre integrated) with some of the most powerful WordPress plugins, including WooCommerce, Events Calendar, Multilingual content manager WPMU, etc.
Woffice is a feature rich, multipurpose WordPress theme that offers a host of advanced features that can help you drive visitors to your community site. The theme is perfect for creating business sites, Intranets/Extranets, community portal, etc.
Its intuitive interface lets you create and customize the site with ease. It offers some fantastic community features such as responsive layout, custom login page, wiki section, files and uploads manager, directory extension, WooCommerce compatibility, chat and messaging features, event calendar, projects management systems and a lot more.
Woffice theme is built with HTML5 and CSS3 so you don't need to worry about its performance and loading speed. SEO friendly design will push you further in your efforts to get more web traffic from search engine platforms.
If you are looking for a way to create a stunning social networking site without getting your hands all up in code, but are nitpicky when it comes to customization, then Community junction is a perfect choice for you.
The theme offers plenty of over-the-top-awesome features and customization options such as full integration with bbPress, WooCommerce compatibility, responsive design, live chat functionality, compatibility with all major BuddyPress extensions, 40 built-in layout and section templates and much more.
It is an ideal WordPress theme for creating a social network for school, company, sports team, etc. You can use its customization options to adjust the overall look and feel of a site, without any coding.
Kleo is the number one selling BuddyPress theme for WordPress in 2016 with more than 10,000 satisfied web customers. Seriously, if you have one shot at creating a WordPress site, pick KLEO for your theme. You won't regret it.
This is a modern WordPress theme that works well with BuddyPress plugin and offers a ton of advanced features. It is perfect for those who place equal importance to the design as well as functionality of their website.
Kleo is a fully responsive and mobile-ready theme, created with HTML5 and CSS3 technologies. There are loads of front-end login options and some spectacularly stunning homepage demos you can load with a click - such as Community HomePage, Portfolio, Ecommerce Homepage, Pinterest style, eLearning and much more.
Not relevant, but I personally adore this theme.
OneSocial is a sophisticated social network theme developed by BuddyPress with an aim to provide you the simple and straightforward design with rich user experience. If it is your first BuddyPress project, then this is an ideal choice for you.
There are multiple advanced features and functions that will help you create a fully-functional and interactive community site with ease. It gives you complete control over your design.
Overall, this is an amazing BuddyPress theme that gives more priority to simple web design with powerful features and performance under the hood.
NRGnetwork simplifies the process of creating community website from scratch. It makes it super easy for visitors to sign up and join your social network.
The theme allows visitors to sign in using their existing account from any social network like Facebook or Twitter. After logging into the account, you and your users can share their work, ideas and get feedback from the community in minutes. You can also take advantage of BuddyPress' quickly growing library of add-ons that can help you extend the functionality of the site with ease.
The theme includes some of the staples of premium theme features including extensively built custom page templates. As an added bonus, there is a whole tray of customization options that helps you build interactive content slideshows, ready to publish straight from your dashboard.
Wrapping up
These are the seven most promising BuddyPress themes that can help you create a WordPress site with an added zing of social networking features. All the themes mentioned in this blog post are great in terms of functionality, usability, and reliability.
Pick the one that suits you best. And don't forget to share your experiences with building online community portals in the comments below.