Do you want to create a community website? If yes, you will love this. 🙂 In this article, I will discuss the best BuddyPress themes plus bbPress themes which are doubtlessly the best option available for creating a community website.
Sounds like a baseless claim? It’s not. First of all, it is WordPress we are talking about – the most generous website platform with millions of themes and thousands of powerful plugins. Among the most valuable and useful WordPres plugins, BuddyPress and bbPress stand out as the essential plugins for creating community websites on WordPress. No wonder, there are thousands of BuddyPress plugins and also bbPress add-ons and extensions.
BuddyPress Vs bbPress
If you are a WordPress beginner, you may be wondering why I am keeping BuddyPress and bbPress together.
So, it’s here.
BuddyPress and bbPress are two separately functioning independent WordPress plugins, i.e. BuddyPress is for social profiles, community sites while bbPress is for adding a forum to WordPress. You can install only one of them and use if you require just one specific function on your site. However, a full-fledged community website requires both the functionalities which is why both plugins are required.
Discussing further, BuddyPress provides an exclusive and a pivotal community feature to WordPress. In other words, it is a power plugin for WordPress which enables users to create a fully functional community or social networking sites. It allows users to create social profiles, become friends with other members and create a network like social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter do.
On the other hand, bbPress is yet another amazing WordPress plugin which specifically works as a forum plugin. bbPress plugin along with its add-ons and extension plugins enables you to add an awesome forum/ discussion board etc. on your WordPress website. Forums are very useful for providing support to the website users, discussing issues and more.
In the conclusion, we can say that BuddyPress and bbPress are fully functional WordPress plugins which can work independently but they work with each other for creating community sites. BuddyPress and bbPress complement each other and allow you create a complete social networking/ community site.
10 Best FREE & Premium BuddyPress plus bbPress Themes & Templates
Doubtlessly, BuddyPress plugin with any WordPress theme will let you add a community-like feature on your WordPress website but why bother when we have a plenty of themes with inbuilt BuddyPress integration. And, most of the BuddyPress themes also offer tight integration with bbPress so as to let users provide a one-stop solution.
No wonder, there is a number of BuddyPress plus bbPress WordPress themes available on the internet, both in free and premium version. Having more options also means more confusion for users, so I carefully handpicked the best BuddyPress themes (FREE and premium) here.
Let’s explore them:
Boss (Premium)
Boss is probably the best BuddyPress theme available on the web. The impressive design and eminent functionality make it the best of its kind – the boss like its name. Boss theme comes with smooth and seamless integration with BuddyPress, bbPress and several BuddyPress add-ons or extension plugins so as to let you create a fully functional community website. With its super-flexible layout, you can create any type of design easily and in no time. Furthermore, the theme supports WooCommerce, Paid Memberships Pro, LearnDash and almost any plugin ensuring endless design and functional possibilities. That’s not all, Boss theme also features one-click demo import feature so as to let you replicate demo in a matter of minutes. Price: $129 (Single Site License for one year) Learn More/ Download Live Preview
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Socialize (Premium)
Socialize is a multipurpose BuddyPress theme for WordPress. Built with seamless integration to BuddyPress and bbPress, you can create a complete social network site or community website using Socialize theme. As the name suggests the theme intends to help people become more social and stay connected in a network. The theme is feature-rich and user-friendly so that both the beginners and webmasters can create professional sites using this. The theme comes bundled with four homepage layouts, nine category layouts and 6 post layouts to choose from. In addition, it supports the powerful page builder plugin Visual Composer which allows you to create any type of design you like. Price: $199
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KLEO (Premium)
KLEO is a fully responsive WordPress theme for community and social network websites. The theme comes with a powerful integration to BuddyPress plugin along with the official WordPress forum plugin bbPress. The theme has provided a modern and sleek design for the community layout which surely will amuse your website visitors. That’s not all; it ensures you the optimum level of functionality BuddyPress plugin would provide ever allowing users to make friends, share ideas via chat, get notifications, sell online and more. Furthermore, it features BuddyPress profile and groups cover and several BuddyPress shortcodes, etc. To your surprise, you will save about $70 as it has awesome premium plugins (Slider Revolution, Visual Composer, and Go Pricing) bundled with it. Price: $59 Learn More/ Download View Demos
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Klein (Premium)
Klein is a responsive WordPress theme that comes with a sleek design and is ideal for creating fully functional and responsive websites. This innovative theme fully supports popular plugins like bbPress, BuddyPress, WooCommerce, and many others. With the help of Visual Composer, you can build striking layouts and stunningly customized pages. This theme offers you the built-in color presets from which you can select the color that best suits your website. You can easily create a fully interactive website for any kind of layout you wish along with the full-width sliders. Your website members can create their profiles, share their views & discuss their ideas via forums and share important events of their lives. Hence, it helps you increase your online presence. Price: $39 Learn More/ Download Live Preview
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Thrive (Premium)
With its solid design and robust features, Thrive theme has assured its spot in our list of best BuddyPress themes. Thrive is fully integrated with BuddyPress, WooCommerce, bbPress and is also compatible with learning dash. It also offers powerful handpicked plugins for the premium performance of your website. Thrive is built from Underscores framework thus is has is very fast. It is a lightweight theme with no external functionalities affixed with it. It happens to be one the best options for someone looking for an attractive, fully responsive, ultra-flexible, easy-to-use community theme. This intranet WordPress theme provides you with the top-notch support. Price: $67 Learn More/ Download View Demos
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Sweet Date (Premium)
Sweet Date is a feature-rich and extremely easy to use WordPress theme. This extremely customizable premium theme is ideal for dating or community websites. But you can easily customize the theme to fit in your business purpose as well. It has its intuitive administration panel with unlimited customization options to help you enhance the look and feel of your site. This theme is packed with powerful plugins, unlimited color combinations, multiple layout options and many amazing features. Not just its awe-inspiring design quality and awesome features, this theme is also well-known for its customized profile area and smart notification. Price: $69 Learn More/ Download View Demos
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BuddyBoss (Premium)
BuddyBoss is a true boss-like BuddyPress theme for WordPress which is a perfect pick for creating community and social networking sites. The theme is carefully crafted by the WordPress and BuddyPress experts at ‘BuddyPress’ so as to offer the breath-taking simple design and vigorous features for a community site. Basically, it presents a clean and minimalist layout that pleases the eyes and keeps the users sticking to it. The theme also has full support/ compatibility to the bbPress plugin so running forums on your social network will be easy. Last but not the least, the theme is ultra-responsive that gives a feel of a mobile app; perfect fit to small screen devices as well. Price: $129 (Single Site License for one year) Learn More/ Download Live Preview 
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Kudos (Premium)
Kudos is a powerful and beautifully designed community focused BuddyPress and bbPress theme. The theme features mighty and impressive customization options, features along with clean, elegant design. Therefore, you can build an alluring and fully functional, dynamic community site in no time. Moreover, the theme provides an amazing way for your website visitors to connect, share and engage. They can create their personal profiles, send messages, discuss in groups, and share ideas and more. This way, you can create a complete website that functions as a social networking site. The theme has provided well-crafted page templates for blogs, forums, portfolios, members’ page etc. In the nutshell, Kudos is a great BuddyPress theme. Kudos to the theme developers! J Price: $59 Learn More/ Download View Demos
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Buddy (Premium)
Buddy is a fully responsive modern BuddyPress theme. In terms of features and integrations, this theme is cutting edge. It offers ample customization option that can help you build sites ranging from simple community and social networking sites to those that suits any type of community or subject you wish. It conforms to the clean coding practices and comes with an outstanding array of shortcodes. The best thing about this theme is that it provides you with the option either to customize your post or page individually or to do it all at once. The responsive retina-ready design ensures that your website looks sharp on high-resolution devices as well. Price: $199 Learn More/ Download Live Preview 
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Wrapping Up
Certainly, BuddyPress and bbPress are the core plugins you need for building community sites or social networking sites. The WordPress themes built with these plugins are immensely useful as they provide readily built templates and features. And, this list contains the most beautiful and most powerful BuddyPress plus bbPress themes.
If you have already used any of the themes, feel free to write your experiences below. Besides, you may have seen or used the theme/s similar to them. If there are any, kindly let us know.
You may also like to see our other theme collections:
- Top 15 Premium WooCommerce Themes
- 15+ Best WordPress Photography Themes
- Best WordPress Church and Non-profit Organization Themes
New to WordPress? Here is how to create a WordPress website – Step by step tutorial.
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