Written on July 11, 2023 by Randy A. Brown

Estimated read time 5 minutes

Magazine Themes for WordPress

WordPress is an excellent platform for publishers. There are lots of WordPress themes available to help publishers display their content in a magazine layout. Whether they publish news, industry articles, or personal blog posts, there are lots of magazine themes to choose from. In this post, we’ll look at the best magazine themes for WordPress to help you decide which magazine theme is best for your needs.

How to Choose Magazine Themes for WordPress

First, I wanted to discuss how I chose these magazine themes. There are lots of magazine themes available and it wasn’t easy narrowing the list to just a few.

For this list, I chose the most popular magazine themes for WordPress. Although there are lots of themes with magazine layouts, I focused on themes that were designed specifically for magazines and included magazine features. I also wanted magazine themes that have been updated recently. If I couldn’t tell, then I didn’t include it on this list unless I trusted the publisher.

If you need help choosing a hosting plan for your magazine website, see the articles What Is Web Hosting? and Shared Hosting Vs. Dedicated Hosting: What’s the Difference?

Top 15 Magazine Themes for WordPress

Now, on to the list of magazine themes for WordPress. The magazine themes are in no particular order.

1. Newspaper

Newspaper was designed for newspapers, magazines, blogs, review sites, and more. Build your website with a single click by selecting from over 150 premade websites and nine premium plugins. It includes a module builder to customize the layouts. It also includes a tagDiv optin builder to monetize your traffic with memberships, multiple plans, locked content, coupons, subscription management, etc. The tagDiv cloud library includes 1300 prebuilt templates to choose from.

It also includes unlimited popups, WooCommerce integration with drag-and-drop elements and prebuilt eShops, a header builder, a footer manager, and lots more. Build everything from the front end. Prices start at $59.

2. Soledad

Soledad is a multi-purpose magazine, newspaper, and blog theme with over 6000 homepage demos and 220 complete websites. It includes Penci AI SmartContent Creator to generate high-quality content based on the keywords you want to target. A built-in text-to-speech plugin adds an audio file for all of your written content so your visitors can listen to your articles. You can also create content using the included RSS Aggregator plugin.

Other features include a built-in podcast system, paywall and membership options, the Penci Pay Writer plugin to track and pay writers, front-end post submission, light and dark mode toggle, header builder, footer builder, cloud storage, and lots more. Prices start at $59.

3. ColorMag

Magazine Themes for WordPress

Written by Randy A. Brown WordPress Enthusiast & Technology Writer

July 11, 2023

Wordpress

How to Choose Magazine Themes for WordPress

First, I wanted to discuss how I chose these magazine themes. There are lots of magazine themes available and it wasn’t easy narrowing the list to just a few.

If you need help choosing a hosting plan for your magazine website, see the articles What Is Web Hosting? and Shared Hosting Vs. Dedicated Hosting: What’s the Difference?

Top 15 Magazine Themes for WordPress

Now, on to the list of magazine themes for WordPress. The magazine themes are in no particular order.

1. Newspaper

2. Soledad

3. ColorMag

ColorMag was designed with magazines, news sites, and blogs in mind. The free version includes eight starter demos and lots of ad space within the layouts to monetize the website. The pro version has over 50 starter sites. It has lots of color options, multiple widget areas, advanced typography, and custom widgets.

The pro version includes a post system to show unique posts on the page, avoiding duplicate posts if you’re displaying multiple tags or categories. Other features include header and footer options, 100 customization options, and social icons. It integrates with most of the popular theme builder plugins. The pro version starts at $69.

4. JNews

JNews was designed for news, blogs, and magazines. It includes over 250 home page demos, 67 built-in websites, a video playlist, podcast features, Google web stories, a paywall, an AI writing assistant, and a writer’s paying system. It also includes a donation button, PayPal integration, post statistics, payment criteria, a header and footer builder, a mega menu builder, a post layout builder, and an archive page builder.

Publishing features include the next post auto-loading, split posts, push notifications, multiple authors, inline related posts, truncated posts, views and shares counter, and reading progress. Other features include a front-end submission system, dark mode, a weather plugin, ads and affiliate system, a gallery with ads, and a sponsored post system. Prices start at $59.

5. Jannah

Jannah focuses on content marketing and includes widgets for Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee. It has several new ad spaces, a built-in Google search, an ad block detector, Google Web Stories, and lots of style options. It also includes tools to customize image sizes, shorten URLs, see post statistics, select custom logos for mobile, create custom titles for the single post page, display popular posts, auto-load posts, select custom colors, and lots more.

The menu includes mega menu pagination and smart sticky menus. Custom widgets include Snapchat, Instagram, weather, widget pagination, widget options, etc. Other features include custom share buttons, video thumbnails, block pagination, headers, etc. Prices start at $69.

6. Newsmag

Newsmag is excellent for blogs, newspapers, magazines, and review sites. It includes the tagDiv opt-in builder to monetize your traffic. Create content, menus, headers, and layouts from the front end with the included WPBakery drag-and-drop builder. It includes 12 pre-made website demos to get you started, nine different post styles to create unique content, AJAX, and 25 custom widgets to add all the features you need.

Premium widgets include a newsletter plugin, weather, exchange widget, Instagram, social counter, popular categories, author box, and an ad box. It also includes an ad system, a custom lightbox, a smart sidebar, a custom gallery, smart lists, and a video playlist. Prices start at $49.

7. SmartMag

SmartMag includes over 35 demos to get your news, magazine, or blog site started. The page builder includes a smart studio to import over 100 premade blocks, sections, and pages. The custom layouts include a footer and archives builder. Other features include a dark mode, auto loading the next post, 31 pre-made headers, typography customization, six post layouts, a post views counter with ranks and sorting, smart images, grids and sliders, newsletter forms, and lots more.

Smart Studio integrates with Elementor for the front-end builder and performance tweaks. It includes 12 blocks and 60 importable blocks. The new block editor works with Gutenberg to add styles and block variations. It also includes a review system and live AJAX search. Prices start at $59.

8. HitMag

Hitmag has a free and premium version. The free version has a magazine home page, four different blog layouts, main color options, social sharing, an author box, related posts, four widgets, and post metadata. It also adds an image slider to display the latest posts or posts from a certain category.

The premium version adds AJAX post widgets, unlimited colors, typography options, video posts, two video layouts, an advanced customizer, a custom slider, infinite scroll using Jetpack, and a footer copyright editor. Prices start at $39.

9. The Voux

The Voux is a feminine magazine theme with a strong focus on building an affiliate marketing shop. It includes shoppable images, lightbox gallery styles, video monetization features, 19 demo layouts, multiple shop page layouts, styled article pages, social sharing, eight custom headers including mega menus, infinite loading, typography management, and the Fuel Studio page editor.

The shoppable image features add a hotspot to the images where users can click to make a purchase. Video monetization adds advertisement network integration. It also includes a sponsored posts plugin to add sponsored articles to your content. Prices start at $89.

10. PenNews

PenNews is a general-purpose theme with a magazine focus that includes 150 website demos to get you started with your news, blog, or magazine website. It includes the WPBakery drag-and-drop front-end page builder and over a dozen more premium plugins. Monetize with unlimited ad spaces, in-feed ads, and affiliate features. Authors can submit articles on the front-end. Custom widgets include an author box, social sharing, weather, and more.

It also includes multiple header styles, image size options, custom video playlists, video thumbnails, Gutenberg tools, 40 content blocks, custom gallery styles, multiple featured sliders, multiple blog layouts, auto-load the next post, show and hide elements based on the device, and lots more. Prices start at $59.

11. The Issue

The Issue includes 19 pre-built demos to help you can select using the Fuel Studio to create a magazine website. It also includes nine different article designs that were created for specific use cases, and 50 post elements with different styles and layout variations to create your own designs. Other features include 10 headers, social integration, 10 custom widgets, lightboxes, lists, typography options, reactions, reviews, and more.

The reactions include 106 icons to create custom reactions to your articles. Create reviews with two different review styles. It also includes AJAX search, ad features, tools for sponsored posts, lazy loading, infinite loading, video monetization, mega menus, and shop features. Prices start at $89.

12. Public Opinion

Public Opinion focuses on building magazine websites that are optimized for mobile. It includes custom typography. You can design custom color schemes, create custom archive pages, choose from multiple article layouts, create a breaking news section, create a sticky menu, create global sections, and more.

The breaking news section lets you choose the number of posts and the categories to display. The nine featured article layouts provide lots of options to display the posts. It’s powered by the Ignition framework. Prices start at $49.

13. MagPlus

MagPlus is a magazine theme with a focus on creating content. It includes a template builder with over 40 demos to build multiple types of online magazines. Advertisements can be placed anywhere with Visual Composer. Mega menus display Font Awesome icons. It also includes lots of sliders to show your content.

Create reviews and allow your readers to review your reviews. Adjust typography, headers, colors, and more. Your readers can share your content with the built-in social sharing features. Prices start at $59.

14. News Portal

News Portal is a free and premium news magazine theme with several free and premium demos to get you started. The free version includes seven widgets, one header, one footer, one archive page, and one layout page. The premium version includes 12 widgets, three headers, two footers, four archive pages, and four layout pages.

It also adds preloaders, breadcrumbs, a post-review system, typography options, image hover effects, a fallback image, WooCommerce integration, a 404 page, section animations, and more. The widgets work with the magazine layout. You can move the magazine widget to any location to create a custom magazine layout. Choose from multiple color schemes. Each magazine category can have a unique color. Prices start at $59.99.

15. Royal Magazine

Royal Magazine has both a free and a premium version to build any type of magazine website you need. The free version includes a featured slider, three related posts, footer widgets, preloaders, and limited social options.

The premium version adds 25 content presentation options, lots of widgets, add-ons, optimization tools, and global features. The options include five related posts, share buttons, social integration, galleries, a lightbox, fonts, author widgets, post widgets, lazy loading, infinity scrolling, color options, webmaster tools, newsletter subscriptions, and more. Prices start at $59.

Ending Thoughts on Magazine Themes for WordPress

That’s our look at the best magazine themes for WordPress. As you can see from this list, there are lots of magazine themes for WordPress to choose from. All of them include amazing features to display your content. Many include publishing tools to help you create content, grow your audience, and even manage a writing team. Regardless of the type of magazine you want to build with WordPress, you’re sure to find the perfect theme on this list.

We want to hear from you. Have you tried any of these magazine themes for WordPress? Let us know what you think about them in the comments.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are WordPress-free themes safe?

People often think that free themes have low quality. However, free WordPress themes actually have high quality and are free to use.

Are WordPress plugins free?

WordPress has loads of plugins you can install, some of them are free, but some of them you will need to pay for. You can learn how to use WordPress Plugins on our blog.

Is a WordPress blog free?

Anyone can download, use, customize, and edit the WordPress code as long as they release it under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Even though the software is free, you can end up paying for things like premium support and hosting.