After the inception of CMS like WordPress and plugins like BuddyPress, it is not at all difficult to create a social network website for your school, community, or circle. Gone were the days when you had to code everything just to create a website. Nowadays, even a non-coder can easily create a website of their own with the correct combination of themes and plugins. And if you are planning to create a community website, there is nothing better than WordPress BuddyPress combination with Reign BuddyPress Theme. We are not saying this just like that. We have reasons to prove that and therefore, in today’s article, we will be telling you about some incredibly useful hacks and customizations for your WordPress BuddyPress-powered website that you can only do with Reign Theme.
So, if you do not want to indulge in adding custom CSS for your website for every customization, this article is just for you. You can get a lot of work done with just one theme for your community website. But before that, let us tell you about the Reign BuddyPress theme and why it is the ultimate solution for your BuddyPress-powered website.
About Reign Theme
A community website is only complete if it offers an incredible design, easy navigation, and freedom to your users to perform different types of activities. If you are planning to create a community website but are afraid that you might have to indulge in coding, this theme will definitely make your work a lot easier. In fact, you will see that you will not require any coding to customize your site for the design or any extended feature. Reign BuddyPress theme is a highly flexible BuddyPress dedicated theme that provides you with the box featured to create a BuddyPress-based social networking community.
BUDDYSOCIAL: An Interactive WordPress Social Community Theme
Useful Hacks And Customizations For BuddyPress
When it comes to the customization aspect, the Reign BuddyPress theme stands out as it offers general as well as BuddyPress dedicated customization options that you will not normally find in your default theme. Let’s now move forward to some amazing customizations and hacks for your BuddyPress website that you can do with the help of this theme.
Style Up Your BuddyPress Avatars
Not all WordPress themes will give you a feature to style the avatar of your site. Moreover, adding custom coding to your site whenever you want to make small customization is also not favorable. For instance, setting a maximum size for an avatar for each user.
Keeping all these aspects in mind, the developers of Reign came up with this BuddyPress customization setting.
With Reign theme, you will get the following customization options:
- Avatar Thumb Size: This option changes user and group thumbnail avatar to selected options inactivity, members and group lists.
- Avatar Full Size: Here you can set dimensions for user and group header avatar.
- Avatar Maximum Size: Here you can set a maximum image size that a user can upload for avatars.
- Default User Avatar: This feature allows you to set a default profile avatar for all the users of your community until they add a custom image.
- Default Group Avatar: This feature allows you to set a default group avatar for all the users of your community until they add a custom image.
Setting up default images for Group Cover and Profile Cover:
Usually, you allow your users to set up their own cover images for their profiles and groups (if they have created one) but when any image has not to be uploaded, it makes leaves a space that might not be appealing for the website. And it is also tedious to upload cover pictures for each profile or group especially when you are creating like hundreds of these. With these BuddyPress customization settings, you can simply upload a default group cover and a default profile cover picture that will be displayed for all users and groups.
You can also select default image size for group cover and profile cover photo which a user can upload.
Customize Your Member And Group Header layout
One of the top customization settings that Reign BuddyPress offers is the capability to manage layouts of your BuddyPress community. With the Reign BuddyPress theme, you will get various layouts for BuddyPress members and group headers. This feature allows you and your community members to choose the right layout for their profile header. A member can update his own header from the frontend. For groups, it can be changed only by those who have been given access.
The customization options that you will get with this theme include:
Member Header Layouts: Allows you to select a member header layout among 3 different layout options.
Group Header Layouts: Allows you to select a group header layout among 3 different layout options.
Customize Your Member And Group Directory Layout
Just like member and group headers you can also choose layouts for members and group directory. Reign offers different members and group directory layout in order to help you customize your site in the best possible manner. These include:
Member Directory Layouts: Allows you to select a member directory layout among 4 different layout options.
Group Directory Layouts: Allows you to select a group directory layout among 4 different layout options.
This feature is essential as it extends the customizing power of BuddyPress and gives you the freedom to select the layout of your choice.
Extend Overall BuddyPress Customization Options
Small tweaks and changes require a lot of custom coding which can make your site heavy. In order to tackle this, Reign BuddyPress also offers some overall customization settings that you can simply select from the backend without indulging in any coding. These additional customization options allow you to customize various BuddyPress-related settings. A few of these important advanced settings include:
- Setting Members to be displayed on each page
- Setting Groups to be displayed on each page
- Auto Group Join Settings
- Enable/Disable User @ Mentions and many more.
Inbuilt Social Profile Module
Everyone is on one or the other social media platforms these days and what’s better than giving them the opportunity to showcase this on their profile.
Reign BuddyPress theme offers an inbuild social profile module that integrates a member’s social media profile and displays it on top of member cover.
An admin has a choice to decide the social platforms he wants his users to enter. He can add as many social media platforms as he wants. Member can add his account URL from his profile section to be displayed on his cover as you can see in the image above.
Extend Your Community’s Power With BuddyPress Extra Widgets
Widgets play a very important role in helping our site members navigate easily throughout the site. You can simply add these widgets at any place of your website. But if you want extended BuddyPress widgets for your site, you will have to indulge in coding. With the Reign BuddyPress theme, you are getting a dedicated widget area for Activity Stream, Member Directory, Group Directory, Member Single Page and Group Single Page. Reign offers 4 such BuddyPress widgets that you can place anywhere on your site. These include:
- REIGN Groups
- REIGN Members
- REIGN News Widget
- REIGN Site-Wide Activity
Just drag and drop these widgets wherever you want. No coding is needed!
Extended Functionalities (with BuddyPress add ons from Wbcom)
Are you planning to add extended features to your BuddyPress-powered social networking website, but cannot do because you cannot code? There is nothing to worried about as we will be telling you about some powerful and much-needed add-ons that can make your community fully featured and highly engaging. All these addons are BuddyPress compatible and are developed keeping in mind the community aspect of WordPress. You can simply install the one you think your site needs and enjoy extended functionality without any coding.
Add member review feature: (BP MEMBER REVIEWS)
Giving your community members the power to review other members can be a great way to increase engagement on your social network. This can be easily done with the help of an easy to use and free BuddyPress to an add-on called BuddyPress Member Reviews. This plugin allows community members to only site members to add reviews to the BuddyPress members on the site. However, a member cannot review his own profile.
This plugin adds a review form that members can use to add reviews on other members’ profiles. Admin can also create multiple criteria for reviews from the backend. Furthermore, this plugin adds a member review widget that displays a member list with reviews on the front-end. There are also a variety of review settings that an admin can set as per his needs such as choosing where to display reviews, sending BuddyPress and email notifications for each review added, and a lot more.
Add Group Reviews (BP Group Reviews)
If you also want to allow your community members to add group reviews & give multi-rating for different groups, you can do so with the help of free BuddyPress Group Reviews plugin. After posting reviews, all reviews will be displayed in the Manage Review section of the group. This plugin includes the BP Group Review Widget that displays the reviewed group.
Allows members to share their location (BP CHECK-INS)
Another important feature that social networks like Facebook these days give are to allow the user to update his favorite location or the places he has recently checked in. It is an amazing feature as it allows users to know about good places in a particular area. BuddyPress by default does not provide a feature of check-in but it can be easily done with the help of a BuddyPress add on called BuddyPress Check-ins.
BP Check-ins is a free WordPress plugin that allows the members of your community to share their favorite spot with other community members via status updates.
This plugin offers two major features. These include the AutoComplete feature where you can add the location of your choice. Place Type feature where you can restrict your members to add locations based on the niche of the website.
It is a great plugin and can extend the features of your community website allowing them to update their location as status.
Add Hashtags feature (BP HASHTAGS)
Hashtags are becoming trendy things to increase your engagement online. On social community websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, these hashtags play a very important role in giving your content engagement. A hashtag is nothing but simply a word or phrase preceded by the # sign. With hashtags, one can easily categorize the posts and tweets that they publish. If you want to make your BuddyPress community searchable and more engaging, then adding hashtag feature can be really helpful for your social network. This can be done with the help of a BuddyPress add on called BuddyPress Hashtags. This add on allows adding hashtags to any BuddyPress activity, bbPress topic as well as WordPress posts and pages. These hashtags then turn into links and used as search items based on topics.
With the latest update of the plugin, you can also allow members to add hashtags in their native language.
Post Status and set moods (BP STATUS)
Status and reactions have also become really popular as they allow users to update what they are doing or how they are feeling. A social platform like Facebook allows users to update status and reactions on their profiles. You can now also do so on your BuddyPress community with the help of the BuddyPress Status and Reaction Plugin.
This plugin allows your site members to set a status on their Buddypress profile. It also allows them to set icons such as emojis besides their username at their profile.
It also allows admin to update his status and mood from the backend and comes with an inbuilt set of icons to be displayed for users.
Make Your Members Love Your BuddyPress Community
Making and extending a community is now not very difficult with the help of these BuddyPress customization features as well as BuddyPress add ons. These features are all provided in one theme, so you really do not need to invest in getting your website customized now and then. Moreover, the plugins mentioned above are BuddyPress-supported plugins and will work great with your community website. Just install the plugin and you are ready to rock.
We hope you liked this article on BuddyPress Hacks and Customizations. If you have any suggestions for us, please let us know in the comment section below.
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