• no distractions, no ads

• no pesky policies invading your privacy

• just you, your friends (and maybe) your family

• no evil algorithm feeding off your inner desires

Why use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter X, Reddit, Quora, WhatsApp, Telegram, Zoom, and Discord when you can have their features and functionalities working on your own social media platform?

This is a quick DIY (do-it-yourself) guide to deploy your own.

1. Hosting 💽

Your website (or app) would require an online server upon which all the files and data of your platform and users shall reside. Every website is essentially just someone else's computer, being accessed over a long distance via the so-called "internet". As such, your social platform would need a computer that can stay active 24/7. A "server", as we call it.

For the purposes of a social platform, it is best to use a paid web hosting service from a reputed brand such as Hostinger, which offers 100 GB for only around $36 for the first year. However, if your platform is not intended to be used widely or actively by thousands of people, then perhaps any free hosting that supports PHP will work, too. We suggest Infinityfree for free hosting, at 5 GB per account.

(In case you require assistance with setting up your hosting, we shall publish more articles and additional guides soon)

2. Domain 🌐

Once your platform has been launched, your users would need to find it on the internet - more preferably be able to search it up on a search engine like Google or to directly type in the URL into their web browsers.

How would they do this? Simple. Your platform needs a domain. It is like a virtual address that you rent on the internet. There are plenty of domains out there in the world, with the most common being .com, .net, .org, and .io. They all have to be paid for, unfortunately.

But luckily for the cheapskates and freebies, you can avail free subdomains if you have your hosting set up with Infinityfree as mentioned above. This means your website will be available at yourwebsite.infinityfreeapp.com or similar. And if you paid for Hostinger, you will have a free .com domain provided!

(In case you require assistance with setting up your domain, we shall publish more articles and additional guides soon)

3. Wordpress 💻

Currently the method of setting up your own social platform depends on an installation of Wordpress. It is free, and always will be! If you have chosen the right kind of web hosting provider (such as the aforementioned examples), then your server can support PHP functions as well as Wordpress.

For Hostinger, they have Wordpress pre-installed on their dedicated Wordpress Hosting packages.

For Infinityfree, you can go to the Control Panel (cpanel) and use the Softaculous Apps Installer to install Wordpress quite easily.

If you are already familiar with Wordpress, then perhaps you never imagined that such a website builder meant for blogging could be used for a whole social network, right? Well, anything can be possible with the right knowledge, creativity and passion. Solely, your platform shall depend on a variety of plugins to bring the functionality of a social platform to your website.

(In case you require assistance with setting up your Wordpress installation, we shall publish more articles and additional guides soon)

4. Plugins 🛠️

Now that you have your basics set up, you can begin adding the following plugins from the WP Admin dashboard of your website. The ones marked with a star '⭐' are mandatory for the basics. You may add more features to your platform with more plugins.

1. ⭐ Buddypress - user profiles, posting, feed, groups

2. ⭐ bbPress - forums

3. ⭐ BP Better Messages - messaging, chat groups

4. BP Verified Member - verified badges

5. BP Attachments - additional file attachments

6. BuddyMeet - video meetings (e.g. in groups)

7. BuddyTask - task management (e.g. in groups)

8. Gamipress - points, badges, ranks, awards

You can certainly find even more plugins than the ones featured here, by searching up 'buddypress' in the Plugins section of your WP Admin.

In case you would like to speed things up, you can download and use the Buddyboss Platform plugin that combines a lot of the features of the plugins above into one dynamic plugin!

In the upcoming months, we are working towards our own special plugin that shall allow a one-click installation to seamlessly allow anyone to launch their social platform within minutes! (Stay tuned)

5. Themes 🎨

If you are following this guide step-by-step, then you are nearly there!

Your social platform needs to look ✨ stunning ✨ and not like some outdated opensource kit. For that reason, we recommend a premium theme fit for a social platform like yours. Something like Buddyboss or Vikinger would look amazing on your site.

In case you cannot afford those themes at the moment, you can just use any theme that you can find for free, via the Themes tab of the Appearance section of your WP Admin.

6. Mobile App 📱

Option A: build an actual Android app yourself, by following this article. Do not worry! It is easier than it looks!

Option B: use a PWA (progressive web app) plugin for Wordpress to enable users to 'download' an accessible shortcut to your platform as an 'app' that appears on the home screen of mobile devices as well as desktop computers. You might already be aware of the 'Install ###' button that appears on the address bar of your browser when visiting certain websites. Well, that's basically it.

7. Alternatives 🤔

Obviously this procedure is NOT the only way for launching a custom social media platform. There are more promising alternatives out there, such as Mastodon. Yet, we believe that this is by far the cheapest and easiest option available so far.

This is not the end, though. We are working on our own website builder. In the future, you can rely on a single platform for managing and launching all of your own!

Thanks for your time, and we wish you good luck! 🫡