Create A Viral Content Sharing Website With These Classy WordPress Themes
If you’re someone who’s looking to use WordPress to create a viral website along the lines ofBuzzFeed or Upworthy, then you’re going to need the right theme. What you’re looking for is a theme that makes it easy for people who visit your website to find your best content and easily share it.
There is no shortage of WordPress themes that are available – however there aren’t too many that scream “viral”. You’ll want to weed out the themes that are designed for nighttime bloggers, eCommerce entrepreneurs, artists who want to share their portfolios, corporations trying to close a sale, and generally “busy” options that are too difficult to navigate. Fortunately, we’ve already done the work for you. Here are five of the best WordPress themes for aspiring webmasters who want to create viral content online.
1. TruePixel
TruePixel is a great place to start if you’re looking for a WordPress theme that makes navigation and sharing exceptionally easy for even the least sophisticated web visitors. Just add your amazing content with billboard style featured images and you’re good to go.
The theme is optimized for speed, meaning that you won’t lose visitors to long load times. It also features a floating box with social share buttons, meaning that it’s exceptionally easy for your visitors to share your amazing content.
Finally, the vertical layout is professional and easy to follow. Overall, TruePixel is a great way to present your viral content. What’s not to love? Plus the theme is just $69.
2. Aruna
If you’re planning a viral website that offers content in numerous formats such as video, audio, and images, then you should take a good look at Aruna. The theme is meant to mimic the viral content site 9GAG, known for hosting images and animated GIFs. However, the author notes, the theme “is not a 9GAG clone.” That will be obvious to people familiar with 9GAG who view the theme. It’s far more sophisticated and offers more robust support of various media formats.
Aruna was also designed to make content easy to share and let casual browsers know what’s hot. A number at the top bar of each post tells visitors how many people have viewed the content. The familiar social share icons are right next to that number, enabling your visitors to post your great content on one or more social media sites.
Aruna also sports a “lazy loader.” That means that your page loads faster and additional content is only loaded when the user scrolls down. That’s a user-friendly experience that will keep your visitors coming back.
Finally, Aruna also allows for color-coded categories, which can be very helpful for people who are just interested in a certain subsection of your site. At just $48, it’s a steal!
3. Harpoon
Harpoon is a simple theme that will give your great content the boost towards virality that it deserves. A key distinction between this theme and the others is that it showcases how much your visitors like or dislike a post, using a thumbs up/thumbs down icon and corresponding numbers. People who are browsing your site will not only see the headline and featured image, they’ll also get a view on how many people actually enjoyed (or didn’t enjoy) each post. That’s a great way to brag about your awesome content using the opinions of your visitors.
Although the theme is clean and lean, it doesn’t lack sophistication. The overall layout and the default fonts provide a professional image to even the most casual blogger. If you’re looking for a classy theme that’s astonishingly simple to use as either an administrator or a website visitor, why not give Harpoon a chance? The theme is currently priced at $48.
4. Pin
The WordPress theme Pin makes your blog look like the famous social media website Pinterestby placing your featured images and headlines in a boxed format. This makes browsing exceptionally easy, especially for users who are accustomed to Pinterest.
This might seem like a great theme only if you’re planning on sharing a lot of images. However, Pin just makes your site look like Pinterest. It doesn’t actually behave like Pinterest. For example, people who click on one of the images in a boxed format will be taken to an article sporting that same featured image, with easy-to-read content just below that.
The bottom line is that you can share your great articles, videos, and images on the Pin theme. And at $48, Pin is a great theme for people who want to share viral content in a way that’s familiar to the millions of people who use Pinterest.
5. PressGrid
If you want a grid layout but are looking for something a little more sophisticated than Pin, consider PressGrid. PressGrid is definitely not a lightweight theme. It offers advanced capabilities, such as automatically moving the layout around as the visitor scrolls downward. It will catch first-time visitors by surprise, that’s for sure. That kind of state-of-the-art technology will also let people know that your site is first class. You’ll earn some brownie points for that.
Surprisingly, the extra code that’s required to make PressGrid look slick doesn’t seem to have an impact on the load time. It comes up quickly, displaying everything just as you’d expect. Also, each element in the grid is sized proportionally to the featured image, meaning that some elements of the grid are wider than others. This offers a great deal of flexibility in what you use for your featured image, whereas many other themes require you to use the same size featured image for every post.
Finally, PressGrid also offers an infinite scroller. What that means is that the content isn’t paginated. Instead, as the user scrolls down, the less recent articles just automatically load. You might have noticed that this is exactly what BuzzFeed is doing these days. It just makes browsing that much easier on visitors.
Remember, though, that there is a downside to infinite scrolling websites from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective. Google can’t “scroll” down your home page. So the only links that Google will find when it spiders your page are the ones that appear before any scrolling is done. This is easily fixed by ensuring that your website has all of the content on a “Posts” page that uses pagination. That “Posts” page should be accessible from your home page menu.
PressGrid is a great option if you’re looking for a few more bells and whistles that might require a slight learning curve on the part of your visitors. If you think that your market is sophisticated and will appreciate the additional features, download it and apply it to your viral content website for just $43.
Wrapping Up
Here we’ve outlined five of the top WordPress themes for a viral content website. Which you go with for your site ultimately depends on what capabilities you need included, and what budget you have to spend on said theme. However, always remember to check out user reviews and have a play around with the demo before committing to any theme! What’s your favorite theme for viral content websites? Let us know in the comments below!
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Create A Viral Content Sharing Website With These Classy WordPress Themes - WPExplorer
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