Written by With the sudden rise of national lockdowns and social distancing during the pandemic, the popularity of social media platforms has increased immensely. The social media platforms people criticized for time wastage helped them to get in touch with their families and loved ones.
This drastic shift of audience to social sites during the pandemic has helped businesses and organizations open more doors to success and popularity. Nowadays, more and more businesses start building their social networking websites to build a community with like-minded people to increase the popularity of their business and organization.
Why Build a Social Networking Website like Facebook?
Social networking websites, in common words, refer to websites that allow like-minded people to interact, engage, inspire, and exchange thoughts. What is the first thing that comes to your mind by hearing about social networking websites? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., right?
Well, the meaning of social networking websites frequently changes day by day. Every day we come across different kinds of social networking websites that change our perspective about social networking websites.
Brands and businesses from different niches and backgrounds can build their community with a social networking site around their products and services. If you want to know how to create your social networking website, we are here to guide you.
Create a Social Networking Website Using BuddyX Theme – Step-By-Step Process
While building your social networking website, you need to consider many factors. Let us first walk you through the step-by-step process of creating a social networking website. Here we go:
Market Research and Competitor Analysis
Before you start building your social networking website, first, you need to do thorough research of the market and analyze competitors. You need to keep your business plan in mind while building the website. It will help you to learn and understand your competitors and find the best ways to stand out from them.
As the number of social networking websites on the internet increases every day, it is crucial to plan how it will differentiate from your competitors. Unfortunately, many businesses make this mistake by starting their social network without any research and analysis. This is among the most common causes of failure of many websites.
First, you need to find out why you are creating your social network, such as travel, dating, professional, academic, etc. Through this, you can figure out your top competitors to find your Unique Selling Point (USP).
Second, you need to do thorough research on your competitors and learn why they are the top choice of their customers. By analyzing their market behavior and business plan, you can identify the best ways to build your social networking website.
Find and Domain Name and Hosting Plan
As you finish your research about the market and competitor analysis, we will take you to the next stage of building a social network website. First, you need to purchase a unique and attractive domain name that goes well with the business name. If you have already registered your business, choose a domain that matches your business name.
Second, is a reputed hosting services provider to host your website. A hosting service allows you to host your website on its servers. That is why whenever users search for your website, they connect to the hosting provider’s servers.
Your domain name and hosting plan make a direct and significant impact on the website’s performance. So make sure you are making the right deal.
Choose the Suitable CMS Platform
After buying the domain name and hosting service, you need to have a look at the top content management system platform to create your website seamlessly and effortlessly.
WordPress is among the most popular choice of users for building websites. With over 37% of websites built with WordPress, it has now become the top choice for building responsive and SEO-friendly websites. But why choose WordPress to build your social networking website?
Well, the basic reason for choosing WordPress is the easy customization features that let you create even the most complex website without any coding skills. In addition, you can choose from a wide variety of plugins and themes to add advanced functionalities to your website. So, we can say that WordPress is an amazing platform to build your social networking website.
Choose the Best Theme
As you choose WordPress, you will spend a lot of time choosing among the wide variety of plugins available for creating a social networking website. So how will you choose the best among them? Well, BuddyX theme is a free solution that allows you to build your community in a hassle-free manner. The top reason is its compatibility with the best community-building platforms like BuddyPress. There are several reasons why it is the best option that includes:
- Create User/Member Profiles: Create attractive and professional user profiles to give your community an extraordinary touch using BuddyX. Use the premium version for advanced user profile features.
- Attractive Activity Feeds: BuddyX theme allows you to showcase activity feeds that let you scroll down your activity feed like Facebook and also provide a user-friendly layout.
- Friend Connection: Just like other social media platforms, you can create a wonderful friend connection feature to allow members to connect and chat with each other.
- Free Access: Another excellent thing about choosing the BuddyX theme is the free access to many features and functionalities. Create a fully-customizable social networking website with the free version and get the Pro version for extended features.
Choose An All-in-One Plugin
You need to keep several things in mind while choosing a plugin. Choose an all-in-one solution while using a plugin to build highly responsive and easy-to-customizable options. First, you must keep your website goal in mind whether the plugin will suit your website type. If we talk about the best plugins, BuddyPress is the most popular option. The rich and advanced features of these plugins help you create your social networking website smoothly and efficiently.
Is it time to Launch and Promote Your Social Networking Site?
Your work doesn’t end after building your social networking website. As your website gets ready, it is time to launch and promote to let people know about your social network. Promote it as much as possible by referring to your friends, relatives, and contact. You can also organize online events and other strategies to promote your social networking website. Make sure that more and more people learn about your website for better growth and success.
Wrapping Up
And that’s how we wrap up our guide on how to create your social networking website using WordPress. We hope this step-by-step guide will help you get started with your social networking website. The process of creating a social networking website includes a lot of work and complexities, but the demand for these websites increases every day at a tremendous rate. Stay tuned with us for more tips and strategies related to the social networking website-building process.
Interesting Reads:
How to Build a Social Network Website With WordPress?
Setting Up Free WordPress Social Network Website
Why is WordPress the best CMS to create a Social Network website?