21 BuddyPress Themes to Help You Build a Brilliant Social Site
Just recently we realized that we didn’t have the chance to talk about BuddyPress at all, so here’s a bit about BuddyPress and why it is the best in the industry.
BuddyPress is a free, open-source content management/extension for WordPress which was developed by Automattic as a result to their desire to offer WordPress users the chance to create a professional social community without having many expenses and without needing any programing skills.
Just like WordPress, the extension got extremely popular and new developers joined the community just in just days since it’s launch. Even though is not very old in the industry, BuddyPress community has managed to build a tremendous database of plugins and themes, so without a doubt more posts about the platform will come soon.
In fact that’s one of the main reasons why BuddyPress will offer you everything you need and more, not to say the fact that is based on the most stable and popular CMS of all time.
Right now just take a look at these premium and free themes and see why BuddyPress is the best social CMS out there.
1. Mingle
Price – $45
A complete WordPress theme with support for the latest BuddyPress version. Mingle has a very elegant and modern portal look that helps you integrate all the social functions in a image-friendly way. Besides that, the theme has an advanced admin panel along with layout management so you don’t need to write any code at all, but customize it effortless.
2. ReviewIt
Price – $45
Like the name says, is a theme that offers great layout support for review-type posts along with GD Star Rating. You can add custom review tags and pages and also have custom post types. ReviewIT comes in 2 color schemes – a dark one like in the screenshoot and a lighter one.
3. Custom Community
Price – Free
This is probably the most professional free BuddyPress theme I have ever encountered. Custom Community also has a premium version available at ThemeKraft for $69.
4. Salutation
Prince – $50
You can use it for a corporate type of website hosted on WordPress or BuddyPress. Salutation offers a very clean design and great ergonomics. The navigation embeds jQuery with nice animations and every user can create a fully customized design of the theme using the menu on right.
5. Huddle
Price – $50
Huddle is the ironic name because this great blue theme has a layout which organizes the content very nice and it is in fact user friendly offering them an experience similar to which you have when you visit sites like Facebook or LinkedIn.
6. Garden
Price – Free
A theme that fits very well for nature and retail related websites. As you can see, Garden is mostly brown, but with a very creative background and with lots of animations too.
7. DynamiX
Price – $45
One of the most popular BuddyPress Themes out there and for good reasons. DynamiX offers a very creative and innovative “decomposing” slider along with lots of content tabs and a featured section on main page. Just like ReviewIt and Mingle, DynamiX gives you the chance to create your own fully customized post types and pages.
8. Game Portal
Price – $45
For those who might think that Game Portal is all looks, they should know that this incredibly lightweight theme comes with a comprehensive design kit too. Among the most popular features, Game Portal brings a suite of shortcodes and four sidebar positions, not to say about how social friendly it is.
9. NiuKita
Price – Free
Has a very modern look that makes you believe you are in a Cosmic battle. It comes in a classic blog style, but it also has lots of social friendly gadgets including Twitter stream and the in-BuddyPress stats.
10. Score
Price – $45
This is yet another Review theme brought by the creators of ReviewIt design. This time though, we talk about a design similar to RottenTomatoes website. Just like ReviewIt, the theme has rating system and a unique homepage with tons of featured content options.
11. Feature!
Price – $45
It has support for WordPress with BuddyPress and also for forum platform BBpress. Feature has a nice looking and ergonomic slider on homepage and also an advanced panel on left that lets your users create their favorite design of the website.
12. SuperMassive
Price – $45
The name describes best this theme which is huge! SuperMassive contains over 40 Shortcodes, five distinctive skins, Flash, HTML5, YouTube and Vimeo players included. Besides that is a pro, unique theme which has a very beautiful, elegant look.
13. Gratitude
Price – $45
One of my favorite themes created by the experts at ZenThemes. Gratitude is one of the single themes with responsive design and it stands out with it’s lightweight design and professional, modern layout.
14. Bruce
Price – Free
Yet another great theme created by Milo from 3OneSeven. The theme has a clean look and a layout that was designed to support a website with a lot of content.
15. BuddyBoss
Price – $59.95
Highly professional theme designed especially to fulfill the need for a design similar to most popular social media websites out there. As I said, BuddyBoss embeds the members data in a very friendly manner with every possibility.
16. Frisco
Price – Free
A minimalist design that has lots of great potential. In fact Frisco is mostly used as a framework for the default theme available on BuddyPress called BP-Default.
17. Solitude
Price – Free
A classic good looking BuddyPress theme with loads of content boxes for you to display featured content on home page.
18. Buddies
Price – $45
A cool ZenThemes design which incorporates all BuddyPress functions in a social friendly manner. The theme is extremely lightweight and also responsive so that no matter what device your visitors use, they will experience the same beautiful layout.
19. Ines
Price – Free
A clean grid based BuddyPress theme which fits best for retail websites or blogs. The theme also has lots of animations created in jQuery.
20. Speed
Price – Free
The name brings lots of details about what this theme is about. You can use it for other niches too, but sports fits best.
21. Cosmic Buddy
Price – Free
A nice theme brought to you by the BuddyPress community at BuddyDev. Cosmic Buddy manages to create a bond between fun and entertaining with the business and pro.
Check out these new BuddyPress themes!
I love the features of buddy press and I have a plan to start a highly professional social networking site. But I am not sure about the strength of buddy press- I mean its traffic handling capacity and the availability of the developers.
@pagetron – Like I said, BuddyPress is an extension created for WordPress which currently is the most powerful and resourceful content management system out there. The script can handle much, but when talking about traffic and stability you should consider thinking about powerful servers, not scripts. If you have a website with lots of traffic and lots of processes running, is recommended to have a VPS or a Dedicated Server along with a CDN.
A great collection. Dont even know which to select for a buddypress project am working on. My major concern with buddypress theme is lack of support for mobile devices. Still searching for a mobile buddpress theme.
Dont know if anyone can provide a link to one.
Hey, I’m putting up a new site based on WP + BuddyPress and I’m wondering – is it better to invest some money into a theme, that is being sold on themeforest and such marketplaces or download a free theme and customize it to my needs as I have some css/html skills. Thanks for any advices!