WordPress themes for magazines help build amazing websites focused on delivering content. Many prominent names in the news and magazines space, such as TechCrunch, use magazine themes and are some of the most sought-out themes among WordPress users.
If content is king, then WordPress themes for magazines set up the stage. A theme is the foundation for the content you will offer. The quality of the theme matters and how it’s built is equally important to its features. The themes included in the list are responsive, mobile-ready, SEO friendly and will help your content stand out.
Key Highlights:
- WordPress themes for magazines are suited for news websites and blogs, where content is at the center of focus.
- Forbes, Techcrunch, New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Vogue are types of magazine-style websites.
- Picking a fast theme that is SEO-optimized is crucial. It translates to faster page load times and better SERP rankings.
- Choose a good hosting provider and plan. Cheap hosting plans have an adverse effect on the website’s performance and ultimately affect search engine rankings as well.
- Look for themes with developer support, documentation, and at least one year of updates.
- A theme must be responsive across all devices. Search engines prioritize mobiles, and most of your visitors will likely be on mobile devices.
Why a WordPress Magazine Theme?
It all starts with the kind of website you want to build. Do you want to build a news website? A personal blog? An entertainment website focused on movie reviews and celebrity gossip?
Once you have the niche figured out, you can look at some of the best WordPress themes to fit that vision. The theme needs to have enough customization options to deliver your content in the right places.
Where content takes center stage, WordPress themes for Magazines are perfect. Take the examples of the New York Times, Washington Post, Techcrunch, and The Verge – these are all magazine-style websites.
You can display posts by freshness, category, popularity, or editor’s pick, which is ideal for opinion pieces. You can include a ticker that displays headlines in real-time, videos, a newsletter subscription button, or social icons.
How to Choose the Best WordPress Magazine Theme?
It’s completely okay to look for the most visually appealing theme. After all, if it doesn’t look good, it will affect your bounce rate. But a theme’s visual appearance must not compromise on the following areas.
- Speed: It is generally accepted that a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load has poor performance. Google, on the other hand, aims for 0.5 seconds or lower for its search engine rankings. That should give you an idea of why a responsive theme matters so much because it affects your page loading.
- Responsiveness: Search engines moved their focus from desktop to mobile years ago. More users are using smartphones and tablets to browse the internet than ever before. As such, most of your web traffic will likely come from mobile platforms. Your WordPress magazine theme must be equally responsive on mobile.
- SEO Optimized: Search engines provide visibility to readers. As a news website, it will be crucial for your news articles to index quickly and rank better than the competition. Make sure that your WordPress themes for magazines ticks SEO optimization in the features list.
- Customization: A good WordPress Magazine theme must have loads of customization options. For example, it should have different page layouts to let you customize headers and menus however you see fit. Look for support for page builders like Elementor.
- Customer support: If you are buying a WordPress theme, you should expect to receive customer support. It will help you troubleshoot issues should you run into them. Also, look for theme documentation, as it’s another useful resource for gaining insights.
25 Best Magazine Themes for WordPress: A Quick Look
Before we go in-depth, here’s the complete list of our WordPress themes for magazines.
- Magazine Pro – Excellent Multi-Purpose Theme For News And Magazines
- Astra – Fully Customizable and Popular WordPress Theme
- Hello Elementor – Simple Theme For News And Blogging
- Divi – Most Powerful All-Purpose WordPress Theme
- Newsmag – Clean And Modern WordPress Theme
- Zeen – A Next-Generation WordPress Theme For Magazines
- Extra – The Ultimate WordPress Magazine Theme
- Anymag – Magazine-Style WordPress Blog
- Foxiz – Mobile-First Magazine Theme
- HitMag – Trending Magazine Theme
- Wonderwall – Responsive Magazine Theme
- Newspaper – Powerful Magazine Theme
- ColorMag – Fast and Modern Magazine Theme
- MH Magazine – The Best Freemium Magazine Theme
- Saxon – Viral Content & Magazine Theme
- The Essence – Stylish WordPress Magazine Theme For Women
- Newsup – Modern WordPress Magazine Theme For News
- Voice – News Magazine WordPress Theme
- The Issue – Versatile Magazine Theme
- Click Mag – Popular Choice For News
- MagPlus – Simple And Customizable Theme For News And Magazines
- Soledad – Highly-Customizable WordPress Magazine Theme
- Herald – Newspaper & News Portal Theme
- Flex Mag – Responsive News Theme
- Ultra – Powerful And Flexible Magazine Theme
The Best WordPress Magazine Themes: A Full Review
Now, let’s talk about the themes in full. We’ll discuss features, mobile support, pricing, and everything that makes a particular theme popular.
1. MagazinePro – Excellent Multi-Purpose Theme For News And Magazines
A look at Magazine Pro:
Brought to you by Studio Press, Magazine Pro is built on the Genesis framework. And features several customization options. It is perfect for your magazine-styled WordPress website.
It is Gutenberg-optimized, which means you can customize things like font, color, layout, and styling. Get started quickly by importing demos or by customizing web pages yourself. You can use the theme editor to upload a header image and logo, place widgets, choose a home page layout, design post style, add a secondary header, and more.
Magazine Pro also supports WooCommerce, allowing you to set up an online store.
Magazine Pro is available as part of Genesis Pro. It is free if you buy a managed WordPress hosting from WP Engine.
Downloads: 1+ million
Rating: 5/5
Key features and stats: Gutenberg optimized, lightweight, supports WooCommerce
Price: $360/year (included with Genesis Pro)
2. Astra – Fully Customizable and Popular WordPress Theme
A look at Astra:
Astra is a popular WordPress theme thanks to the number of customizations available. As a multi-purpose website, It can fit several styles, including magazines.
You can start by adding a page builder plugin like Elementor to customize layout settings, colors and typography, header options, and blog posts. Astra also supports Gutenberg with an extensive library of templates. You’ll also find WordPress optimizations for render blocking elements, and Astra boasts a page loading speed of <0.5 seconds.
If you are not up for customizations, you can pick from the many prebuilt websites to get started quickly.
And best of all Astra is available as a free WordPress theme. You can upgrade anytime to the Pro version for access to advanced features.
Downloads: 1+ million
Rating: 5/5
Key features and stats: Lightweight, hundreds of prebuilt layouts, supports WooCommerce, open-source
Price: Free, $47 for Astra Pro
3. Hello Elementor – Simple Theme For News And Blogging
A look at Elementor:
Hello Elementor is a simple and lightweight WordPress theme suitable for personal blogs. It is developed and maintained by the Elementor team, so you can be sure that support is not going away anytime soon.
The theme is free and works with Elementor page builder. Owing to its lightweight design, the web pages take up only 6KB of resources, resulting in loading speeds significantly faster than most WordPress themes. It also supports WooCommerce for building online stores.
Downloads: 1+ million
Rating: 4.5/5
Key features and stats: Lightweight, WooCommerce, free license
Price: Free
4. Divi – Most Powerful All-Purpose WordPress Theme
A look at Divi:
You might have read about Divi; it’s often included in the best WordPress themes list. And for a good reason. Divi is exceptionally good at being multi-purpose. The rich features allow you to create a website for any niche.
Using Divi, you can choose from multiple layouts for the homepage and posts, add sidebars, and customize typography, colors, and header logos. You can add elements like CTAs, sliders, galleries, forms, and testimonials. Divi also includes more than 200 prebuilt websites that cover various niches like technology and e-commerce.
There’s an incredible amount of customization options. But all of that doesn’t come at the expense of speed and responsiveness. Divi includes various optimizations for CSS and JavaScript, such as render-blocking elements and automatically detecting and loading the content above the fold.
Downloads: 1+ million
Rating: 4.9/5
Key features and stats: Optimized for WordPress, versatile, supports WooCommerce
Price: $89/year, $249 lifetime
5. Newsmag – Clean And Modern WordPress Theme
A look at Newsmag:
Newsmag has been a popular choice as WordPress themes for magazines since it was introduced in 2014. It is perfect for websites focused on blogging, news, affiliate reviews, and magazine websites.
Newsmag features 14+ prebuilt websites, including Tech, Sport, Travel, Video, Classic Blog, and Fashion. Other customization options include 9 post style layouts, 4 top bar layouts, 10 header and footer styles, social media buttons, sticky menus, an integrated newsletter plugin, and more. Fonts support includes TypeKit, Font Stacks, and Google Fonts.
It comes bundled with Speed Booster Plugin, which will optimize your website for speed.
Downloads: 10,000+
Rating: 4.5/5
Key features and stats: Various website templates,
Price: $49
6. Zeen – A Next-Generation WordPress Theme For Magazines
A look at Zeen:
Zeen is a WordPress magazine theme with a modern look and feel, with slick animations that will impress visitors to your website.
The theme is optimized for Core Web Vitals, which means you’ll score high in metrics like LCP, FID, and CLD in the test. It is optimized for both desktop and mobile. If you add a subscription model for readers, Zeen allows you to monetize your content by setting up a paywall using Restrict Content Pro.
Other features include support for AMP, WooCommerce, MailChimp integration, BuddyPress, Let’s Live Blog, Google Fonts, social media box, and much more. It uses Tipi Builder for creating page layouts, including category and tag pages. On the note of pages, prebuilt websites are available for you to import.
Oh, and it also includes a Dark Mode for readers.
Downloads: 5000+
Rating: 4.93/5
Key features and stats: Modern and style look, WordPress optimized, various plugins included by default
Price: $64
7. Extra – The Ultimate WordPress Magazine Theme
A look at Extra:
Extra is built on the Divi framework and uses the popular Divi Builder. This theme has so much functionality that it’s hailed as one of the best WordPress themes for magazines.
In addition to 800+ premade layouts that you can use, the theme gives you a lot of freedom to build. There are over 40 content modules that you can add to a page, such as a post slider and post carousel. You can customize the header/title and footer, add mega menus, or choose between 7 different post formats.
Since there is WooCommerce support present in the theme, you can use the built-in review system to add reviews to any post. There is also a rating system for posts and a social box for sharing on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Downloads: 1+ million
Rating: 5/5
Key features and stats: SEO optimized, solid customization options, powerful page builder, supports WooCommerce, open-source, good value for money
Price: $89 (also includes Divi, Bloom, and Monarch)
8. Anymag – Magazine-Style WordPress Blog
A look at Anymag:
Anymag unfolds like a magazine. As you navigate through the theme, the pages open up like a magazine, giving you that unique feeling of reading paper on the screen. It’s suited for news websites that focus heavily on fashion and style.
You can choose from several demos to get started quickly. It is WooCommerce ready, and is compatible with Gutenberg and Elementor. Customization options include choosing a post layout, social media link box, contact forms, advanced typography settings, Mailchimp integration, and more.
The theme has been around since 2020 and keeps receiving new features and improvements through updates. The most recent update added new Google fonts to the theme.
Downloads: 1000+
Rating: 4.75/5
Key features and stats: Unique visual appearance, WooCommerce support
Price: $39
9. Foxiz – Mobile-First Magazine Theme
A look at Foxiz:
Foxiz is a theme with mobile-first design at its core. Foxiz uses Elementor for building pages. You get to customize 35+ blocks with 100+ options on each block. There is also the option to customize the header, footer, category, author, and blog section.
WooCommerce support is present, plus you can add a paywall for content with recurring payments. You can also monetize through sponsored posts for affiliate partnerships.
Other features that fly under the radar include a dark mode, a bookmark button, pagination, premium widgets like weather and Instagram feed, social sharing, infinite posts, table of contents, emoji reactions for posts, and more.
The theme is ready for Core Web Vitals and earned a score of 97. You’ll be glad to know that since it natively supports lazy loading, CSS & JS optimization, preloading of fonts and icons, so additional plugins are not required.
Foxiz is one of the few themes out there that offer a lifetime of updates and one-time payment.
Downloads: 1200+
Rating: 4.9/5
Key features and stats: Responsive, SEO optimized, supports WooCommerce, plenty of customization options
Price: $59
10. HitMag – Trending Magazine Theme
A look at Hitmag:
HitMag is another popular WordPress theme for magazines and newspapers. The best part about it? It’s free.
You can start by customizing it to match your vision. It features four different post layouts, magazine homepage layout, color options, social sharing, a related posts section, and more. It has an image slider to group featured posts for readers.
What makes HitMag attractive is the number of features it delivers as a free WordPress theme, such as Jetpack Infinite Scroll support. Although it has a premium version, it gives plenty of options under the free license. But things like changing the header background, top bar color, site title/font/size, sticky sidebar, post view count, and Elementor support are locked behind the Pro version. But it has enough customization options to get you started.
It’s Gutenberg-ready and supports WooCommerce.
Downloads: 10,000+
Rating: 5/5
Key features and stats:
Price: Free, $59 for Pro version (1 license)
11. Wonderwall – Responsive Magazine Theme
A look at Wonderfall:
Wonderfall aims to be a classic WordPress magazine theme that delivers a modern touch with a white space background. It is suited for news, magazines, and fashion websites.
You can choose from 7 different featured posts sliders to group your best posts for the readers. And it has 11 different content modules, 5 header layouts, and 4 post layouts.
The prebuilt demos give you an easy way to start with prebuilt designs. But if you want to build everything your way, the Yellow Pencil visual style editor lets you edit backgrounds, page layouts, animations, colors, fonts, backgrounds, and more.
Downloads: 100+
Rating: 4/5
Key features and stats: classic with a modern look
Price: $59
12. Newspaper – Powerful Magazine Theme
A look at Newspaper:
With over 100,000 downloads on Envato, Newspaper ranks as one of the most popular WordPress themes for magazines.
It hosts an impressive number of features for building news websites. But it’s not limited to just that; Newspaper is a versatile theme that can be used for business, listings, reviews, job postings, and more.
It features its own tagDiv Composer page builder for all sorts of customizations. You can start by defining your homepage and post layout, setting up content blocks, customizing headers and footers, and much more. Newspaper has over 1800 layouts and templates, including over 60 ready-to-use pages to choose from. There is potential to create some beautiful-looking WordPress magazines websites with this theme.
The tagDiv Opt-in Builder plugin lets you monetize your website by setting up unlimited membership options for readers. And it supports WooCommerce as well. But let’s not forget speed and response. The developers behind Newspaper have worked hard to make the theme ready for Core Web Vitals.
Downloads: 100,000+
Rating: 4.8/5
Key features and stats: feature-rich, supports WooCommerce, fast and responsive, loads of customization options
Price: $59
13. ColorMag – Fast and Modern Magazine Theme
A look at ColorMag:
ColorMag is another popular WordPress magazine theme that caters to the growing number of news websites. ColorMag powers more than 100,000+ sites online and is the #1 WordPress magazine theme at wordpress.org.
The developers have put a strong emphasis on performance, so much so that the theme promises to deliver page load times of under 1 second. It advertises a speed score of 99% in Core Web Vitals and a speed score of 94% on GTmetrix. As we discussed earlier in the guide, your website’s performance plays a part in search engine optimization.
It is compatible with page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder and supports Gutenberg. The theme has more than 25 ready-to-use websites to get started.
If you want to do things yourself, there are several customization options. You can customize header and background image, set up a breaking news header, choose homepage layout, enable sticky menu, display related posts, add social icons, and more.
The Pro version has additional features, such as 600+ Google fonts and Unique Post System that prevents your posts from repeating if they fall under multiple categories.
Downloads: 100,000+
Rating: 5/5
Key features and stats: feature-rich, supports WooCommerce, WordPress optimized, fast loading speeds, various customization options
Price: Free, $69 for Pro (single license)
14. MH Magazine – The Best Freemium Magazine Theme
A look at MH Magazine:
MH Magazine falls under the freemium category, meaning it has a free and a paid version. It is easy to get started, allowing you to get some basic functionality running on your news website. But only the paid version will unblock its full customization potential, which is where MH Magazine shines as one of the best WordPress themes for magazines.
You can customize it the way you want. Notable features include a custom logo/title for your website, a news ticker for rolling headlines, custom menus for navigation, a content slider that displays featured posts, custom widgets and advertisement blocks for monetization, a sliding carousel to display images, social icons, and more. There are also 15 demos that you can import.
Downloads: 30,000+
Rating: 4.5/5
Key features and stats: various customization options. SEO-friendly,
Price: Free (MH Magazine Lite), $49 (single license)
15. Saxon – Viral Content & Magazine Theme
A look at Saxon:
If you want to build a viral content blog, then take a look at Saxon. Viral content is one of the easiest to market, and you can monetize your website easily using its built-in advertising management system.
You can look forward to 20 homepage layouts when you download and set up Saxon. There are 27 homepage blocks that you can customize, 11 blog listing layouts, 5 widgets sidebars, 6 custom theme widgets, post views and likes features, featured posts header slider, sticky header, header and background images, and a lot more. There is WooCommerce support if you wish to set up an online store.
All of this can be customized using a drag-and-drop blocks builder in the theme. The theme includes 12 demos that can be imported with a click.
Saxon is optimized for speed. It is built with clean CSS/HTML/PHP code. And the developer advertises a Google page speed score of 100 and a GTmetrix performance score of 96%.
Downloads: 1000+
Rating: 4.8/5
Key features and stats: modern-looking theme, WooCommerce support
Price: $59
16. The Essence – Stylish WordPress Magazine Theme For Women
A look at The Essence:
If you are building a magazine-style website targeting the female demographic, we have the perfect feminine WordPress theme for you. The Essence is everything you need to get started.
The Essence is designed and marketed as a feminine blog/magazine WordPress theme. It comes with 17+ different homepage layouts, support for Contact Form 7, color options, featured posts area and featured slider for both header and footer, social sharing integration, and more. The theme uses its Meridian Styler to change appearance attributes, such as typography, color, and background.
It has plenty of visual styles to nail that chic design you want for your audience.
Downloads: 600+
Rating: 4.7/5
Key features and stats: modern-looking design, suitable for feminine blogs and magazines
Price: $59
17. Newsup – Modern WordPress Magazine Theme For News
A look at Newsup:
Newsup lets you build a modern WordPress magazine website and supports various customization options to design according to your needs.
You can set a fully widgets-based layout that includes your posts, categories, featured posts, post carousel, author widget, and more. It is RTL-ready, meaning it supports languages that move from right to left. When it comes to responsiveness, the theme is optimized for mobile and AMP-ready. Though, you’re likely not to use AMP, considering Google has dropped its focus on it.
And if you want to add an online store, it also supports WooCommerce. The free version will get you started, but some features, such as an Instagram slider and typography style and colors, are locked behind the Pro version.
Downloads: 30,000+
Rating: 5/5
Key features and stats: Lightweight design for news and blogging, SEO-friendly
Price: Free, $59 for Pro (single license)
18. Voice – News Magazine WordPress Theme
Voice delivers all the features you need to start your magazine project. Based on material design, it delivers a very clean and modern look for news, magazine, and professional blogging projects.
For starters, there are over 150 post layout combinations, including 7 main layouts for post listings and 3 layouts for featured area posts. Sidebars can be set up to appear on a page, post, or category in a sticky or non-sticky fashion. You can set up modules to display posts from categories on your websites.
Pagination allows you to break long pages into multiple pages. There are four pagination types to choose from to allow readers, including Infinite Scroll, that loads the next set of posts as the user reaches the end.
It has RTL and WooCommerce support. And with bbPress, you can set up a forum to allow your visitors to start discussions with each other. Other features include multiple header layouts, category modules, custom widgets, banner ads system for monetization, post views number, related posts display, and social sharing.
The developers have optimized Voice for WordPress. Test scores show a page load time of 2.02 seconds. All of that makes Voice a solid WordPress theme for magazines.
Downloads: 8000+
Rating: 4.9/5
Key features and stats: supports WooCommerce, fast page load times, ideal for creating news websites with an online forum
Price: $69
19. The Issue – Versatile Magazine Theme
A look at The Issue:
The Issue takes everything you want to see in a WordPress theme for magazines and presents it in a clean and stylish look.
Right off the bat, the theme lets you pick from several prebuilt demos to get started. You can import from the growing list of templates anytime you want. If you prefer more hands-on customization, the theme lets you pick between 9 article details that speak to various use cases, 50+ post layout elements, 5 pagination options, 10+ custom widgets, and 10 header styles.
WooCommerce support is present for building online stores. Regarding monetization, you can set up sponsored posts, add affiliate links, and use advert placements to fit images or Adsense codes.
If your website is also in the business of reviewing games and movies, there are 2 review styles available for listing the pros and cons.
The Issue is optimized for SEO and speed. And it includes lazy loading for faster page loading.
Downloads: 3000+
Rating: 4.7/5
Key features and stats: ideal for review websites, lots of customization options, supports WooCommerce
Price: $79
20. Click Mag – Popular Choice For News
A look at Click Mag:
Click Mag checks all the boxes for what a WordPress theme for magazines should have. That means several home page and post layouts for designing a unique appearance.
The theme features 8 post layouts, 3 page layouts, 7 custom widgets, and 800+ Google fonts to choose from. You can set up posts to be full width, add threaded comments, use infinite scroll for showing all posts and make your website more engaging to readers by adding a discussion board using the bbPress plugin.
Click Mag is also compatible with WooCommerce and has custom ad blocks for monetization. The theme comes with a few paid plugins, such as Theia Post Slider and Theia Sticky Sidebar, giving you $78 worth of plugins free of cost. There is also support for RTL layout.
The theme is also SEO optimized to give you all the help to rank better in search engines.
Downloads: 2000+
Rating: 4.6/5
Key features and stats: ideal for review websites, lots of customization options, supports WooCommerce
Price: $35
21. MagPlus – Simple And Customizable Theme For News And Magazines
A look at MagPlus:
Starting out with your first WordPress magazine website? Try MagPlus. It’s a popular theme that combines a minimalistic look with all the necessary functionality. There are 43+ designs and 270+ layouts for you to import. Prebuilt websites range from News, Fashion, Meme, Travel, Food, Cryptocurrency, Health, and more.
MagPlus supports page builders like Elementor and WPBakery Page Builder and has support for Guttenberg and AMP.
Your post layout matters. If it’s visually appealing, the reader will likely stay and read through the end. MagPlus offers 25+ article layouts. You can place the title to the left and the sidebar to the right, make the post full-width, use a double sidebar, or even set up the post as a gallery. And you can edit blocks and content using the Elementor plugin.
Moreover, there are 13+ header styles, 27+ sliders, and 70+ modules for customization.
MagPlus is also optimized for speed. It has a built-in caching system to make page load times faster. The theme advertises a 100% score in Google’s Pagespeed insight and 92% score in GTmetrix.
Downloads: 3000+
Rating: 4.8/5
Key features and stats: optimized for speed, WooCommerce support, plenty of customization options
Price: Free, $49
22. Soledad – Highly-Customizable WordPress Magazine Theme
A look at Soledad:
Soledad is an elegant multi-purpose WordPress theme with 220+ prebuilt websites and 6000+ homepage demos ready to use. It is one of the few themes that have integrated text-to-speech. Your readers can use the play button to listen to an article instead of reading through it. That’s handy if you are driving or walking but want to catch up on the latest news.
The theme scored 90+ on Google’s Pagespeed test and grade A in GTmetrix’s Pagespeed score. It’s because the theme has been optimized for speed and Core Web Vitals. So, you don’t need to worry about meeting certain search engine ranking metrics.
The theme lets you customize the header and footer using the Penci Header Builder or other page builders like Elementor and WPBakery Page Builder that are supported as well. If you decide to set up an online store using WooCommerce, there are 8 styles for product listings, various designs for product pages, wishlists and comparisons feature, and support for affiliate products.
Customization options don’t end there. Soledad features 800+ Google Fonts, 35+ slider styles, 11 header styles, bbPress and BuddyPress compatibility, dark mode, 10 article layouts, 4 types of pagination, 11 custom widgets, and more.
The number of features present in Soledad easily makes it one of the best WordPress themes for magazines.
Downloads: 40,000+
Rating: 4.8/5
Key features and stats: optimized for speed, WooCommerce support, versatile for different niche, loads of customization options
Price: $59
23. Herald – Newspaper & News Portal Theme
A look at Herald:
Herald is a modern-looking WordPress theme designed for all types of magazine websites. Whether it’s fashion, tech, sports, politics, travel, or eCommerce, Herald has the features to build them.
There are 4 header sections where you can arrange items like logo/title, site description, and main menu, and choose alignment for three of those sections. There is also a sticky header that stays while scrolling.
The theme includes more than 500 post layout combinations, multiple aspect ratios for images, author and category modules, unlimited sidebars, sticky sidebars, post views, social sharing, RTL support, custom widgets, and 4 pagination types, including Infinite Scroll.
Herald is optimized for both desktop and mobile. It earned a score of 94/100 in Pingdom. The theme allows you to turn on CSS and JavaScript minification for faster page load times. You can always add plugins like JetPack for minification, but it’s nice to have that built into the theme itself.
The theme receives regular updates and additions. Support for the bbPress plugin was added later via an update.
Downloads: 3500+
Rating: 4.8/5
Key features and stats: WordPress optimized, WooCommerce support, versatile WordPress theme
Price: $69
24. Flex Mag – Responsive News Theme
A look at Flex Mag:
Flex Mag’s brilliant customizations can help you create a compelling magazine website.
The theme has an auto-load posts feature where the next article loads automatically underneath as readers reach the end of the blog. It is useful if you want to keep visitors hooked on your content. Serving relevant articles from the same category builds more time spent on the website.
Flex Mag gives you customization options like 9 featured post layouts, 8 article layouts, 4 preset skins, 8 custom widgets, 800+ Google Fonts, sticky sidebars, pagination options, unlimited ad units, and more. It is RTL and AMP ready, supports WooCommerce and bbPress, social sharing, and more.
Downloads: 4800+
Rating: 4.5/5
Key features and stats: SEO optimized, supports WooCommerce, colorful layouts
Price: $39
25. Ultra – Powerful And Flexible Magazine Theme
A look at Ultra:
Ultra is an all-in-one WordPress theme developed by Themify and the final contender on our list. It has a built-in drag-and-drop page builder for full control over your design.
Ultra is a powerful theme that can create just about any website, ranging from Fashion and Lifestyle to Magazines and eCommerce. There are 60+ prebuilt websites that speed up the process of getting a magazine website up and running. Additionally, you can choose from 60+ predesigned layouts.
Speaking of customizations, the built-in page builder lets you design from header to footer. There are 17 header/page styles, a sticky header option, 5 single post layouts, 6 header background options, 6 archive layouts, 600+ Google Fonts, and 15 pre-set colors. Other features include social media integration and WooCommerce support.
The theme includes $100 worth of plugins at no extra cost. The add-ons include useful elements like a countdown, a progress bar, and a pricing bar.
Downloads: 7000+
Rating: 5/5
Key features and stats: SEO optimized, supports WooCommerce, various customization options
Price: Free, $59 for full version
Getting Started With a WordPress Magazine Website
Domain
Before you choose from the WordPress themes for magazines, you will need to pick a domain name for your project before anything else. It’s the name you type in the address bar of a web browser to open a website.
Choose a name that closely explains the niche of your website. Then, pick from any domain name registrars like NameCheap and GoDaddy. They also provide web hosting, so you can buy a domain and hosting bundle to get a discount. Domain names are not for life, so you will have to renew them just like your hosting plan.
Hosting
Web hosting is the second thing you need. It is a crucial part of your overall website success that needs attention. A good hosting provider will dictate the performance of your website.
Getting a cheap Shared hosting plan is the Achilles’ heel for any website that aims to make it big. You can check out our comparisons between the types of web hosting plans. But in a nutshell, cheap hosting plans cannot meet the demands of a rich magazine website with thousands or millions of visitors per month.
- Your hosting plan directly affects page load times, your search engine rankings are affected too.
- You need to ensure adequate processing resources by investing in a good hosting plan, for all those images and videos, plugins, and database queries.
- You also need a plan with sufficient storage space, as magazine websites tend to host a lot of images and videos,
Here’s a helpful guide on the best WordPress hosting providers of 2022 that you can choose from.
The Best Places To Buy WordPress Magazine Themes
WordPress themes for magazines can be bought from the developer’s own website or through third-party websites like Theme Forest. You can check out review scores or a live demo to get a feel of the theme.
Here are some of the places to buy WordPress themes:
- themeforest.net
- elegantthemes.com
- themify.me
- templatemonster.com
- templatic.com
- mojomarketplace.com
- studiopress.com
- mythemeshop.com
- themegrill.com
How We Test And Choose The Best WordPress Magazine Themes
Speed is one of the factors that play into search engine rankings; hence we put a heavy emphasis on it while testing any theme.
We use Google’s Pagespeed Insights and GTmetrix for testing a theme. Once a theme has been installed, we take a default design without additional plugins, then run the website in the tools. A website with a single static page will load faster than a website with dynamic content, various pages and plugins, and a bigger database. So, we attempt to check the theme as it is installed without adding anything else.
Then, we look at the features, pricing, value, customer support, update history, and user reviews to determine the theme’s selection.
A paid theme must offer proper documentation and frequent updates for at least a year. The theme’s documentation helps to learn about features and how best to use them.
Final Thoughts
We hope the list proves helpful to you. There may be more themes, but these are the ones we can confidently suggest to you. You can always narrow down your picks by reading up user reviews on WordPress forums and other online forums.
To reiterate, a fast theme is important for SERP. And it starts with picking the right hosting provider and plan. You can check out our guide to speed up your WordPress website. It will introduce you to concepts like lazy loading, minification, and caching that improve website performance.
Next Steps: What Now?
- If you are just getting started, check out our article on how to install WordPress.
- Once you have WordPress up and running, learn how to customize your WordPress theme.
- Finally, get helpful tips from our article on how to use WordPress: A beginner’s guide.
- It will help you to check the theme’s demo first before buying.
Further Reading – Useful Resources
At Host Advice, we are all about helping you find the best hosting providers and how to get the most out of your website. We think it will benefit you to check out these articles:
- A WordPress security guide: Learn how to defend your WordPress website
- Check out our fastest WordPress Hosting Providers.
- Discover more recommended themes for other niches in our best WordPress themes list.
- WordPress features are essential. Find out what your site needs.
