Are you looking to make a social networking site like Twitter?
Twitter has a modern and minimalist design with powerful features—this inspires people to create something like it.
However, creating a website like Twitter is especially challenging if you have no coding experience.
If you don’t have any coding experience, you can think of outsourcing the work to a website developer.
But if you lack capital, it won’t work.
You might also be considering learning to code, but it will take you months or even years to code something like Twitter.
So what’s the best way to go around it?
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a website like Twitter in 5 easy steps (without writing a single line of code).
- Get web hosting with SiteGround
- WordPress Setup
- Choose a theme
- Install PeepSo
- Configure your theme & PeepSo
1. Get web hosting with SiteGround
The first step to creating a website like Twitter is to get it online.
For that to happen, you need to purchase web hosting from a reputable hosting company like SiteGround.
I personally recommend SiteGround for the following reasons:
- You can get chat support in less than 3 minutes.
- Fast loading time.
- High security.
In fact, the website you are visiting is currently hosted by SiteGround.
First, go to SiteGround.com and click on “WordPress Hosting”.
There will be 3 hosting plans that you can choose from.
I recommend choosing the “Startup” plan (unless you expect 10,000+ visitors per month).
Click here to start your website with SiteGround hosting for a special price of $6.99/monthH.
After you have selected your plan, you need to choose a domain name for your website.
What do you want to call your social network?
For starters, your domain name should be short, memorable, and branded.
You need to choose an unregistered domain name.
If you’re having trouble choosing a domain name, you can use the business name generator.
Try to get the .com domain name instead of other extensions because it’s a top level domain.
Finally, you need to review and complete the order.
SiteGround will give you a hefty discount if you choose a 12-month plan instead of a monthly plan.
So, if you are looking to save more money, you can choose the 12 month plan.
If you want extra security, you can add the “SG Site Scanner” service for $19.80 a year.
However, I recommend unchecking it as it is not needed.
Congratulations! You’ve completed the first step—get a web host.
2. WordPress Setup
The second step is to install WordPress on SiteGround.
In this tutorial, WordPress is the content management system (CMS) that you will use to create a website like Twitter.
It’s fast, flexible and fully customizable with thousands of themes/plugins.
Moreover, you don’t have to write a single line of code when using it.
Installing WordPress on SiteGround is extremely easy.
All you have to do is login to your account > websites > site tools > WordPress > Settings & Management.
You can also contact the support team if you don’t know how to do this.
To contact support, click the question mark icon in the right corner of the screen.
Once you have WordPress installed, you can access your site’s admin panel by navigating to Websites > WordPress Toolkit > WordPress Admin.
After you click on “WordPress Admin” you will get to the admin panel where all the magic happens.
You can configure your site’s settings, plugins, themes, etc.
For now, all you are left with is a theme + plugin to create a website like Twitter.
3. Choose a theme
Now, it’s time to choose a theme for your website.
In WordPress, a theme is a collection of website templates that you can choose to change the look and feel of your website.
There are tons of free themes you can choose from, but it’s best to buy one if you want it to look professional.
In this case, you will want to buy a theme that looks like Twitter.
The theme you want to take is Peepso’s Gecko theme:
Click here to purchase Gecko theme for WordPress.
It has the perfect layout for a social network and looks a lot like Twitter.
The theme is fully customizable—you can add logos, sidebar widgets, footers, etc. to your site.
You can also change the color for everything.
The theme also has great support (at no extra charge) that can help you with any technical issues.
I personally used this theme for one of my communities and it is amazing.
After you have downloaded the theme, you need to upload it to your website.
Navigate to your WordPress Admin Panel > Appearance > Themes > Upload Theme.
Then select the Gecko theme you downloaded and uploaded.
Once you have uploaded the Gecko theme to your website, you need to activate it.
Hover over the theme’s image and click “Activate” to activate the theme.
You have successfully installed a theme that looks like Twitter!
In the next few steps, you’ll learn how to add the social networking features Twitter has by installing a plug-in to your website.
4. Install PeepSo
In the previous step, you installed a theme that directly integrates with the social networking plugin, Peepso.
Next, it’s time to install the actual Peepso plugin that has Twitter’s social networking features.
I personally recommend Peepso for the following reasons:
- Beautiful and minimalist design.
- Social profiles (username, profile picture, banner photo, etc.).
- Mobile responsive.
- Post your thoughts, pictures or videos (similar to Twitter).
To get started, visit the Peepso website and click “Get Peepso”.
There will be 3 pricing options you can choose from—Basic, Beginner, and Ultimate.
Click here to download the Peepso plugin for WordPress.
Basic options include core features like post, friends, chat, etc.
If you want additional features like badges (e.g. verified badges), user limits, and word filters, you can purchase a starter or final plan instead.
Alternatively, you can download the free version of the plugin, but this version contains less features than the paid version.
After you have downloaded Peepso, you need to upload it from your site’s admin panel/dashboard.
Navigate to your site admin panel > plugins > add new > upload plugin.
After uploading the Peepso plugin, click “Activate” to activate it.
You have successfully added the Peepso plugin to your site!
Now all you have left is to configure the plugin and customize your theme.
5. Configure your theme & PeepSo
The final step is to configure your theme and the PeepSo plugin.
This step is very important if you want your website to look good and perform well.
First, go to your website and click “Customize” in the top navigation bar to customize your theme.
Once you are on the customization page, you will see a lot of options that will change the overall design of the theme.
The “Site Identity” option is where you can add your logo and site title.
On the other hand, the “Colors” option allows you to change the color of the theme.
There are also many other customization options that you can try to interfere.
With that said, the most important option you want to customize is the “Widgets” option.
On top of that, you can add extra widgets (just like on Twitter!).
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can customize your widgets:
- Click on the “Widgets” option.
- Select “Title Widget” > “Add Widget”.
- Scroll down and add “Peepso User Bar”.
- Change the widget style to “box”.
- Go back and select “Left sidebar”.
- Remove all widgets for “Leftbar”.
- Select “Add Widget”.
- Scroll down and add “PeepSo Profile”.
- Change the widget style to “box”.
After you follow the instructions above, your left sidebar should look like this:
You have successfully customized your theme design!
Last but not least, you need to configure the PeepSo plugin.
Go to your site’s admin panel > Peepso > Configuration.
On it, you can change various settings like General, Appearance and Posting.
In the General tab, you can choose to show/hide posts for users who are not logged in.
You can hide the activity stream if you only want to show the login screen (like Twitter’s homepage).
There are many other configuration settings that you can change.
But I’ll let you configure it based on your own goals.
I highly recommend reading the PeepSo documentation as it gives you instructions on how you can configure the plugin.
In the end, you should have a website that looks something like this:
You can even implement ads (Ezoic, Google AdSense, Media.net, etc.) in the future as your social network grows.
This is very close to Twitter’s user interface and all you need is less than a day to create this.
Plus, you’ll save thousands of dollars in development costs by using WordPress + PeepSo.
The best part is that you can do all this without writing a single line of code.
Conclusion
In this article, you learned how to create a website like Twitter in 5 easy steps.
I’ve been using the PeepSo plugin for about a year and I have nothing but good things to say about it.
It’s also much better than all the other social plugins I’ve used (e.g. BuddyPress, bbPress).
If you found this article helpful, use the links given to purchase the products/services listed (it helps pay the costs of this website!).
Read more
How to make a website like Facebook
How to make an Instagram-like website
How to make a website like Reddit
Categories: Social Media
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
