Has it already been 8 years? Wow! Buddypress, the premier Social Networking plugin for WordPress, was created way back in 2024, while trying to add social networking capabilities to a website that was powered by WordPress MU. The first stable release was in May of 2024 and since that time, Buddypress has grown and changed a lot, from very basic to a powerful tool that allows you to create entire social network websites with ease. In 2024, there are a whole bunch of free and premium Buddypress themes out there to choose from and also a massive number of useful plugins available for WordPress and Buddy Press that really expand the amazing built in features and let you power up your features and functionality.
Divi
Divi is an incredibly powerful theme, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it fully supports BuddyPress, in addition to all of it’s other features. Divi is a multipurpose powerhouse template, so if you want to integrate BuddyPress with an amazing portfolio, an online webstore, a business portal or even your personal blog, Divi can do the trick. The functionality is high level and best of all, since Elegant Themes is one of the most trusted theme makers around, their support is top notch. Yep, if you want to add the most popular social network builder plugin to a WordPress theme, you might want to consider this theme.
Kleo
KLEO is a fantastic theme for building an online BuddyPress based social community website. This theme is a great choice for a modern, feature filled website that’s both bbPress and BuddyPress ready, using the power of those amazing plugins to create a great looking, easy to use portal to really engage with your audience. The sophisticated design does wonders for making your users feel comfortable, letting them create and express themselves in a community based on a shared interest. Forums are a wonderful way to create a great user experience and bbPress is probably the best free plugin to make that happen. BuddyPress the preeminent way to let your users create profiles, upload their own content and interact with others. Combined, KLEO has all the features you need to help your site rise to the top. And since KLEO is one of the best selling themes on all of ThemeForest, it’s well documented and well supported, so you can create an online community that will really last.
KLEO is totally responsive, making the site load perfectly on any device, so your users can access your site, make posts, connect with others and feel at home on any sort of device. This retina ready theme also includes several demo sites to help get you started quickly, with very few problems. You can even use KLEO to blog about any topic you’d like, since it’s a full featured blog theme, as well as a portfolio. There’s a news magazine demo, the theme is completely WooCommerce ready and so much more. Seriously, check out some of the demo sites, this theme is absolutely fantastic.
X Ultimate WordPress Theme
X is probably the fastest selling theme in the history of Themeforest and now, it’s even Buddypress and bbPress ready. That means it’s a powerful option for building your own social network community with Buddypress. You’ll enjoy the amazing support and find this theme surprisingly easy to use, considering how powerful it is. Some say it’s the best theme they’ve ever used. This theme is so powerful to use, it makes beautiful and responsive website development a quick and enjoyable process, designing in the browser is a true reality. Pretty cool. Many plugins are included for free, so it’s a tremendous value, and you can even get support via the X Theme Facebook community. That’s unique.
This amazing, wonderful WordPress theme is extremely adaptive in design and style, permits you to assign custom images for backgrounds and more, it is effectively Retina display friendly, quickly responsive and presents mind-blowing BuddyPress functionality also. I’ve seen several communities based around this X theme and they look great, seriously custom looking sites. If you want to create a BuddyPress and bbPress based community using a powerful and fast WordPress theme, X may be what you’ve been searching for. X is just one of the most famous, strong, completely unique and fantastically built WordPress themes available for purchase. But yet those details can’t tell the full, unabridged story explaining what is actually attainable with this incredibly powerful, wonderful and dynamic theme. X theme is amazingly well-known for a number of criteria, let’s review a number of them. This stunning theme is absolutely and completely responsive, will let you adjust the wonderful typography immediately, presents very clear website navigation, is amazing for the one page web-sites and a stunning amount of more brilliant capabilities. It is possible to fashion captivating portfolios of any sort, and X is also eCommerce friendly to trade in awesome goods and services online. That’s a lot of features.
X provides an awesome community user-experience as well as a remarkable admin experience, seeing that it really is perfectly built to look amazing on any notebook and exceptionally effortless to modify to look precisely like you wish it to appear. X arrives outfitted with the cost-free and robust Cornerstone web-page builder and it’s an adaptable, easy to use, fast page builder that will make it uncomplicated to establish your website that appears to be how you wish it to look and also has offers many of the awesome functionality you need. If you happen to be a newcomer with designing a WordPress site, this may be an exceedingly handy benefit to possess, due to the fact that the layout is perfectly altered in the page builder, you will not likely have to know how to write code to generate an impressive and efficient webpage.
Paper
Paper is a full featured magazine and newspaper theme, released in January of 2024, and already one of the most popular new Buddypress compatible magazine theme’s we’ve seen so far. Paper has a blog page builder feature, so you can make your blog pages look and behave exactly as you want them to, there are six awesome widgets and five content modules too. Unlimited home page variations, as well as blog page, archives and regular page design layouts. With Buddypress, bbPress and WooCommerce, there’s nothing you can’t do in terms of building a community and selling products. The design of Paper is deceptively simple, ideal for tech news and communities, design newspapers, online magazines dealing with nearly any subject who want the ability to create a real, full fledged online community around their niche. Great support and outstanding features all make this easy enough to accomplish.
Monarch
Monarch is an innovative theme that can be used on WordPress. It has been programmed to accommodate pages dedicated to community and social networking. Among its many features are three distinct homepage options. Users can choose the default homepage display, which combines small and medium-sized posts in three columns. There are also masonry and timeline options that offer a more symmetric display with two and three-feed columns respectively. This particular WordPress theme is also unique because it has a widgets page where users can place any widgets of their choosing for easier content access. Then there is the live customizer, which makes interface customization a breeze. Choose color schemes, backgrounds and other display elements to make your page stand out even more.
Equipped with BuddyPress, this theme allows users to make use of special features that are reflective of social media networks from post feeds, user profiles, groups, notifications, and so much more. Additional cover page functionalities enable users to customize their pages even more with beautified headers. Aside from ensuring that all important elements of social networking sites are made available on a page, BuddyPress also offers other support features like No Captcha reCaptcha, which adds Google’s Captcha confirmation box to the page’s registration form. What this does is prevent robot accounts from being created. It also has a liking component, allowing community members to like any post across the platform.
To foster engagement amongst community members, the theme provides access to bbPress, allowing developers to have an active discussion area within the page. With a translation tool in place, it is easy to utilize the theme for various sites catering to different audience nationalities. Finally, high-resolution content display and an infinite scrolling feature from JetPack automatically loads content when community members approach the bottom of the main page.
United Community
If you’re trying to build an online community using WP, Buddypress is probably the best option if you don’t want to break the bank. That’s where United Community comes in. This is a unique looking theme, completely different than other BP themes I’ve seen. It offers exactly what you need, with forums, group pages and individual member profiles. It’s got a truly liquid layout up to 1670 pixels and it works with hundreds of Buddypress extensions, like chat, events calendars, user galleries and more. Add a plugin like Paid Memberships Pro, you can even offer paid memberships. Pretty cool.
Klein
The Klein WordPress theme is a one-stop solution for creating community or social sites online. It integrates perfectly with the best premium plugins like BuddyPress, bbPress, Paid Membership Pro and more. It even offers you the ability to install WooCommerce and sell digital or tangible products. Due to all of its customization and capability options, virtually any type of social-driven business can get a boost toward success with Klein. Other options include social media platforms, message boards, and paid membership communities.
The developers recently released Klein 2.0, which gives even more possibilities for creative webmasters. The drag and drop page builder plugin called Visual Composer is now packaged with the theme. All you have to do is click on the features, elements, and content blocks you want and move them into place on each page. This extra plugin usually costs quite a bit of money on its own, but it is included with the Klein WP theme as an added bonus. It also includes Slider Revolution to add graphic interest. No matter what type of social community you wish to creating, using the BuddyPress-friendly Klein theme makes sense. Even non-developers can have a highly professional and amazingly function site without much worry or effort.
WooHoo
The great thing about a responsive magazine theme that also offers bbPress and Buddypress integration, is you can build a fully functional news site that allows your readers to take part in a completely integrated social network on your very own website. WooHoo is a news magazine theme with a well crafted, functional design, it’s SEO optimized for great SERP results and it loads super fast too. WooHoo is a sleek, feature-packed theme that comes with a few demo sites to install, each one representing a different industry or general look for the website. There’s the default demo, a high tech blog magazine design, a health magazine, fashion layout, sports magazine site, a couple of classic blog designs and more. Each one of these theme demo designs allows you to make yourself, and your users, a great social community based on BuddyPress, which is the best free social network engine for WordPress. WooHoo offers WooCommerce, which shouldn’t be too much of a stunner, considering the name. There are custom categories, a search page, author page, tags and archive pages, a custom 404 page and more. No coding is required, since there’s a drag and drop page builder integrated with WooHoo and that’s a nice touch for beginners, and the one click demo import gets you up and running without delays.
Gone
Gone is an incredible BuddyPress theme that’s built for travel communities. But you don’t have to have the travel bug to enjoy this theme, it’s adaptable enough to work for a wide variety of online communities. Gone is a multipurpose BuddyPress theme, packaged with the incredible Visual Composer plugin, and Slider Revolution too…both for free! Pretty cool, huh? Gone also supports mega menus and handles WooCommerce as well as bbPress. That’s a full service community builder for sure. gone is straight forward to customize and the documentation offers step by step guides to make it run smoothly.
M
(M) is a social network in a box, so to speak. This Buddypress theme is a modern hub for discussion and enlightenment, filled up with incredible features to make an astonishingly professional and well designed social network. If you need a site where people can really feel free to communicate with one another, a Buddypress enabled theme is a must. I think (M) is a great choice.
Sahifa
Sahifa is certainly one of the best, most wildly popular Buddypress and bbPress themes I’ve seen. Flexible too, Sahifa is meant for blogs and news sites too, with plenty of options for helping folks to interact on your website. Sahifa is clean, responsive and has a built in reviews engine, so your articles can really get the conversation and interaction started. With over 10,000 downloads and counting, Sahifa is well documented and well supported too.
Socialize
Like the name states, this WordPress theme is specially designed for webmasters who want to Socialize. It integrates fully with the popular plugins BuddyPress for social media pages and bbPress for message boards and forums. Before you start attracting attention with its full range of community capabilities, take a moment to design a stunning and eye-catching front page with high-quality animated content effects, icons, and designs. Socialize comes complete with four separate and highly unique homepage templates and six varied blog post layouts, but you do not have to stick with the stock layouts if you do not want to.
The Socialize BuddyPress theme comes with the Visual Composer premium plugin. This lets you explore a huge range of customization options and truly build a one-of-a-kind website for all your content and social networking possibilities. You never need to touch one line of code in order to rearrange content blocks, modules, and page elements on every page of the site. Other plugins are also included for more capabilities that can impress your site visitors. These include WooCommerce, the ultimate in only sales solutions, WPMU, for multi-language translation support, and an organized and efficient events planner. People who sign up for the message board or social media platform you run with BuddyPress or bbPress will love the ability to schedule special events. No matter what type of social platform you wish to build, the Socialize WP theme will live up to its name.
SweetDate
People interested in creating the next hottest dating site online should consider the SweetDate theme specifically designed for use with the BuddyPress WordPress social networking plugin. However, if you want to get a community together for any other reason, this theme’s customization options make it simple to change its look and feel without diving into complicated code.
One of the many custom layout decisions you can include is a unique slider displayed prominently on the website’s homepage. A single graphic works as well. With retina-ready graphic quality and 100% responsiveness for all types of screens and monitors, Sweet Date WP theme is built to impress.
Building a social community is not the only benefit of using this particular BuddyPress theme. SweetDate includes full integration with Paid Membership Pro, which allows you to run a premium site that earns you money when people subscribe. Multiple levels and payment models are permitted including monthly subscriptions. To entice more people to try out your new social service, there is the possibility of setting up a free trial period. This can help you build a community more quickly and succeed with your business.
The SweetDate BuddyPress theme takes care of all the technology behind running your own social networking, community, membership, or dating website. Combine this with an attractive and engaging look and you can’t go wrong if you choose this solution for an online business.
Plexus
Many BuddyPress-specific themes do not integrate well with WordPress Multisite, but Plexus was developed to do just that. Even if your goal is not a website network, the Plexus theme still provides everything you could want. Its unique design will push your site to the forefront of visitors’ minds as they appreciate the clean, stylish, and user-friendly look and feel. Although it appeals straight out of the box, site owners can also do a huge number of customizations and edits to build a unique style. Any site built with the Plexus Buddypress theme offers retina-ready graphics and responsive layout options.
Other premium plugins packaged with the Plexus WP theme include the user-friendly Visual Composer drag and drop page builder and Layer Slider, which helps you create stunning slideshows on any page. A ton of eye-catching elements and content blocks can be arranged however you like to properly display your information and graphics. All of these features and the seamless integration with BuddyPress social networking and bbPress message board community addons make the Plexus theme a grand solution for anyone with an ambitious project to complete.
Bounce
Companies, freelancers, and other professional who want to create a social community or network for their industry or niche should consider the Bounce theme. It integrates smoothly with both bbPress and BuddyPress on any WordPress site. Every bit of the backend power is handled by these plugins, but the design elements and features come from Bounce. Customize the home page to suit your particular needs. Copy and paste shortcodes to add unique content blocks or capabilities. Choose from one of the seven attractive color schemes included with this theme.
For flexibility and professional style, the Bounce WordPress theme offers everything you need for bbPress and BuddyPress social platform creation. It offers truly flexible and completely responsive styling.
Salutation
Unlike some BuddyPress WP themes built in the past, Salutation has not been abandoned to languish in the out-of-date and unprofessional waste pile. The developers continue to add features, make updates, and listen to the users’ ideas and suggestions for added capability. The Salutation theme just keeps getting better. It integrates smoothly with not only BuddyPress, but also the bbPress message board plugin. These two features combine to provide the most professional yet user-friendly social community-building solution available for WordPress websites.
Salutation includes a vast collection of features, elements, options, and settings to help you create a truly unique online platform. Because of its complexity, the developers responded to community need to publishing video tutorials to help you do everything from setup to fine launch. Text-based instruction and documentation is also available. When it comes to designing a social media or message forum website using the BuddyPress and bbPress plugins, the Salutation WordPress theme allows for the ultimate in professional-quality customization and helps you achieve it as well.
Creatif
Creatif is a simple, but elegant Buddypress and bbPress theme, built with community in mind. Mojo themes is the only one to offer this amazing theme and they do a great job of making sure only the best designs are available. You can also get this theme installed for a small fee if that’s something you need. No matter what you need, Creatif will help get your community launched quickly and have it looking like you want it in no time.
Razor
The Razor WordPress theme was designed with social networking and community building in mind. Totally compatible with BuddyPress social media plugin, this theme delivers stunning style for professional and business websites. There is nothing flashy or over-the-top about Razor, just the straight deal on sleek style and capability.
Select one of the stylish skins packaged with the Razor forum theme with a simple click of the mouse. It delivers a front page with a highly aesthetic and professional look so every site visitor knows the quality they will find there. With a BuddyPress installation on board, people who enjoy your content can add some of their own. Social networking and sharing of information adds a new dimension of success to any WordPress website.
Razor is fully responsive so connected individuals can access your social community from a home computer, tablet, or smartphone and get the same attractive and user-friendly experience. Retina-ready graphics keep things looking crisp and modern. The theme comes complete with a collection of icons, white label control panel, and bbPress forum integration. If you wish to run a social network for any reason, the Razor WP theme provides everything you need and the look you want. The developers even created tutorial videos to help you achieve your goals.
Flix
The Flix theme imparts plenty of modern style to any website. It lets you take your blog to the next level with a community creating forum or message board built on the powerful and secure BuddyPress plug-in. The popularity of social media and networking should encourage website owners to get involved and allow their fans to build a community using this amazing theme. Flix offers plenty of customization options so you can choose the page templates and design styles that suit your industry or niche the best. Visitors who share content will appreciate having an equal presence depending on the configuration of text and graphics you choose.
Using BuddyPress with the Flix theme provides excellent features that suit blogs with multiple authors. Besides showcasing the content fairly, a tabbed profile section can be added to the blog’s landing page. This SmartTab element is just one of the unique options webmasters can enjoy when they use the Flix BuddyPress theme to create not only an amazing, attention-getting blog, but also a community where everyone can feel valued.
XPhoria
The best Buddypress themes are sort of like a social network in a box, and Xphoria is just that. If you’re trying to create an online community, and you’d like to use WordPress as your content management system, then XPhoria is a great option. Xphoria allows you to build a social network for school, a company, sports team or even a niche community. I’ve seens ome really cool examples using Xphoria. Xphoria is a theme integrated with BuddyPress & bbPress, so your members can register and start creating profiles, sharing information, posting messages, exploring, creating and interacting in groups, making connections, learning and much more.
There are two basic color schemes, a dark and a light version. One of them is sure to match up with your desired site design and if you need to make subtle tweaks from there, it’s easy using the theme options panel. XPhoria is very friendly with many popular BuddyPress extensions, so anything you’d like to do to extend the native BuddyPress functionality, is easy to accomplish. XPhoria includes templates for all of the various BuddyPress standard pages, such as member pages, login page, community pages and the registration page. They’ll all perfectly fit with the site’s design, making for a harmonious website all the way through. XPhoria includes a bunch of shortcodes to help add page elements into your content.
OneCommunity
OneCommunity is a Buddypress enabled theme, so it lets you quickly create an online community of like minded individuals, no matter what the subject matter of your site. The free plugin called BuddyPress is what makes all of this possible. If you want to allow your visitors to register to create profiles, message each other, create forums, make connections, create and connect via groups and more, then OneCommunity is a great theme to select. If you want to build a niche community for a sports team, a shared hobby or interest, a school or a company, a bbPress and Buddypress template like OneCommunity is just the thing you need.
OneCommunity includes nine pre-designed color schemes, selected to give a basic look to your site quickly, but each one can be tweaked to perfectly fit what you want your site to look like. There are awesome options like pop-ups for new messages, content for ‘members only’ and full bbPress integration too. If you want to extend BuddyPress, there are a huge number of available extensions and OneCommunity supports them all. Some of those extensions allow you to have social logins, so people can login with their Twitter or Facebook account, a profanity filter, rtMedia for photo and video sharing, BOWOB chat and a cool profile statistics plugin. All of these features and plenty more make OneCommunity a good choice for a BuddyPress based community site.
Mingle
If the sales numbers are any indication, the Mingle BuddyPress theme offers webmasters an outstanding solution for building an online social networking site. Smooth integration with BuddyPress and other WP plugins mean it will look great and perform even better when visitors come to chat and network. Mingle also includes a vast array of features that can transform a simple content sharing and messaging page into a powerhouse of industry or niche-specific communications. The developers keep adding more capabilities and style options all the time.
Mingle comes with a convenient and highly intuitive layout management system that lets even the lease informed webmaster simply drag elements around the screen and drop them into the preferred position. Although the theme shines when used in conjunction with BuddPress, it is possible to use it for any WordPress website or blog. You can include a stylish portfolio, organized gallery pages, a personal or professional blog, and more. With all these capabilities and the tried and true functionality of the Mingle BuddyPress theme, it remains an excellent choice for the creation of social networking pages online.
Cinematix
Explicit
Explicit is a dynamic, well crafted magazine and Buddypress theme with built in reviews. Add in groups and forum and you’ve got a platform where people can interact and communicate their thoughts and ideas. Explicit has a swipe driven master slider, infinite loading, and four preset reviews styles. Oh, and with infinite ratings criteria, there’s absolutely nothing you can’t use this theme for. It’s certainly one of the best and most popular reviews engines we’ve seen and perfect for creating an online community with WordPress.
WildCommunity
The BuddyPress theme called WildCommunity brings style and capability to your WordPress installation. Not only does this theme make installation of the BuddyPress and bbPress message board plug-ins straightforward and easy to understand, it offers the unique opportunity to meld a stylish and modern design from the community feature and the static part of your website.
WildCommunity offers four distinct layouts for the homepage of your site. With the included collection of shortcodes, customization options abound. Site visitors who are eager to join the conversation will experience a unique design and functionality powered by bbPress or BuddyPress form creation programs. These are easy to set up, use for both administrators and visitors, and include security features and plenty of unique options. This WP theme also offers multi-site usage opportunities and allows for full integration with WooCommerce and the translation plug-in WPML.
NRG Network
Social networking sites only work if they are user-friendly, attractively designed, and have plenty of positive traits that people want. When you choose the NRG Network theme in conjunction with the powerful WordPress plugins BuddyPress and bbPress, you can deliver on every promise. Site visitors can sign up easily with a new user name and password or by using their Facebook account. BuddyPress offers many specific addons so you can customize your website to be the perfect solution for either a diverse group of socializers or a unique niche group.
Packaged with NRG Network theme is Visual Composer, the ultimate drag and drop page builder plugin that usually comes with a premium cost. Revolution Slider is another premium option that allows you to create dynamic slideshows with attention-grabbing graphics or videos. If you do not wish to build site pages from scratch, NRG comes complete with a collection of pre-made templates to help you launch your new social network more quickly.
