How to Create a BuzzFeed Like Website Using WordPress

BuzzFeed turned personality quizzes and listicles into one of the most-shared content formats on the internet. The same playbook still works for a small WordPress site today.

As online content creators ourselves, we’ve seen firsthand how creating content that goes viral can turn a simple blog into a successful online business.

The great news is, you don’t need a huge team or a massive budget to build a website that captures attention like BuzzFeed.

Just look at our founder, Syed Balkhi — he started a blog called List25, which was all about creating engaging list-based content. List25 became incredibly popular, and Syed eventually sold it.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to build a viral content website like BuzzFeed using WordPress. We’ll talk about everything from registering your domain to publishing your first quiz, listicle, and email opt-in.

Why Start a BuzzFeed Like Website?

BuzzFeed grew from a simple website into a major media company reporting $185.3 million in 2025 revenue — built on quizzes, listicles, and pop-culture commentary.

This type of content can capture the attention of a large and active audience. BuzzFeed’s success story offers valuable lessons for anyone looking to build a thriving online presence, whether you’re an aspiring blogger or entrepreneur.

As we already mentioned, our founder Syed Balkhi started a listicle-based blog called List25 and implemented smart ways to earn money from it. List25 became incredibly popular, and Syed eventually sold it to another company.

This gave us a unique perspective on building an online community around viral content.

What’s the takeaway for you? Creating engaging, shareable content like BuzzFeed and List25 is a real way to make money online while letting your creativity shine and providing real value to your readers. It’s a proven path for anyone building a long-lasting, profitable site.

Choosing Your Website Builder

For a content-heavy site like this, we recommend WordPress.org. With over 63,000 plugins, ir allows you to add quizzes, listicles, polls, and social sharing tools in just a few clicks.

One quick note before you get started. WordPress.com is a hosted builder with limits on plugins, while WordPress.org is the self-hosted software we use ourselves – see our expert comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for the details.

For a BuzzFeed-style site, you want WordPress.org. It gives you the freedom to install the quiz, listicle, and social sharing plugins we’ll cover later.

What Do You Need to Build a BuzzFeed Like Website?

There are three things you will need to make a website like BuzzFeed:

• A domain name – This will be the address of your website that users will type in their browsers to see your WordPress blog (For example, wpbeginner.com).
• Web hosting – This will be your website’s home and where you will store all your website files
• Your undivided attention for 40 minutes

Yes, you can make a BuzzFeed-like website in 40 minutes, and we will walk you through it every step of the way.

In this tutorial, we will cover the following:

Ready? Let’s get started.

Setting Up a BuzzFeed Like Website Using WordPress

First, you will need to register a domain name and purchase hosting.

Typically, a domain name costs $14.99 annually, and website hosting costs $7.99 per month, usually paid annually.

If you are just starting, this is quite a lot of money.

Thankfully, Bluehost has agreed to offer WPBeginner readers a free domain name and a generous discount on hosting.

So you can get started for $2.99 per month.

Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world, and it is an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

We recommend Bluehost because of its faster hosting servers, excellent customer support, free domain name, and affordable hosting plans. For details, see our complete Bluehost review.

Note: At WPBeginner, we believe in transparency. If you sign up with Bluehost using our referral link, we will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you (in fact, you will save money and get a free domain). We would get this commission for recommending just about any WordPress hosting company, but we only recommend products that we use and believe will add value to our readers.

Let’s move on to setting up your domain name and hosting so you can start building your website.

First, visit the Bluehost website and click the ‘Get Started Now’ button.

Next, you will be asked to select a plan. The Starter and Business plans are popular among our users.

Simply click ‘Choose Plan’ under the plan you want.

After that, you will need to choose a domain name for your website.

Here are some tips on choosing the best domain name for a BuzzFeed-like website.

• Your domain name should be easy to remember and pronounce.
• Stick with a .com domain name extension (To learn more, see our article Com vs Net – What’s the difference between domain extensions)
• Do not use hyphens or numbers in your domain name.

Need more advice? See our guide on choosing the perfect domain name for your website.

Once you type the domain name you want into the field, click on the ‘Search For Domain’ button.

Then, you’ll be taken to the Bluehost Cart page. From here, you can choose the duration of your Bluehost plan.

We recommend choosing the ‘3 Years’ option because it offers the biggest savings. Next, click ‘Continue to Checkout.’

After that, you will need to enter your account information, such as name, address, email, and so on.

Next, you must add your payment information to finish the purchase.

Afterward, you will receive an email with a link to your hosting control panel and login details.

Installing WordPress

Bluehost will automatically install WordPress for you, and you can log in to your WordPress site directly from the hosting dashboard.

Once logged in, you will see the WordPress admin area.

From here, you will manage your WordPress website, change content, and add content.

Choose a BuzzFeed Like Design for Your Website

WordPress comes with a basic theme that looks nothing like BuzzFeed by default. Luckily, you can choose from thousands of pre-made WordPress multi-purpose themes.

These themes are not exact copies of BuzzFeed’s website, but they are highly customizable and can be used to add design attributes to BuzzFeed’s website.

We have hand-picked a few WordPress themes for viral content and BuzzFeed-like websites.

1. Sydney – Best for Beginners

Sydney is a flexible, high-performance WordPress theme that works beautifully for content-rich, BuzzFeed-style sites. It ships with multiple ready-made starter sites, including bold magazine and blog layouts that you can install with a single click.

You can fully customize colors, fonts, headers, and post layouts using the built-in theme settings, and Sydney also plays nicely with all the top WordPress page builders.

Beyond the visuals, Sydney is remarkably lightweight. We ran a speed test on a fresh install and were impressed to see it consistently scoring high for Core Web Vitals. This is essential when you’re creating a rich, multimedia BuzzFeed-style site.

2. SeedProd – Best for a Custom Theme

SeedProd is the best website builder plugin for WordPress. It comes with dozens of templates that you can use with any WordPress theme of your choice,

Plus, you can use it to create a custom WordPress theme for your magazine website with your own layout and unique design.

It comes with an intuitive, drag-and-drop design tool that lets you easily create custom designs without any special skills or writing any code. It even has an AI website builder that allows you to create a custom website in less than 60 seconds.

We use SeedProd as our page builder for many of our own projects and partner sites, including WPForms and Duplicator — both built with SeedProd.

We’ve put together a detailed SeedProd review based on our hands-on experience, so you can dive in and see why we trust it.

3. Divi – Best for Flexible Design

Divi is another popular option among WordPress beginners due to its versatility and built-in page builder. It comes with dozens of website templates that you can start with, including several viral content media layouts.

To find out more, check out our in-depth Divi review.

4. Public Opinion – Best for Magazine-Style Layout

Public Opinion is a beautifully designed WordPress theme made for content-rich websites like online magazines and newspapers. It comes with dedicated spots to display ads on your website.

It also includes multiple layouts for the homepage, categories, and single articles. It’s easy to use, with many customization options and unlimited color choices.

5. OceanWP – Best Free Option

OceanWP is a free WordPress multipurpose theme. It ships with dozens of pre-built sites and a 1-click content importer to get started quickly.

All the theme layouts are fully customizable, so you can use your own logo and brand colors with any design.

Interested? We’ve put this theme through its paces and written a detailed OceanWP review to help you decide if it’s right for you.

6. Ultra – Best Multipurpose

Ultra is another great multi-purpose WordPress theme that can be easily used to create a BuzzFeed-like design in WordPress.

It ships with dozens of starter templates, including a few magazine layouts that would work for a content-rich website. Plus, it is highly customizable so that you can edit it to your liking.

Want to look at more themes? See our expert pick of the best WordPress magazine themes that can be used to build a BuzzFeed-like website.

Creating Viral Content for Your Website

BuzzFeed started with viral content like personality quizzes, memes, listicles, and pop-culture commentary. It has now evolved into a large media company publishing different types of content.

You will need to decide what type of content you want to publish on your website.

WordPress makes it easy to add any type of content to your website. You can create listicles and articles, upload images, embed videos and audio, create photo galleries, and more.

To learn more, see our beginner’s guide on adding a new post in WordPress and utilizing all its features.

Here are some of our guides that will help you create content similar to BuzzFeed and other viral magazines:

• How to create a contact form in WordPress
• How to create a landing page with WordPress
• Best WordPress plugins to create quizzes
• How to create interactive polls in WordPress
• How to create surveys in WordPress

While building a website similar to BuzzFeed, it is essential to make it your own by giving it a unique voice and style. This will help your brand stand out and capture a loyal audience.

To achieve this, you will need to publish new content regularly. You will notice that larger websites publish a lot of content each day. Initially, this isn’t easy, so you must choose your frequency.

We recommend starting with three articles a week and then increasing your pace to publish daily.

Now, you may think, how would you come up with new ideas for blog posts regularly? See our pick of blog post ideas that are engaging and can easily be used on a viral content website.

Need even more ideas? Make it a habit of visiting websites similar to BuzzFeed for inspiration. We are not saying that you should steal or copy their content.

Instead, collect ideas /topics, get inspired, and learn. Use these ideas with your blog posts to create something new and original.

Adding Quizzes, Polls, and Interactive Content

Personality quizzes, trivia, and polls are what made BuzzFeed famous, and they’re still some of the most shareable content formats online. Quizzes are also a great way to grow your email list, because you can gate the results behind an email opt-in.

Luckily, WordPress has beginner-friendly tools that let you add quizzes, polls, and surveys to your site within minutes.

For personality and outcome-based quizzes (the classic ‘Which character are you?’ format), we recommend WPForms with the Quiz Addon. It uses a drag-and-drop builder, shows beautiful result reports, and lets you embed quizzes anywhere on your site.

Here’s the short version of how the build comes together. We’ve written a full walkthrough separately, but these are the five moves that turn a blank form into a shareable BuzzFeed-style quiz.

1. Install WPForms and activate the Quiz Addon. After you install and license WPForms, head over to WPForms » Addons, find the Quiz Addon, and click Install Addon. WPForms activates it for you.

2. Create a new form and turn on Quiz mode. Go to WPForms » Add New, give the form a name, and pick the blank form template.

Then open Settings » Quiz in the form builder, toggle Quiz on, and choose ‘Personality Quiz’ as the type.

3. Name the personalities the quiz will sort readers into. Still in the Quiz settings, list three to five outcome types.

For a travel quiz those might be Adventurer, Relaxation Seeker, and Culture Explorer; for a home decor quiz, Modern Minimalist, Cozy Cottage, and Industrial Loft.

4. Write the questions and assign each answer to a personality. Drag a Multiple Choice field into the form for each question, write the question and the answer choices, and use the dropdown next to each answer to map it to one of the personalities you defined.

The answer with the most matches at the end of the quiz is the result the reader sees.

5. Write a result message for each personality, then embed the quiz. In the ‘Outcomes’ tab, add one outcome per personality with its own celebratory message, a short description of what the result means, and a link to a related post or product.

When you’re happy with it, click ‘Embed’ in the form builder to drop the quiz into a new or existing page.

For the full walkthrough with all the result-logic options, see our guide on how to build a personality quiz in WordPress.

For quick polls that boost engagement, follow our tutorial on how to create an interactive poll in WordPress.

For longer-form feedback and NPS-style surveys that help you figure out what your audience wants next, see our guide on how to create a survey in WordPress.

You can also see our expert pick of the best quiz plugins for WordPress for more options.

Getting More Visitors to Your Viral Blog

Viral content websites like BuzzFeed rely on traffic and user engagement for success. More people visiting your website means more pageviews and higher advertising revenue.

However, we have noticed that most beginners struggle to get traffic to their new sites. Here are some steps that we have seen worked well for most users.

Optimize Your Website for SEO

Most popular websites get the majority of their traffic from search engines like Google. Experienced website owners use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to improve their websites for search engines.

WordPress is built to be an SEO-friendly platform out of the box. However, you can still do a lot to make sure your content is found by search engines and displayed higher in search rankings.

We recommend using the All in One SEO for WordPress.

It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and comes with powerful features like a site-wide SEO audit, competitor analysis, full Schema.org support, powerful custom sitemaps, and more.

It’s beginner-friendly too — you don’t need to be an SEO expert to use it.

We use AIOSEO to optimize every single article we post on WPBeginner, and we’ve seen a big rise in rankings as a result. If you want to find out more, then check out our detailed AIOSEO review.

If you do decide to use this plugin, then head over to our WordPress SEO guide where you’ll find step-by-step instructions on how to get started.

Improve Your Website Speed and Performance

You will notice that BuzzFeed loads extremely fast and works well even on slower internet connections. A faster website offers users a better user experience and improves your SEO.

You can make your website fast by implementing some best practices to fine-tune its performance.

We have a complete guide for beginners on improving WordPress speed and performance with step-by-step instructions.

Add Social Sharing Buttons to Every Post

BuzzFeed’s entire growth strategy is built on one-click sharing to Facebook, X, and Pinterest. Your viral site needs the same.

Thankfully, you can easily add share buttons to WordPress with a dedicated plugin, such as Novashare.

If Pinterest is a priority for your niche, then it’s also a good idea to add a Pinterest Pin It button to your site so readers can save individual images.

Set Up Push Notifications for Return Traffic

Web push notifications are one of the most effective ways to turn one-time visitors into loyal, recurring readers.

These are small, clickable alerts that appear directly on a user’s desktop or mobile browser, so you can notify them every time you publish new content.

We use PushEngage on WPBeginner. It’s the best web push notification service for WordPress, and push notifications are one of our top sources of return traffic.

To set them up, follow our guide on how to add web push notifications to your WordPress site.

Learn From Your Users

You need to know what your users prefer to make your website popular. Most beginners try to make educated guesses instead of getting the actual data. We recommend collecting actual insights to help you make a good strategy for growth.

The easiest way to do this is with MonsterInsights, which connects Google Analytics to your WordPress dashboard so you can see which pages are popular, where users are coming from, and how much time they spend, all without leaving your site. For step-by-step setup instructions, see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

You can also track user engagement on your website with Google Analytics. This allows you to see what users do on your website and how you can increase their engagement.

Making Money From Your BuzzFeed Like Website

BuzzFeed not only has a large audience, but it also makes a lot of money.

Their primary source of revenue is from online advertisements and selling marketing solutions to businesses and advertisers.

As a beginner, you may not get as high-paying advertisers as BuzzFeed, but there are plenty of ways to generate a steady income from your website.

1. Displaying Ads on Your Website Using Google AdSense

Millions of websites on the internet rely on ads to make money. Google AdSense makes it super easy for bloggers to display website ads.

You don’t have to worry about finding advertisers and collecting money. Google deals with advertisers, collects money, and sends it to you after taking a small cut.

For detailed instructions, see our step-by-step guide on how to properly add Google AdSense in WordPress.

2. Sell Memberships and Subscriptions

Many online publications sell subscription and membership plans to generate recurring revenue.

You can use a subscription plan for some pay-per-view content and also use it as your Patreon-like program to give members additional perks and benefits.

To do that, you’ll need MemberPress. It is the best WordPress membership plugin allowing you to easily sell subscriptions on your website.

This is the plugin we use to power our video course website, and it scales well for a content-heavy, BuzzFeed-style site.

For more details, see our in-depth MemberPress review.

3. Build a Social Media Following

Viral content platforms like BuzzFeed have substantial social media following, which has made them even more attractive to top brands. These brands approach them for collaboration, brand placement, and other deals to reach their massive social media audience.

However, you must start building a following on social media platforms. Instagram and YouTube are the two platforms that attract a lot of big and small businesses.

An easy way to build a social following is by sharing posts on your website. You can share your Instagram posts on your blog and embed your videos in your blog posts.

4. Start Building an Email List

BuzzFeed has built a massive subscriber base subscribed to their email lists. This brings them a ton of returning visitors, revenue, and advertisers.

This is why you need to instantly start building your email list from day one. We recommend using Constant Contact, the best email marketing service for beginners.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to start an email newsletter.

However, users often ignore simple, plain-looking email sign-up forms. That’s why you see BuzzFeed using clever optin popups to convert visitors into subscribers.

Luckily, you can do that with OptinMonster. It is the best conversion optimization software on the market and helps you quickly grow your email list.

It has powerful optin tools like lightbox popups, countdown timers, header and footer banners, slide-in popups, and spin-to-win popups.

Want to know if OptinMonster is worth it? We put it to the test by using it to promote our own special offers and deals, and we’ve been impressed with the results. We share all these insights in our detailed OptinMonster review, so you can see if it’s right for you.

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing allows you to recommend products and get a referral commission when your users purchase a product after clicking on your link.

BuzzFeed has a whole ‘Shopping’ area dedicated to promoting partner products and earning revenue through affiliate marketing.

You will need to find products that complement your website’s topics and have an affiliate program. The biggest affiliate network you can join is Amazon Affiliates. It has thousands of products that you can choose from.

To keep your affiliate links tidy and click-worthy, we recommend ThirstyAffiliates. It cloaks ugly Amazon URLs into clean, branded short links and tracks every click so you can see which products earn the most. For the full walkthrough, see our guide on how to manage affiliate links in WordPress.

You can create a sub-section of your website similar to BuzzFeed shopping by creating an Amazon affiliate store. It is an eCommerce store featuring external products.

There are plenty of other ways to generate revenue from your viral content blog. Take a look at our guide on different ways to make money from your blog for some more ideas.

Bonus Website Ideas You Can Build with WordPress

The success of websites like BuzzFeed inspires many others to create similar content. This increases the competition, making it harder for new websites to build a sustainable business.

However, we have seen niche websites beating this trend. Basically, you can make a BuzzFeed-like website but cover more focused topics.

Here are some guides that will inspire and give you more ideas:

• How to Start a Fashion Blog (and Make Money) – Step by Step
• How to Start a Food Blog (and Make Extra Income on the Side)
• How to Start a Travel Blog (to Make Money on the Side)
• How to Create a Real Estate Website Using WordPress

Resources to Learn WordPress and Grow Your Blog

Building a magazine website like BuzzFeed allows you to experiment with different ways to add content, engage audiences, and grow your business. As you work on your website, you will realize there is so much more you can do with WordPress.

WordPress is relatively easy to use, but occasionally, you will come up with questions. The good news is that there is plenty of help available online.

WPBeginner itself is the largest free WordPress resource site in the world. We have many helpful resources, guides, and how-tos explicitly written for beginners, bloggers, and business owners.

Here are a few handy WPBeginner resources that you should check out. All of them are entirely free:

• WPBeginner Blog — This is where we publish our WordPress tutorials, how-tos, and step-by-step guides.
• WPBeginner Videos — These step-by-step videos will help you learn WordPress FAST.
• WPBeginner on YouTube — Need more video instructions? Subscribe to our YouTube channel with over 1 million subscribers and 53 million+ views.
• WPBeginner Dictionary — The best place for beginners to start and familiarize themselves with the WordPress lingo.
• WPBeginner Blueprint — Check out the plugins, tools, and services we use on WPBeginner.
• WPBeginner Deals — Exclusive discounts on WordPress products and services for WPBeginner users.
• WPBeginner Engage — Our Facebook group, with over 98,000 active users, is where you can connect with other WPBeginner users and our experts.

Many of our users use Google to find answers on WPBeginner by simply adding ‘wpbeginner’ after their search term.

FAQs About Building a BuzzFeed Like Website

How much does it cost to build a BuzzFeed like website with WordPress?

You can launch your site for as little as $2.99/month by taking advantage of our exclusive Bluehost offer, which also includes a free domain name and free SSL certificate.

While the WordPress.org software itself is completely free, you should budget an additional $50 to $200 per year for premium themes or specialized quiz plugins as your site grows.

Do I need coding skills to build a BuzzFeed style website?

No. You don’t need to write a single line of code to build a viral content site.

Thanks to modern WordPress themes and intuitive drag-and-drop page builders like SeedProd, you can design your site visually.

This extends to the interactive features that make BuzzFeed so famous, too. With the right plugins, you can add things like personality quizzes, trivia challenges, and polls without ever writing code.

What’s the best WordPress theme for a BuzzFeed like website?

Sydney is our top recommendation because it offers beautiful starter sites, plays nicely with page builders, and scores well for Core Web Vitals out of the box. If you want more options, Divi and OceanWP are also great picks — Divi is best for designers who want a built-in page builder, and OceanWP is a strong free starting point.

How do I make BuzzFeed style quizzes in WordPress?

The easiest way is to install WPForms along with their powerful Quiz Addon.

Because WPForms uses a drag-and-drop interface, you can build everything from personality quizzes (“Which character are you?”) to graded trivia tests without needing to write a single line of code. You can even use WPForms’ AI-powered quiz generator to build an entire quiz simply by describing what you want in plain English.

To learn more, see our guide on how to build interactive surveys with AI.

How long does it take to build a BuzzFeed like website?

If you follow our step-by-step guide, you can have a live, functional website up and running in about 40 minutes.

While you will need extra time to customize your homepage design and write your first few viral articles, the technical setup is quick enough that you can start publishing content on day one.

How does a BuzzFeed style website make money?

Successful viral sites typically diversify their income streams.

The most common methods include display ads (via networks like Google AdSense, Mediavine, or Ezoic), affiliate marketing through programs like Amazon Associates, offering premium memberships, creating sponsored quizzes, and monetizing your email list.

We recommend combining at least three of these strategies to maximize your revenue.

How do I drive traffic to my new viral content website?

To start, prioritize your SEO efforts using a plugin like AIOSEO. We also recommend publishing new content consistently (aim for at least three posts a week) and making sure you have social share buttons on every single post.

Additionally, you should enable web push notifications to secure return traffic and start building an email list using a tool like OptinMonster to keep your audience engaged long-term.

We hope this article helped you create a BuzzFeed-like website using WordPress. You may also want to see these practical tips to drive traffic to your new website and our expert picks for the best WordPress plugins to grow your website.

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