According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 59% of people think online dating is a great way to meet people. And the use of online dating sites or dating apps by young adults has nearly tripled since 2013.
This is evidence that people are discovering online platforms like chat apps and dating websites to find potential partners online. 💑💬
Reading: How to create a dating website with buddypress
This has led to an increase in the number of businesses related to online dating. The value of dating services as a business was valued at $2.5 billion in 2015 and is projected to grow 5.1% per year to $3.2 billion by 2020 in the US alone, according to MarketResearch.com. 🤑
So if you’re looking for a profitable business idea, you have one right in front of you.
Required WordPress theme and plugins 📝
To enable interaction between To enable site members, you need to add social features like user profiles, private messaging, advanced search, and the like. You can achieve that with BuddyPress.
But before that, you need to choose a good dating theme for your website. The theme you choose can transform or destroy your website. So you need to choose one that looks good and provides the best user experience on your site.
If you don’t have one in mind, you can check out rtDating – our premium WordPress dating theme! 😃
rtDating Features
Here are some of the features of rtDating that make it an exciting choice for building your dating website 🤩 –
- Fully responsive
- Compatible with all major browsers
- Compatible with major WordPress plugins
- Compatible with major social login plugins
- Shows the member’s active status
- Different color palettes to choose from
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Once you have installed and set up the rtDating theme on your website, consider installing and setting up the BuddyPress and rtMedia WordPress plugins.
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BuddyPress 👥
BuddyPress adds important networking features to your website such as custom profiles, member management, Connection requests, private messages and more. Without BuddyPress, managing members on your site can be difficult.
rtMedia 🖼️
rtMedia is essentially a media management plugin that offers deep integration with BuddyPress. You can use it to extend the features offered by BuddyPress. It offers the ability to create albums, view media in a lightbox, view media likes, and more. Check out the full list of rtMedia addons that may help you in the list below –
- rtMedia moderation
- rtMedia favorites
- rtMedia Likes
- rtMedia View Count
- rtMedia Album Privacy
- rtMedia 5 Star Rating
- rtMedia -WordPress Comment Attachments
- rtMedia Social Sync
- rtMedia Photo Watermark
- rtMedia Photo Filter
The separate purchase of this add -ons can cost you around $690. But if you buy the rtMedia Pro Bundle, you can save around $190 and get access to all 35 premium rtMedia addons.
Besides BuddyPress and rtMedia, you can also try the following plugins to use them to enable live chat feature on your dating site.
- WordPress, BuddyPress Users Chat Plugin on CodeCanyon
- iFlyChat – WordPress Chat
- CometChat Go
Steps to create your dating website
Here are the steps you need to follow to create your dating website with WordPress –
Step 1 – Download and install the rtDating theme from your rtMedia account. And set it up as in the demo or as you like.
Step 2 – Install and configure that BuddyPress plugin on your website by following our BuddyPress tutorial.
Step 3 – Install and set up rtMedia from your WordPress -Dashboard off by following the official support doc.
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Step 4 – Download the required rtMedia add-ons from your m rtMedia account and install it manually on your website. You can see which add-ons are required from the list shared in the rtMedia section.
Step 5 – Go to rtMedia settings page and configure the available options under – Display, WordPress, BuddyPress, Default Albums, Types, Media Sizes, Privacy, Custom CSS, Social Sync, Moderation, Watermarks and other settings.
If you need help getting started with the add-ons, you can refer to the rtMedia add-on documentation page.
Step 6 – Create the important pages (site policies) and publish them on your site. You can contact an online business legal team to understand what you need to cover on these pages.
Step 7 – Create a private group of beta testers and ask them to test if your site’s features are working properly. If anything comes up, fix the errors and keep testing until there is no error.
Step 8 – Start marketing your website on social media- Platforms and across the web to get the initial flow of your website visitors. Make sure that you bring as many people as possible to your website yourself in the first few days. This allows subsequent users to find your site welcoming.
That’s it, you’ve now created a dating site using WordPress, BuddyPress and rtMedia. 🥳
Links: Download rtDating | Download BuddyPress | Download rtMedia
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