Hey there, WordPress user! Are you ready to harness the power of user-generated content and build an online community that‘s as addictive as Reddit? You‘re in the right place.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll walk you through everything you need to know to create a Reddit-style website with WordPress. By the time we‘re done, you‘ll have a fully-functional site where users can submit and vote on content, participate in discussions, and keep coming back for more.
But first, let‘s talk about why you‘d want to build a Reddit clone in the first place. Reddit is the 7th most visited site in the US with over 430 million monthly active users. It‘s known as the "front page of the Internet" for a reason – it‘s where people go to discover new content, engage in passionate discussions, and form communities around shared interests.
By creating a similar site for your niche, you can:
- Crowdsource content from your members, reducing your own workload
- Foster a loyal community of engaged users
- Establish your site as the go-to resource for your topic
- Drive massive amounts of traffic and monetize through ads and subscriptions
In short, building a Reddit-like site can be a game-changer for your online presence. And the good news is that with WordPress and a few key plugins, it‘s entirely within reach – no coding experience required!
Step 1: Set Up WordPress and Choose a Theme
First things first: if you don‘t already have WordPress installed, head over to a reliable host like Bluehost or SiteGround and sign up for an account. Most hosts offer one-click WordPress installation, so you can be up and running in minutes.
Once WordPress is installed, it‘s time to choose a theme. While you could use just about any theme for a Reddit clone, here are some features and characteristics I recommend looking for:
- A clean, minimal design with lots of white space
- A layout that highlights submitted content over bells and whistles
- Built-in functionality for user submissions and upvoting (we‘ll enhance this later)
- Optimized for speed and performance
Two of my personal favorite themes for this use case are:
Astra – A lightweight, customizable theme with tons of pre-built website templates that can be easily adapted for a Reddit clone. Astra is used by over 1.6 million sites and has a 5-star rating on WordPress.org.
Firey – A viral magazine theme with built-in submission forms and voting. While not as flexible as Astra, Firey comes more or less pre-configured for a Reddit-style site.
Of course, feel free to explore the 8,000+ themes in the WordPress repository and premium marketplaces to find one that fits your vision. Just make sure it‘s well-coded, actively maintained, and plays nicely with plugins.
Step 2: Configure User Registration and Roles
One key feature of Reddit is that users need to create an account to submit content, comment, and upvote. So our next step is to configure WordPress to allow visitor registration and set the right user roles and permissions.
In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Settings > General and scroll down to the Membership section. Check the box that says "Anyone can register." I also recommend changing the default user role from "Subscriber" to something more appropriate like "Member" or "Contributor."
Next, go to Settings > Discussion to configure your commenting settings. At minimum, I recommend checking the following options:
- Comment author must fill out name and email
- Users must be registered and logged in to comment
- Automatically close comments on posts older than X days (choose a timeframe that makes sense for your site)
- Enable threaded (nested) comments
These settings will ensure that only registered members can participate in discussions and that conversations stay focused and on-topic.
Finally, let‘s make sure your registered members have permission to submit content. Go to Settings > Roles and select the role you chose for new members (e.g. "Contributor"). Under "Capabilities," make sure the following boxes are checked:
- edit_posts
- delete_posts
- read
This will allow your members to submit and manage their own content without giving them full control over your site.
Step 3: Set Up User-Submitted Content
Now that your member permissions are squared away, it‘s time to let them start submitting content! We‘ll use the free User Submitted Posts plugin to create a front-end submission form.
Install and activate the plugin, then head to User Submitted Posts > Settings to configure it. Here are the settings I recommend:
- Require login: ON
- Assign author: ON
- Post Status: Pending Review (so you can moderate submissions)
- Notification email: Your email address
- Success message: "Thanks for your submission! It will be reviewed by our team."
Under the "Form Fields" tab, drag and drop the fields you want to include in your submission form. At minimum, you‘ll want a "Post Title" and "Post URL" field.
Finally, hop over to the "Form" tab and copy the shortcode at the top of the page. Create a new page, give it a title like "Submit Content," and paste in the shortcode. Publish the page to make your submission form live!
Step 4: Enable Upvoting and Downvoting
No Reddit clone would be complete without the ability to upvote and downvote submitted content. For this, we‘ll use the Thrive Comments plugin.
Install and activate the plugin, then go to Comments > Settings. Here are the key settings to pay attention to:
- Voting system: Up/down
- Display voting buttons: Before and after comment
- Member badges: ON (reward your most active users)
Feel free to explore the other settings and customize the labels, colors, and sorting to match your site‘s branding.
Thrive Comments will add upvoting and downvoting to your comments out of the box, but what about to your submitted posts? Fortunately, this is possible with a bit of code.
Add the following snippet to your theme‘s functions.php file or a custom plugin:
function thrive_post_voting() {
if (function_exists(‘thrive_post_voting_render‘)) {
thrive_post_voting_render();
}
}
add_filter(‘the_content‘, ‘thrive_post_voting‘);This will display the upvote/downvote buttons above your post content. You can adjust the placement by changing the_content to a different hook like above_post_title.
Step 5: Create Categories for Your "Subreddits"
One of the defining features of Reddit is its thousands of niche communities called subreddits. To replicate this on your WordPress site, you can simply use the built-in categories functionality.
Head to Posts > Categories and start adding a new category for each of the main topics you want your site to cover. For example, if you were building a marketing-focused Reddit clone, your categories might include:
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- PPC Advertising
- Social Media
- SEO
When choosing your categories, it‘s important to strike a balance between being too broad and too niche. You want to choose topics that have a large enough audience to sustain regular submissions and discussions, but not so broad that the content gets diluted.
As a general rule of thumb, aim for 5-10 core categories to start, with room to expand into more niche subcategories as your community grows.
Once you‘ve created your categories, you‘ll want to make them easily accessible by adding them to a navigation menu. Go to Appearance > Menus and create a new menu titled "Subreddits" or similar.
Add each of your categories as a custom link using the URL structure /category/category-slug. If your theme supports it, you can enable icons and thumbnails for each category to make the menu more visual.
Finally, make sure to place this menu in a prominent location like your header or sidebar so users can easily browse to their favorite content.
Step 6: Customize Your Theme to Match Reddit
With the core functionality of your Reddit clone in place, it‘s time to make it look the part! Depending on the theme you chose, this may be as simple as swapping out colors and logos, or it may require some more extensive customization.
To start, create a new child theme so you can safely modify your theme files. Then, open up style.css and start incorporating Reddit‘s signature design elements:
/* Global Styles */
body {
background-color: #DAE0E6;
color: #1A1A1B;
font-family: ‘IBM Plex Sans‘, sans-serif;
}
a {
color: #0079D3;
}
a:hover {
color: #3293db;
}
/* Header */
header {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
box-shadow: 0 2px 4px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.06);
}
.header-logo img {
height: 30px;
width: auto;
}
/* Navigation */
.nav li {
padding: 0 10px;
}
.nav a {
color: #1A1A1B;
font-size: 14px;
font-weight: 500;
text-transform: uppercase;
}
/* Posts */
.post {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
border-radius: 4px;
border: 1px solid #EDEFF1;
margin-bottom: 16px;
padding: 16px;
}
.post-score {
color: #1A1A1B;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight: 700;
}
.post-title {
font-size: 18px;
font-weight: 500;
}
.post-meta {
color: #787C7E;
font-size: 12px;
}This is just a starting point – feel free to explore Reddit‘s design in more depth and put your own creative spin on it.
Some other elements you might want to customize:
- Buttons and form inputs
- Pagination links
- User profile pages
- Sidebar widgets
- Footer copyright notice
The key is to capture the essence of Reddit‘s design – clean, minimal, and content-focused – while still making it your own.
Step 7: Enhance Your Site with Additional Features
At this point, your WordPress site has all the core functionality of Reddit, but there are still plenty of ways to enhance and optimize the user experience. Here are a few of my top recommendations:
Private Messaging
Reddit‘s private messaging feature is a great way for users to connect with each other directly. To add this functionality to your WordPress site, I recommend the Front End PM plugin.
Front End PM lets users send private messages to each other from anywhere on your site, and includes a threaded conversation view similar to Reddit‘s. Plus, it‘s completely free and integrates seamlessly with WordPress‘s user system.
Single Sign-On
Want to make it even easier for people to join and participate on your site? Add social login functionality with a plugin like Super Socializer.
Super Socializer lets users register and sign in with their existing Facebook, Twitter, or Google accounts. According to a recent study, 73% of users prefer to log in with social media rather than creating a new account, so this can be a huge boost for your community.
Badges and Gamification
One effective way to incentivize participation and keep users coming back to your site is through game-like elements such as badges, points, and leaderboards. You can easily add this functionality to WordPress with a plugin like myCRED.
myCRED awards points to users for actions like submitting content, leaving comments, and receiving upvotes. You can customize the number of points for each action and create tiered badges that users can earn. This not only encourages activity but gives your most engaged members a sense of status and recognition.
Email Newsletters
Email is still one of the most effective channels for driving repeat traffic and engagement. With a plugin like MailPoet, you can send automated email newsletters with your site‘s top content directly to your members‘ inboxes.
MailPoet lets you create beautiful email templates that match your site‘s branding, segment your subscribers based on categories and interests, and track opens and clicks. By sending regular updates, you can keep your community coming back even when they‘re not actively browsing your site.
Frequently Asked Questions
Before we wrap up, let me address some common questions I see from people looking to build a Reddit clone with WordPress:
What‘s the difference between building a Reddit clone and a regular WordPress site?
The main difference is the focus on user-generated content and community engagement. While a regular WordPress site is typically centered around content created by the site owner, a Reddit clone relies on its members to submit and curate content. This requires a different set of plugins, features, and moderation strategies.
How much does it cost to build a Reddit clone with WordPress?
The beauty of WordPress is that it‘s completely free to use, and most of the plugins I‘ve recommended in this guide are also free. The only hard costs are your domain name ($10-15/year) and web hosting ($5-30/month).
Of course, if you want to use premium themes or plugins, you may have some additional expenses. But it‘s entirely possible to build a fully-functional Reddit clone for less than $100.
How do I monetize my Reddit-style WordPress site?
There are a few different ways you can monetize a Reddit clone:
- Advertising – Sell ad space directly to sponsors or use a network like Google AdSense to display relevant ads to your users. Just be sure not to overdo it and detract from the user experience.
- Memberships – Sell premium memberships that offer exclusive features like an ad-free experience, bonus content, or a custom badge. You can use a plugin like Paid Member Subscriptions to automate this.
- Affiliates – Earn a commission by promoting relevant products and services on your site. Look for affiliate programs related to your site‘s niche and include honest reviews and recommendations.
- Donations – If your Reddit clone provides genuine value to your community, some members may be willing to support you through voluntary donations. Plugins like GiveWP make it easy to accept one-time and recurring donations.
Remember: the key to successful monetization is providing real value to your users first and foremost. Focus on building a strong community and the rest will follow.
Wrapping Up
Congratulations! You now have everything you need to build a thriving Reddit-style community on WordPress. Take a moment to be proud of what you‘ve accomplished.
As your community grows, keep these tips in mind:
Stay engaged – Don‘t just moderate, participate! Respond to comments, submit your own content, and let your users know you‘re invested.
Encourage quality – Set clear guidelines for the type of content you want to see and don‘t be afraid to remove low-effort submissions.
Foster a positive culture – Lead by example and create an environment where people feel safe to express themselves and engage in respectful discussion.
Listen to feedback – Your members are your most valuable asset. Pay attention to their ideas and concerns and be open to making changes based on their input.
Building a successful Reddit clone takes time and effort, but the payoff is more than worth it. By providing a platform for people to connect, learn, and share their passions, you‘re making a real difference in their lives.
So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start building your community!
