Face-to-face gossip replaced by Facebook, reading the news replaced by Daily Rundowns on LinkedIn, friends communicating over emails replaced by WhatsApp chats and SnapChat, sharing artistic physical photo albums and catalogs replaced by Instagram and Pinterest respectively. It’s now time to build that social network using just two simple tools – WordPress and Buddypress.
What makes social media so powerful and influential? It is the strong network of people that it builds and the relevant information that it has on each and every user. Many times, we come across brilliant ideas for building a special social network but do not execute it just because we are hindered by the lack of technical acumen we have to build the product. But here, we will discuss how you can build a social networking app of your own without any prior coding knowledge!
BuddyPress, a free social networking site builder plugin that is available with WordPress is a life-saver when it comes to building social media sites from the scratch without prior technical experience. First and foremost, you should have a layout and the basic functionalities in terms of the engagement functions in your social media app as well as the website. Once clear, try choosing a BuddyPress theme that looks similar to the layouts for the website you had in mind complementing the app. Once you find the theme, you can customize it according to the layout you had in mind and voila! You have created a social media website using BuddyPress.
Some of the most popular themes to choose are:
Boss: Boss is a great theme to work with that is easy to integrate with some of the most renowned payment gateways like PayPal. Boss is also highly responsive in case of a mobile site to give a good viewing experience and can easily be converted into a native mobile app as well.
BuddyApp: BuddyApp is one of the most mobile optimized BuddyPress themes out there. This makes sense to use the maximum amount of crowd on social media (read around 90%) access it through their handheld devices or smartphones. Hence, BuddyApp is also a great option to go with.
Kleo: Kleo is highly responsive and is easy to build upon as it has visual composer which you can use to build the website block by block using a drag-and-drop technique.
Now, to convert a BuddyPress powered social media website into a compatible native app, one can use a powerful tool called Canvas by Mobiloud. It converts and configures all the UI elements of the BuddyPress site into a native app ready to be pushed to the Google Play Store as well as the Apple App Store.
So, what are you waiting for! Don’t let technical knowledge be a barrier between you and your dreams. Use the power of BuddyPress and Canvas to make your social network idea a reality.