WordPress Network Theme

Imagine, building your very own “Facebook Caliber” Social Network using BuddyPress & Multisite

Okay, so maybe you don’t have enough users to populate North and South America…yet. But if you’re ready to build a thriving Social Network using BuddyPress & Multisite, you need a platform which will:

Display content from ALL sites on your WordPress Network – right from your home page.
Display a list of your most recent, or most active users
Make your BuddyPress groups, forums and user directories easily accessible from your home page.
Send REAL TIME updates of all public activity across your WordPress network from your home page.

Think about it, WordPress.com and Facebook both attract a lot of attention because visitors see that there are things happening across their networks. People are talking, posting content, interacting…who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

That’s exactly what you’re about to build using the Network theme, and it’s more than just a theme…

No More “Plugin Soup”: One Network Theme to Rule them All

Most BuddyPress site owners can’t display all their site content from one place without installing an army of BuddyPress plugins.

What a hassle!

But with Network, you can…

1) Display all posts from across your network (including their featured images) right on your home page:

Home Page Images

Notice how all the featured images are the same size?

Network does that automatically…even if the featured images are different sizes across your network!

2) Display network ‘stats’ (number of blogs, friends, and groups) on each user’s profile page and activity page

3) Create unique sidebars for each BuddyPress page!

4) Control which blogs are displayed on the front page and which are excluded

5) Use widgets to fully customize your footer and display “members online,” “new members” or whatever content you wish!

How many BuddyPress plugins would it take to make all that happen and keep your home page looking organized and professional?

But that’s not all, since Network is a theme, you’ve got gobs of custom design features too…

Build Your Network, Brand Your Network

Check out these “out of the box” design features that Network offers you:

Simple SEO features for posts and pages
Logos: add small and large images for your logo
Customize your site using Google fonts
Templates for creating Full width, blog or news style pages
Easy option to add Google analytics
3 styling formats to choose from
Option to create your own style!
Customizable header
Customizable background
Child and parent theme creation options

Where else can you get loads of functionality plus control over your Network design and layout, without writing any code?

With Network in your toolbox, you can finally focus on the fun part…building and growing your network!

You can get started right now. Just click the “Download” button on this page and Network is all yours.

Guaranteed Quality, Support & Compatibility

PLUS: ‘Guaranteed To Work’ Compatibility with the Latest Version of WordPress, Multisite and BuddyPress

We guarantee that all our themes work with the latest version of WordPress, Multisite and, if appropriate, BuddyPress too … no more suffering with broken, poorly coded, free plugins… that’s the WPMU DEV money-back guarantee.

PLUS: Absolutely NO license restrictions

Whether you choose to purchase one theme or all our plugins and themes, you can use your purchase on as many sites as you like, for as long as you like, no ongoing membership or subscription required, everything at WPMU DEV is 100% GPL.

PLUS: No subscription or ongoing membership required

Simply join and then cancel your membership, and you can carry on using our plugins and themes for as long as you like, wherever you like. Or, become an ongoing member for more support, updates, new plugins and APIs for videos, our dashboard and more. It’s up to you!

PLUS: Unlimited Live & Q&A Support from the WordPress experts, for anything to do with WordPress at all!

All WPMU themes and plugins come with simple usage instructions, and unlimited member access to support Q&A where our dedicated team of WordPress support and development experts are waiting to answer your questions 24 hours a day – no appointment required!

PLUS: Fully internationalized, fully white-label ready, fully customizable

It’s easy to translate any WPMU DEV plugin or theme, and it’s equally easy to white-label them so your clients or users never know your secret source. As 100% GPL code, you’re even free to edit our plugins and themes as much as you like, no questions asked.

PLUS: More Amazing Premium WordPress Plugins

Buy Network now and we’ll show you how to upgrade to premium membership and gain access to EVERYTHING we offer: more than 300 plugins and themes, all with the same the updates and support we’ve just promised you.

Join more than 100,000 satisfied customers who trust WPMU DEV as their #1 WordPress resource – it’s like having your own dedicated WordPress team.

Click the download button on this page to get Network now.

Installing a theme from WPMU DEV

1. Download the theme file

2. Unzip the file into a folder on your hard drive

3. Upload the folder to /wp-content/themes/ folder on your site

If you’re using multi-site you’ll need to visit Network Admin -> Themes and Activate it there.

4. Make sure your install path is correct for example:

/www/var/site/wp-content/themes/thethemename
not
/www/var/site/wp-content/themes/themes/thethemename

5. You’ll see several files and folders depending on the theme package. Most themes contain a folder for the parent and child theme within the folder called themes.

6. Launch FileZilla or your FTP client – read more about using FTP and FTP clients here.

7. Enter your domain name, your username and password. NOTE: the same username and password that you use to log into your cPanel.

8. Click Quickconnect

9. Upload both the parent theme folder and child theme folder to wp-content/themes/

For example, with BuddyPress Daily theme you need to upload bp-daily and bp-daily-child to wp-content/themes/ (bp-daily folder is the parent theme folder)
With Gallery you need to upload gallery and gallery-child to wp-content/themes/ (gallery folder is the parent theme folder)
We provide child themes with themes to enable you to customize your own files without having those changes overwritten when we update a theme.
To find out more about parent and children themes please visit our guide to parent and child themes.

Uploading parent and child themes to your theme folder on your site

10. Dragging the theme folders from your computer into theme folder in your WordPress directory uploads these new themes to your WordPress install however they aren’t enabled on a WordPress Multisite install.

11. As Super Admin user on WordPress Multisite you have the choice to enable:

a) The theme network wide so that all users can use the theme
b) Enable access to the theme on a per site basis
c) Use Supporter plugin via supporter-themes.php to make it available as a premium theme for supporter sites only

Enabling The Theme network wide

Here’s how to enable Sleek Photo network wide so that all your users can use the theme:

1. On your Network Admin dashboard click on the Themes menu

2. Select Network Enable underneath the theme name to enable its access network wide.

To enable more than one theme at once:

Enabling themes on a per site basis

Any theme that has not been activated for the entire network can be activated on a site as follows:

1. Locate the site you want to enable specific themes on by searching for the specific site by clicking on Sites > All Sites

2. Once you have located the site click on Edit (hovering your mouse over the domain name brings up the action menu)

3. Click the Themes tab

Only themes that haven’t been enabled network wide appear on the site theme list

You can also enable more than one theme at the same time:

Using Supporter Plugin for Premium Themes

The supporter plugin allows you to select premium themes for supporter sites only.

The idea is you make the best and nicest themes available on supporter sites so users will want to sign up to access the themes.

To install:

1. Install the Supporter plugin as per the installation instructions.

2. Upload supporter-themes.php to wp-content/mu-plugins

How it works is:

1. A Premium Themes page is added to Settings > Supporter in the Network Admin dashboard, where you can select the themes that you want to enable for Supporter sites only.

Only themes that haven’t been enabled network wide on Network Admin >Themes will be listed on this page

2. A Premium Themes sub-menu item is added to the dashboard of all sites under both Supporter and Appearance – but only users using supporter site can activate a Premium theme.

3. Whereas users on non-supporter sites can see all the Premium themes but can’t activate them – instead they see a message saying ’This feature is limited to supporters only’