If you want to create a viral content website, WordPress is the perfect platform. Not only is this software capable of handling large amounts of content and high volumes of traffic, but by choosing one of the viral WordPress themes in this collection, you’ll have everything you need to get started today.
When looking for the best themes for viral content websites, be sure to look out for features that will help keep your visitors on your site for as long as possible, as well as easy ways for them to share your content on social media. Monetization options such as a good selection of advert locations are important too. After all, you do want to get paid for your efforts!
If you want to replicate the success of sites like BuzzFeed and others, choosing a theme from this collection is the easiest way to get started.
1. SociallyViral
SociallyViral has been created by MyThemeShop, producers of some of the fastest WordPress themes around.
Not only does this theme have a design that will help reduce your website’s loading times, but it has also been built with the sole purpose of helping your content go viral. Each of the two different homepage designs does a great job of displaying your latest content, while the individual page templates have been optimized to earn as many social shares as possible.
As well as the prominent social media icons, SociallyViral also features a handy trending content widget. This widget can be used to ensure your readers can always find your hottest content, helping to increase the time they spend on your site and improve the chances of them finding something they want to share with their followers.
To help ensure your increased traffic equals an increase in revenue, the SociallyViral theme has been fully AdSense optimized. This means you get plenty of options when it comes to controlling how your pay-per-click adverts are displayed.
Not only is SociallyViral one of the best viral WordPress themes you can buy today, but by joining the MyThemeShop members club, you can get access to all of their other themes and plugins – including the equally viral TruePixel – for one low price.
2. InHype
InHype is a blog and online magazine WordPress theme with a viral-friendly design.
As this theme has 10+ demos, it can be used to create a wide range of websites. Some examples of the types of topics this theme would work with, based on its library of demos, include health, news, business, lifestyle, and celebrity. There’s also a demo for creating a review site, and one for publishing deals and offers online.
Regardless of which demo you choose, you’ll be getting access to a modern homepage template. These templates not only look good, but contain lots of elements to increase engagement on your site, and hopefully increase the chances of your content going viral.
Some of those features and elements include animation effects that should encourage visitors to click on links, sliders and carousels for showcasing lots of content in a confined space, and social share buttons that make it easy for visitors to share a link to one of your articles with their followers on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Other features, such as the custom widgets that can be used to display links to the trending content on your site, can be used to direct traffic to your articles that have the most chance of going viral.
Some other reasons to choose InHype include pop-ups that can be used to display article previews, review templates for publishing professional-looking reviews on your website, and opt-in forms for encouraging your visitors to join your email list.
InHype also comes with over 30 content blocks to help you set your website up exactly how you want.
3. Anymag
Anymag is a magazine WordPress theme with lots of interactive features.
If you want to build an audience that’s engaged and has the potential to help your content go viral, Anymag should be a good option. The Anymag demos come in a range of styles. Some are general-purpose, while others are focused on specific types of websites, such as lifestyle and fashion content.
One interesting feature of Anymag is that it makes it easy to publish issues of your online magazine, rather than simply listing all your articles on your website. Thanks to this, you can create collections of your content that are organized by month, season, or topic. Regardless of which demo you choose or how you decide to organize your content, the design of Anymag should have everything you need to give your website a good chance of being shared and going viral.
Elementor is compatible with Anymag to help you customize your website.
4. Foxiz
Foxiz has plenty of demos to help you build the right type of website.
Whatever type of content you want to go viral, Foxiz should have a demo with an overall design and set of templates that will work for your project. In fact, with over 80 demos, website owners who choose this theme will be spoilt for choice. As the demos span many categories, there’s a high chance you’ll be able to find one that meets your needs.
When it comes to setting up your website with this theme, Foxiz lets you do it in many ways. If you want to make your site interactive, you can easily enable features such as the discussion forum and bookmarking system that let visitors communicate with each other and curate their own content collections. There’s also membership and paywall functionality to help you monetize your content.
Foxiz has good social media integration to help your site go viral.
5. Bimber
Bimber aims to help you build a professional content website with the least amount of effort.
Bimber makes every effort to encourage your visitors to stay on your site for just one more article. No matter where a visitor is on your site, there’s always another link to click and another piece of content to view. Then, when they feel inspired, there are the ever-present floating social share buttons to enable them to take the next step and help make your content go viral.
Bimber also does a good job of ensuring your most popular content rises to the top. Thanks to the trending and hot content widgets, not to mention the popular content badges, your visitors will always be able to find the most viewed articles on your site. The infinite scroll feature and recommended article widgets also do a great job of keeping your visitors on your site for longer, increasing the chances of them engaging positively with your content. These are all popular features that anyone looking for a viral WordPress theme will appreciate.
If you want to give your audience the ability to submit their own content to your site, Bimber has been built to work with the popular Snax front-end uploader plugin. This theme has also been created with ad monetization in mind, giving you plenty of options for displaying those lucrative pay-per-click adverts.
No matter what type of articles and videos you want to publish, Bimber is one of the most powerful viral WordPress themes.
6. Weltgeist
Weltgeist is a viral magazine WordPress theme with multiple high-quality demos.
All of the Weltgeist demos have designs and templates that are perfect for creating content-rich websites that have the potential to go viral. If you don’t want the design of your website to have a negative impact on your chances of connecting with your target audience, Weltgeist certainly meets that criterion.
If you take a look at the Weltgeist demos, first you’ll notice that the homepage templates have been well designed and have the right type of layout to provide your audience with plenty of options as soon as they arrive at your site. Some examples of the Weltgeist features that could help increase the amount of time your visitors spend on your site include the sidebar area that can scroll independently and has its own set of custom widgets that display links to other articles on your site and the grid layouts for promoting some of your featured content.
Hopefully, as your visitors spend more time on your site, they’ll find the content that they think is worth sharing with their audience. With more of your content being shared, it’s more likely to find its audience and then go viral. To make it as easy as possible for your visitors to share your content, Weltgeist comes with a full set of social sharing buttons and tools.
While the Weltgeist homepage and archive templates have been designed to a very high standard, the same can also be said of the individual blog post and article designs. Thanks to this, each time you add new content to your site, you should be able to find a suitable template that will present it in the best possible way.
Weltgeist has good support for publishing videos on your website as well as text- and image-based content.
7. Newsy
Newsy is a viral news and magazine WordPress theme.
With so many demos to choose from, you should find that Newsy works well for your project. As this is a news and magazine theme, all of the demos are focused on helping site owners publish lots of articles and then organizing that content so that it’s easy for readers to find the next interesting piece of content to consume.
To make it as straightforward as possible to customize your site, all of the templates of Newsy can be edited with the WordPress block editor rather than having to rely on a third-party tool. This theme actually comes with a selection of custom blocks for the WordPress editor, including tools for adding viral quizzes to your content.
Newsy can help you build a highly interactive viral news site.
8. King
King is a magazine WordPress theme designed to help your content go viral.
As well as the five homepage demos that make up the King package, you also get access to eight different templates for your individual articles. Out of this selection of templates, five have been designed for news articles, two for publishing video content, and one for articles that feature a lot of images. Thanks to this, no matter what type of content you’re publishing you should be able to present it in a way that will increase its chances of going viral.
In addition to the pre-built templates and layouts, you can also choose from a range of options for the header area of your site. Due to these customization options, you can easily adjust the logo image, colors, and other properties of the header of your website. Gaining control of your category pages is also easy with the King viral magazine WordPress theme. This means that all of your related content will be displayed in the right way, matching the overall style of your website.
If you want to make your WordPress website more interactive, King has some good features in this area. For one, you can let your visitors sign up and start interacting with your content. You also have the option of awarding badges to your users and displaying their activity metrics in a leaderboard format. Visitors can also share their reactions to your content, such as using emojis and like buttons to express their opinions. If you want to, you can even give your audience the ability to submit content on your site. Thanks to the front-end submission forms, you can configure how user-generated content is submitted to your site.
With a growing library of pre-built content and a long feature list, King is an interesting viral WordPress theme.
9. BoomBox
BoomBox has all the essential ingredients needed to help your content go viral.
To ensure your website has the right look and feel for your project and its content, BoomBox includes four demos with more on the way. Although these demos will look familiar to anyone who has found themselves on popular viral content websites like BoredPanda and BuzzFeed, the overall design of your site can be modified to give your website a more custom look.
When setting up your website, you’ll have three different post-ranking systems to choose from. Thanks to the trending, popular, and hot ranking systems, your visitors will always be able to find your latest content. Your audience can also provide feedback on your content using the reaction buttons. There are multiple reaction options for them to choose from, helping readers to instantly rate your articles.
If you want to make your viral content website a more collaborative project, BoomBox includes front-end submission forms for accepting articles from your users. This viral WordPress theme is also fully BuddyPress compatible, giving you an easy way to add many social networking features to your site. When it comes to the type of content you and your team can publish on your BoomBox-powered viral website, there are plenty of options. Lists, quizzes, audio and video embeds, and social media content can all be added to your site in just a few clicks.
With a design that’s optimized to be both easy to use as well as encourage social shares, BoomBox is a viral WordPress theme you should definitely take a closer look at.
10. Saxon
Saxon is another blog and magazine theme with lots of features to help your site go viral.
Whether you’re looking to become the next viral success or simply create a blog, magazine, or another type of content-focused WordPress website, Saxon is a theme that was built with you in mind. The 18 demos in the Saxon package are all focused on presenting your articles in the best possible way and have been built to cover a range of topics. For example, among the 18 demos are options for creating business blogs, review sites, tech news portals, and finance and crypto magazines to name just a few. There’s also a good personal blog demo that’s ideal for creating a website to share your thoughts and news online.
To help your content go viral and enable you to grow your following, Saxon has good levels of social media integration. This includes feed integration to repurpose some of the content that you post on sites such as Facebook and Twitter as well as the ability to display share buttons on your articles.
Although all of the Saxon demos have their own stylish homepage layouts, you’re not limited to just using them in their default state. This is a highly configurable theme and due to that, you can take full control over the layouts of the homepage and other parts of your site. Through the drag-and-drop interface, everyone should be able to change the order of the elements on their homepage as well as customize how the different sections look and behave. There’s no need to be a coder to create a unique and custom viral website with WordPress when you’re using this theme.
With some high-quality designs, Saxon is a theme that could help your content go viral.
11. Buzz Stone
Buzz Stone works equally well for magazine-style websites as it does for viral content sites.
With a content-focused design, no matter what type of articles you want to publish, from attention-grabbing list-based articles to long-form pieces, Buzz Stone should be suitable. To give you an idea of what this theme provides you with for your new website, there are 10 different homepage demos for you to choose from as well as a growing library of templates for the articles you want to publish on your site.
You can see these demos for yourself on the Buzz Stone website, but as this is a modern theme, you can be sure that they all have fully up-to-date designs. As this is a content-driven WordPress theme, the pre-built homepage layouts have lots of links to the other articles on your site. This technique is used throughout the demos, ensuring that no matter where a visitor is on a page, they always have a number of links to click on to visit more pages on your site. Therefore, if you want to use catchy titles and featured images to encourage your readers to view more of your content, this theme has a design that will appeal.
Other features of this theme, such as the selection of useful widgets, the mega menus, and the parallax effects should all combine to help give your website a professional appearance. If you want to tailor this theme to match your vision, then you’ll be pleased to know that the premium WPBakery Page Builder plugin is included at no extra cost, as are the Slider Revolution and Swiper Sliders tools. The colors and fonts are all flexible too, ensuring you can easily make changes to the way your content is displayed.
Whether you want to launch a new personal blog or a multi-author online magazine, Buzz Stone is a suitable theme.