A social community website with advanced features assists businesses to engage their community members with their products or services. It’s a better way to know more about your customers according to author Bill Lentis. Create social network websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. have gained popularity worldwide. And, if you’re also looking to create a social network for your business, WordPress provides you with decent selection options for making your site more interactive. As we know that WordPress is the leading CMS, you don’t require to have the expertise to build a social network on WordPress. You can check out some WordPress alternatives if you want to explore them further.
Create a Social Network Website With WordPress
In this blog, we are describing the best WordPress plugins to create social network websites for social media marketing companies that are easy to use and can be set up in no time.
1. BuddyPress
BuddyPress is a social media builder WordPress free plugin that enables you to run any sort of social network. With approximately 200,000+ active installs and a rating of 4.5, it leads the social networking plugins for WordPress. The core features of BuddyPress enable users to create a profile, publish an update on activity streams, create groups, and much more. It also provides features like discussion forums, friend connections, activity streams, etc. Ease of integration, ease of use, and extensibility make it the first choice for all WordPress users. You can create a community for your company, school, sports team, or other niches.
The Free BuddyBoss platform is a fork of BuddyPress and is available for free downloads, most of the BuddyPress addons now support the platform.
Key Features:
- In BuddyPress, users can create and update profiles, including the use of profile photos. Website admin can easily set up the parameters of the user profiles.
- Users can befriend one another. The website admin can decide what special abilities friends have about one another.
- With the help of BuddyPress users can send private messages. BuddyPress comes with a robust private messaging system, the same as Facebook.
- Website users can choose whether or not to receive an email notification when someone sends them a message.
- Users can also form and join groups on the BuddyPress website. Admins can choose to let their users create and join groups of common interest.
Also Read: How to Optimize WordPress Site To Reduce Bounce Rate?
Try BuddyPress Demo with BuddyPress Addons
2. WP Symposium Pro-Social Network Plugin
WP Symposium Pro is undoubtedly another best plugin to create a social network website. It is extremely compatible, customizable, and works great on a multi-lingual site. It has up to 1,000+ active installs to date. The features list includes profile security, connections, chats, a notification bar, and much more. This plugin is preferable as it provides frequent updates.
Key Features:
- This plugin can be used individually or all together, to produce a social networking site built on WordPress with WP Symposium Pro.
- You can activate a member profile page with the help of an activity wall and posts. Member profile photos or avatars, make friends and followers, activate a website forum, add a web directory of members, and send or receive private messaging.
- In WP Symposium Pro, live chat windows, Groups, Photo Albums, Events, Facebook Shared Status, and Mobile Access are provided.
3. PeepSo
A super-light, free plugin with 1000+ active installs and 4.5 ratings, PeepSo stands out to be an extraordinary WP social plugin. It has features like customizable user profiles with Avatars and covers images, widgets, and configuration.
To help you create an amazing community website with PeepSo, Wbcom Designs has developed a dedicated theme for this plugin. Reign PeepSo WordPress Theme is a dedicated theme for PeepSo and allows you to create a social network website with all the features of this plugin.
Key Features:
- Elegant Clean Look to User Profile and Activity Page
- Ultimate Unlimited Color Options Beautiful Typography
- Beautiful Header Options And Comes With Multiple Header Layout
- Multiple Member & Group Header Layout
Checkout PeepSo Demo and PeepSo Addons
Also Read: Best Multi-Vendor eCommerce Platforms To Create An Online Marketplace
4. User Pro- User Profile with Social Login
User Pro comes with amazing features like social connect and integration, user badges, content restriction, etc. It enables the creation of beautiful front-end user profiles and community sites using WordPress.
This is an all-in-one plugin that gives you several features to create a social network with WordPress. These features include customizable login and registration, social connection, content restriction, user badges, verified accounts, and a lot more.
If we compare BuddyPress vs User Pro, then User Pro is a plugin with a completely modern look and feel. It gives you all that you need to set up a complete community website. Also, the compatibility and frequent updates make this plugin a great choice for social networks. With some amazing customization options such as ready-to-use skins, Unlimited CSS support, unlimited Google fonts, etc this plugin is a must-go with the plugin.
Key Features:
- Fully responsive designs.
- In-built skins, icons, fonts.
- Translation ready.
- Advertisement and community features.
- SEO-friendliness.
- Custom profile fields.
- Auto-redirection after signup/login.
- User roles.
- User-specific invitations.
- Email notifications.
- Private/public user activity stream.
- Beautiful display layouts.
- Seamless integration with other plugins & tools.
5. Ultimate Member
Ultimate member’s plugin is perfect for creating advanced online communities. It enables you to create any type of site where users can join and become a member very easily. Some of its features include SEO optimization, Drag, and Drop builder, front-end user registration and login, etc.
Key Feature:
- Front-end user profiles, registration, and log-in.
- Custom form fields.
- Conditional logic for form fields.
- Drag and drop form builder.
- User account page.
- Custom user roles.
- Member directories.
- User emails.
- Content restriction.
- Conditional nav menus.
6. MemberPress- create a social network website
MemberPress is another best membership plugin that allows you to create a membership website. You can set up membership levels and charge your visitors to become members of your site. Besides, you can easily manage and track your membership subscriptions. With simple payment gateway integrations, you can easily manage payments from your members.
Key Features:
- Ridiculously easy setup.
- Powerful access rules.
- Easily build and sell courses.
- Premium community forums.
- Pretty pricing pages.
- Works with any theme.
- Clear and relevant reporting.
- Simple payment gateway integration.
- Full-blown subscription management.
Also Read: Google API Configuration
7. Youzer
Now take a look at Youzer! It’s also a WordPress membership plugin that allows for building community websites efficiently. It offers all the necessary social features that are required to build a robust online community. Some of these social features are a social wall, information privacy, private profiles, unlimited custom tabs, and links, groups, friendships, messages, notifications, verified badges, emoticons, social login, activity stream, likes, notices, comments, members, and groups directory, and a lot more to explore.
Key Features:
- Create, Edit & Delete member types.
- Activate and Deactivate member types.
- Assign WordPress roles to member types.
- Enable and Disable the member type directory.
- Customize member type directory slug.
- Set a default member type on registration.
- Allow users to select a member type while registering.
8. bbPress- create social network website
bbPress is popular open-source software that allows you to build communities within WordPress. This plugin offers many features like forums, polls, groups, member management, etc. The most important thing about it is that it does not cost anything. You don’t even need to pay for hosting. All you need to do is install the plugin and build your community.
In fact, thousands of plugins out there claim to be free but charge you later. But bbPress doesn’t do that. In addition, it provides some handy features such as customizing the appearance of your community, creating different types of memberships, managing multiple languages, etc.
- You can send private messages to
- Fully integrated with WordPress
- Single installation
- Fast and Light
9. Bitrix24- create a social network website
The Bitrix24 plugin helps you to track the time spent on each task. Moreover, you can assign tasks to people and send messages to clients via email. In addition, it enables you to add multiple accounts and save time while working on multiple projects simultaneously.
The tool offers a variety of templates, which are easy to customize according to your needs. Furthermore, it allows you to post images, videos, documents, and even audio files. Another important feature of this software is the ability to sync data across devices.
- the advanced access permission system
- Enhanced the task automation service
- Bitrix24 CRM document builder
- The new contact center gathers all communication channels
Also, Watch the Best Online Social Community Theme Video
Also Read: How Does A WordPress Quote Plugin Enhance Your Online Community Website?
Final Thoughts on creating a social network website
In a nutshell, it won’t be wrong to say that building a Social Networking site with WordPress will be fruitful for your business. If you want to take your website to the next level, you might want to also install a page builder such as Elementor and pick up a theme that is friendly with the page builder, such as one of these Elementor-friendly themes from CollectiveRay. By building a community of like-minded people you can share innovative ideas and interests. Here are some WordPress security plugins that enhance search engine results and beneficial social media to get more views on the post. We would love to hear whether this article about the best WordPress plugins to create a social network website was helpful for you. Check out the Wbcom Designs Review. Please mention this in the comments below.
WordPress also offers a wide range of MVP software development tools. This is useful if you are not ready to dive head into the building of a full-fledged solution and want to validate the idea first. This way, you won’t spend too many resources on building a product that might not work out.
Thus, with a minimal viable product, you can test your hypothesis and collect valuable user feedback to further enhance your solution. An MVP is also a way to get a product to the market faster and gain a competitive advantage. Finally, you can use an MVP to attract the attention of investors.
Interesting Read:
Free WordPress Community Themes