Are you looking to make a social networking website like Twitter?
Twitter has a modern and minimalistic design with robust features—which inspires people to make something like it.
However, making a website like Twitter is challenging especially if you have no coding experience.
If you don’t have any coding experience, you might be thinking to outsource the work to a website developer.
But if you’re short of capital, that’s not going to work out.
You might be also considering learning programming, but that will take you months or even years to code something like Twitter.
So what’s the best way to go around it?
In this guide, you’ll learn how to make a website like Twitter in 5 easy steps (without writing a single line of code).
- Get web hosting with SiteGround
- Set up WordPress
- Choose a theme
- Install PeepSo
- Configure your theme & PeepSo
1. Get web hosting with SiteGround
The first step to making a website like Twitter is to get it online.
For that to happen, you need to get web hosting from a reputable hosting company like SiteGround.
I personally recommend SiteGround because of these reasons:
- You can get chat support in less than 3 minutes.
- Fast loading times.
- High-security.
In fact, the website that you’re on right now is hosted by SiteGround.
Firstly, go to SiteGround.com and click on “WordPress Hosting”.
There will be 3 hosting plans that you can choose from.
I recommend selecting the “StartUp” plan (unless you’re expecting over 10,000 visitors per month).
Click here to start your website with SiteGround hosting for a special price of $6.99/month.
After you’ve 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, easy to remember, and brandable.
You need to choose a domain name that has not been registered.
If you’re having trouble with choosing a domain name, you can use a business name generator.
Try to get a .com domain name instead of other extensions because it’s a top-level domain.
Lastly, you need to review and complete the order.
SiteGround will give you a hefty discount if you select the 12-month plan instead of the monthly one.
So, if you’re looking to save more money, you can select the 12-month plan.
If you want additional security, you can add the “SG Site Scanner” service for $19.80 a year.
However, I’d recommend that you uncheck it because it’s not necessary.
Congrats! You’re done with the first step—getting a web host.
2. Set up WordPress
The second step is to install WordPress on SiteGround.
In this guide, WordPress is the content management system (CMS) you’ll be using to make 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 using it.
Installing WordPress on SiteGround is super easy.
All you have to do is to log in to your account > websites > site tools > WordPress > Install & Manage.
You can also contact the support team if you don’t know how to do this.
To contact support, click on the question mark icon on the right-hand corner of the screen.
Once you’ve installed WordPress you can access your website’s admin panel by navigating to Websites > WordPress Kit > WordPress Admin.
After you clicked on “WordPress Admin”, you’ll land on the admin panel where all the magic happens.
You can configure your site’s settings, plugins, themes, etc.
For now, all that you’re left with is a theme + plugin to make a website like Twitter.
3. Choose a theme
Now, it’s time to choose a theme for your website.
In WordPress, themes are a collection of website templates that you can choose from to change the appearance of your website.
There are a lot of free themes you can choose from, but it’s best to purchase one if you want it to look professional.
In this case, you’ll want to purchase a theme that looks like Twitter.
The theme that you want to get is the Gecko theme by Peepso:
Click here to purchase the Gecko theme for WordPress.
It has the perfect layout for a social network and it looks very similar to Twitter.
The theme is fully customizable—you can add your site’s logo, sidebar widgets, footer, and more.
You can also change the colors for everything.
The theme also has amazing support (at no additional cost) that can help you with any technical issues.
I personally used this theme for one of my communities and it has been amazing.
After you’ve downloaded the theme, you need to upload it to your site.
Navigate to your WordPress Admin Panel > Appearance > Themes > Upload Theme.
Then, select the Gecko theme that you’ve downloaded and upload it.
Once you’ve uploaded the Gecko theme to your site, you need to activate it.
Hover over the theme’s image and click on “Activate” to activate the theme.
You’ve successfully installed a theme that looks like Twitter!
In the next couple of steps, you’ll learn how to add the social networking features that Twitter has by installing a single plugin to your site.
4. Install PeepSo
In the previous step, you installed a theme that integrates directly with the social networking plugin, Peepso.
Next, it’s time to install the actual Peepso plugin that has the social networking features of Twitter.
I personally recommend Peepso because of these reasons:
- Beautiful and minimalistic design.
- Social profiles (username, profile picture, banner picture, and more).
- Mobile responsive.
- Post your thoughts, images, or videos (similar to Twitter).
To begin with, go to the Peepso website and click on “Get Peepso”.
There will be 3 pricing options you can choose from—Basic, Starter, and the Ultimate bundle.
Click here to get the Peepso plugin for WordPress.
The basic option includes core features such as posting, friends, chatting, etc.
If you want additional features such as badges (e.g. verified badge), user limits, and word filters, you can purchase the starter or ultimate bundle instead.
Alternatively, you can download the free version of the plugin, but it contains way fewer features than the paid ones.
After you’ve downloaded Peepso, you need to upload it from the admin panel/dashboard of your website.
Navigate to your website’s admin panel > plugins > add new > upload plugin.
After uploading the Peepso plugin, click on “Activate” to activate it.
You’ve successfully added the Peepso plugin to your website!
Now, all you’re left with is configuring the plugin and customizing your theme.
5. Configure your theme & PeepSo
The final step is to configure your theme and the PeepSo plugin.
This step is crucial if you want your website to look and function well.
Firstly, go to your website and click on “Customize” at the top navigation bar to customize your theme.
Once you’re on the customization page, you’ll see a ton of options that will change the overall design of the theme.
The “Site Identity” option is where you can add your site’s logo and title.
On the other hand, the “Colors” option allows you to change the colors of the theme.
There are also many other customization options that you can try meddling with.
That being said, the most important option that you want to customize is the “Widgets” option.
On there, you can add side widgets (just like the ones on Twitter!).
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can customize your widgets:
- Click on the “Widgets” option.
- Select “Header Widgets” > “Add a Widget”.
- Scroll down and add “Peepso Userbar”.
- Change the widget style to “box”.
- Go back and select “Sidebar left”.
- Remove all of the widgets for “Sidebar left”.
- Select “Add a Widget”.
- Scroll down and add “PeepSo Profile”.
- Change the widget style to “box”.
After you’ve followed the instructions above, your left sidebar should look like this:
You’ve successfully customized the design of your theme!
Last but not least, you need to configure the PeepSo plugin.
Go to the admin panel of your website > Peepso > Configuration.
On there, you can change various settings such as General, Appearance, and Posts.
Under the General tab, you can choose to show/hide posts from non-logged-in users.
You can hide the activity stream if you just want to show a login screen (like the homepage of Twitter).
There are a ton of other configuration settings that you can change.
But I’ll leave it to you to configure it based on your own objectives.
I’d highly recommend that you read the PeepSo documentation as it gives you instructions on how you can configure the plugin.
By the end of everything, 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 shockingly close to the UI of Twitter, and all you need is less than a day to create this.
In addition, you’ll save thousands of dollars worth of development costs by using WordPress + PeepSo.
The best part is, you can do all of this without writing a single line of code.
Conclusion
In this article, you’ve learned how to make 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 that I’ve ever used (e.g. BuddyPress, bbPress).
If you found this article useful, do use the given links to purchase the products/services listed (it helps pay for the expenses of this website!).
Further Reading
How to Make a Website Like Facebook
