Content sharing websites such as BoredPanda, 9Gag and all kinds of meme sites drive hundreds of millions of pageviews in traffic each month. Some of the strongest points of content sharing, viral websites are:
- huge session durations - visitors spend so much time scrolling, “addicted” to captivating content. More time users spend on the website means more advertisement exposure, which ultimately means higher profits.
- user-generated content - another great thing about content sharing websites is that users can contribute, adding more and more content. This type of crowdsourcing results in more monetizable content and also forms a community around the website.
WordPress is an amazing CMS for creating a viral content sharing website. It is very SEO-friendly almost out-of-the-box and it has a great website creation experience. All modern WordPress websites are very easy to create, edit and maintain with no development experience. Most of the things can be done visually with drag’n’drop builders and feature-rich admin interfaces. It’s also amazingly easy to publish, tweak and maintain content, offering a great editorial experience. Furthermore, the WordPress community is huge and it’s easy to find resources, themes, templates, plugins, tutorials and support.
Let’s have a look at some key features you need to look for in a WordPreess theme when creating a content sharing website:
- support for loads of categories and tags
- lots of grid layout variations
- SEO and page speed optimization
- voting and reactions systems
- seamless social sharing options and widgets
- quickly-accessible social comments
- ad placement (especially AdSense) optimization and management
- NSFW post type feature
- user posting features (front-end submission)
Below, there are are a few WordPress themes that perfectly combine all the features mentioned above and even lots more to create the perfect content sharing, viral or memes WordPress website:
Boombox is a very powerful theme for creating viral content sites such as 9gag and BoredPanda. It offers a lot of custom features, such as:
- 16+ trendy and modern pre-made demos
- powerful admin customization panel
- Gamify and myCRED plugins support
- BuddyPress and bbPress support
- Easy Social Share Buttons 5 plugin included ($19 value)
- Visual Composer included ($25 value)
- post ranking system
- custom user points system
- unlimited layout combinations
- advertisement optimization for various ad networks
- facebook instant articles support
- WooCommerce shop support
- AMP ads
- unique download features
- password strength meter
- 6 single post page templates
- sponsored articles feature
- unique post galleries
- reading time labels
- 3 post pagination types
- NSFW post options
- Emoji post reactions system
- direct GIF sharing on facebook
- FontAwesome support
- 13 featured area types
- powerful voting systems and badge support
- “fake user engagement” options
- SEO-friendly
Bimber seems to be the best-selling theme in the niche and it offers loads of features for creating dynamic viral content sites (memes, quiz, viral articles, poll sites), such as:
- integration with numerous popular plugins such as WooCommerce, bbPress, BuddyPress, Restrict Content Pro and lots more
- Visual Composer included ($25 value)
- extraordinarily powerful admin options panel
- option to restrict content and sell subscriptions
- affiliate coupons features
- Download Monitor integration
- Gutenberg-ready
- AdSense-optimized
- sponsored article option
- member ranks and points system
- Emoji-like post reactions
- image watermarks feature
- NSFW posts option
- ad blocker software detection
- social comments integration
- 16 custom post formats like “hot or not”, “meme”, “versus”, “trivia”, “quiz”, “poll” and more
- 15 pre-made viral demos
- advanced custom layout options for each page
- dark mode option
- newsletter integration
- custom powerful voting system
- WooCommerce shop and unique shoppable images feature
- external link redirect page
- lightbox galleries
- lots of social media widgets
- video playlists
Find more curated WordPress themes you can use to create websites like Medium, Aliexpress, Amazon, IMDB, Pinterest, Kickstarter and more here. Also, you can find a complete list of all 82 WordPress theme companies.