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“Follow the plan outlined here and you can create your own website from scratch without writing any code for less than $300.”
LinkedIn is far and away one of the most popular employment-oriented services in the world.
With over 500 million members and counting, the website is known as the pinnacle of professional networking and online business relationships.
It’s a great business model – one that attracts countless employers and employees. It just makes sense that so many others are trying to cash in on LinkedIn’s incredible success.
If you are hoping to make a website like LinkedIn, you definitely don’t want it to be a shoddy knockoff. No, you want it to rival the quality of LinkedIn while still bringing something new to the table.
Furthermore, you want your new website to have a stylish and beautiful design, intuitive user features, and powerful SEO benefits.
The best way to get all of those benefits and more is by using WordPress. Today, I’m going to show you exactly how to make a WordPress site that rivals LinkedIn.
Your new website’s design
If you’ve ever used LinkedIn, then you already know about its minimalistic design.
Rather than bog the website down with clunky extras, the professional networking platform opts for a simple, straightforward approach that emphasizes performance.
Here’s a quick look at what your site will look like after following this guide:
Your new WordPress website will be capable of very similar functionality to LinkedIn and have many community features such as following, friending, and private messaging. When you use the right tools, it’s not hard to create a functional and stylish website like this.
Now you’re probably excited to see how this all fits together, so let’s cover the steps now.
How to Create a Site Like LinkedIn
You can create a professional and social networking and employment website like LinkedIn with just five easy steps:
- Get a domain name
- Get hosting
- Install WordPress
- Install and configure a WP theme
- Launch your site
I’ll take you through each of these five simple steps in detail now, but for even more information, take a look at our comprehensive guide on how to create a WordPress website.
Get a domain name
The first tool you need to build a website like LinkedIn is a domain name.
Your domain name, or URL, is the web address people type in to access your website. You should strive to find an available “.com” domain because, according to Searchmetrics, this common domain extension has SEO and branding advantages.
After you secure a domain name, it’s time to look for web hosting.
Get hosting
All of your website’s files will be stored on a server that will deliver these files to visitors’ browsers when they type in your domain.
In other words, without hosting, your website can’t exist or load.
While there are many good hosting options available, I always recommend Nexcess above others.
Nexcess is an excellent way to seamlessly host a WordPress site. They’re affordable for beginners while still offering fantastic performance.
And there’s one feature in particular that makes Nexcess a great choice to make a site like LinkedIn.
Install WordPress
The final tool that you need to create a WordPress website is WordPress itself.
The next step here is to install WordPress on your site. One major benefit of using Nexcess is that they auto-create a WordPress site for you when you signup.
In other words, you’ll create an account with Nexcess by filling out a simple form and get a free WordPress site made for you.
The site you’ll have will be hosted at your domain name and have all the basic features that come with WordPress.
In order to transform your site into a social network, you’ll install a WordPress theme.
Benefits of Using WordPress
Still not convinced that WordPress is the right platform for you?
Take a look at these benefits and try not to change your mind:
- Easy to use – WordPress takes some time to get familiar with, but there’s nothing technical about using it
- No coding – You don’t need to know a lick of coding or have any prior knowledge about web design
- Complete control – You’re the only one with access to your new website, so make it look and function exactly how you desire
- Full customizability – WordPress is extremely flexible and enables you to customize just about every aspect of your website’s design.
- Free – WordPress has always been and will always be free to use
One last benefit of WordPress is the fact that it’s been around for over a decade and has more than a billion dollars worth of developer investment behind it. We’re talking about many of the world’s best PHP developers working over this time to make WordPress as easy to use and reliable as possible.
Watch the free video course in my tutorial on how to make a site with WordPress for additional help
Beyond that, it’s always easy to find help because there are so many forums and blog posts covering every topic you could ever encounter.
The Aardvark theme
Aardvark is our number one choice for those that want to make a website like LinkedIn.
It’s designed for community building and social networking. Every aspect of its design and layout was developed with these goals in mind.
This WordPress theme allows you to build a community, create a paid membership site, provide online courses, build an online store, and run a blog. Entrepreneurs who are looking to promote a business on LinkedIn will find value in adding their company to your site as well.
And that’s not all – several premium plugins give you even more control over your new site’s performance and design.
Other reasons to choose Aardvark are its clean aesthetics, one-click demo installs, BuddyPress integration for social features, full customization, and 100% responsive design (mobile-friendly).
Click here to see more from Aardvark
Alternative WordPress Themes Like LinkedIn
Even though Aardvark is an awesome theme, there are other themes you may prefer. Our runner-up WordPress themes for building a website like LinkedIn are Kleo and Besocial.
Kleo
Kleo is notable for its community-centered, multi-purpose approach. It’s a stunningly elegant theme that’s built for social and professional networking.
The theme is so great that it was among the number one best-selling themes in 2018.
Besocial is another WordPress theme that’s top-rated for social networking. Like the other social network themes here, Besocial is fully compatible with the popular BuddyPress plugin for social networking functionality.
Besocial boasts an intuitive interface, all the features you can dream up, and an elegant aesthetic.
You can find even more alternatives in our collection of BuddyPress WordPress themes.
Launch your LinkedIn website
You now have all the tools that you need to create a WordPress website like LinkedIn.
Remember that all you need to do is buy a domain name, get web hosting with Nexcess, install WordPress, and configure our favorite theme (we recommend Aardvark) to launch your new website.
With a great customer acquisition strategy, visitors will be flocking to your LinkedIn-like professional networking website in no time at all.
