When it comes to magazine and news websites, WordPress is top of the bill.
Well-known news sites like The New York Times, TechCrunch, CNN, Reuters, Mozilla’s Blog, and many others use WordPress as their platform of choice, highlighting just how scalable WordPress blogs can be.
And in a world where younger audiences have a notably weaker connection with news brands, it’s important that online news maintains its quality and values.
The Best WordPress Magazine Themes for 2024
If you want to create the best news website design then choosing the perfect WordPress theme for a magazine website or news blog may be trickier than you’d think.
As a publisher you’ll be looking to showcase a lot of content on a single screen, whilst at the same time wanting it to be accessible, perform well, and look attractive so as to generate user engagement.
To help you out we’ve prepared a list of the best WordPress magazine themes on our pay-as-you-go Envato Market, Themeforest. This list is regularly updated and refreshed so dig in and see what’s new!
1. Saxon—Viral Content WordPress News Theme
First on the list, Saxon is the best WordPress Magazine theme for you if you’re looking to build a dynamic magazine site or blog.
Clean, modern, and ideally suited to vibrant, colorful supporting imagery, Saxon gets any magazine or news website off to a great start.
It comes with a wide range of pre-built layouts, and take a look at the difference its light and dark variants can give your content.
2. Zeen—Next Generation WordPress Magazine Themes
Zeen is described as a “next generation” magazine theme and its recent update has seen every aspect of it built anew from the ground up. Super-stylish and very flexible, this is a superb magazine WordPress theme fit for a wide range of purposes.
The screenshot shows one of the magazine layout demos which really needs to be seen in a browser to be fully appreciated; its main story sticks to the top of the page as the reader scrolls down, until the bottom of the white section catches it.
Very stylish and the best news website design.
Want to see Zeen in action? Check out these websites which put it to great use:
3. Avenue | Creative Responsive WordPress News Theme
Technically a “multi-purpose” WordPress theme, Avenue comes with a whole host of layout and website options, however its stylish magazine blog is what’s brought it to this list.
Well designed, and packed with customizable features, Avenue comes with Google fonts and Typekit support, custom icons, video and parallax backgrounds, plus premium plugin integration such as Visual Composer and Revolution Slider.
4. Neder—WordPress News Theme
Neder touts itself as being “simple and functional”, qualities which are often highly sought after in the world of WordPress themes!
Used as a WordPress News theme, t’s ideally suited for any kind of news websites, and comes packaged with various plugins including: Visual Composer, Fast Gallery for Visual Composer, Fast Media Gallery For Visual Composer, and Fast Carousel.
5. Bizi | A WordPress News Portal for Food Bloggers
A trending item on Themeforest, Bizi’s rich layout is perfect for the foodies among you.
Designed to make the most of high quality imagery, its clear tagging and typography make Bizi perfect for navigating and reading recipes.
Perhaps most importantly, this magazine theme is built with performance in mind, serving up some very appealing speed test results. Take a look at the item page for more details.
6. Henrik | Clean WordPress Magazine Themes
Henrik features a minimal WordPress magazine themes that also works as a news portal. Its 8 pre-built demo sites come in all shapes and sizes, including a great collection of magazine themes, like the one shown below.
This responsive WordPress news also features:
- Elementor Page Builder plugin compatible
- customizable blog pages with different post formats
- sliders and multiple headers
- responsive WordPress news theme
- compatible with WooCommerce
- 1000+ Google Fonts
- and so much more!
7. Jannah | Best News Website Design for Sports
Jannah is a magazine theme which fills a wide array of niches. Whether you’re looking for a fashion magazine theme, a tech magazine, a stylish newspaper, a sports magazine (like the image below), or any other kind of magazine, Jannah has a variant that’ll interest you.
It incorporates push notifications, AMP support, and is built with WooCommerce, BBPress, BuddyPress and other extensions in mind. No doubt, one of the best news website designs.
8. Scribbler | Simple Blog & WordPress News Theme
Clean cut and contemporary, Scribbler provides a range of grid-based, modular layouts for the budding magazine editor or blogger. This is a great responsive WordPress news theme.
Nine distinct homepage layouts are included, all offering something different whilst sticking to the Scribbler aesthetic. Check out the item page for details on what’s in the box.
9. Barcelona | WordPress Magazine Themes
Barcelona is a clean-cut magazine theme with sharp edges, bold whitespace, and high contrast (which is excellent for readers with vision impairment).
It boasts “eleven different page modules with six different featured post styles”–check out the demos to see them in action. It’ll inspire you to create the best news website design.
10. BoomBox | Viral WordPress Magazine Themes
Billed as the “all-purpose viral magazine theme” BoomBox really is high-octane crammed with features for your pop cult website.
Publish news stories, listicles, quizzes, then push them through the usual social sharing culprits–utilize trending, reactions, and voting systems. It’s a solid WordPress news portal! Phew.
11. Authentic | Lifestyle Blog & WordPress Magazine Themes
Light and classic, Authentic is suited for lifestyle bloggers and magazines. And one particularly appealing point is their level of support (get a response to your support question within thirty minutes, during working hours).
If you’re after the best WordPress magazine themes, then this is definitely one to consider!
12. Evonews | WordPress News Portal & Magazine Theme
Evonews is a responsive WordPress news theme for lifestyle content. Featuring a slider with content boxes at the top, perfect for showcasing different articles of your magazine.
Download one of the best news website design from this list and get:
- fast support
- different demo styles for: news, magazine, lifestyle and fashion
- front-end & backend Visual Composer
- a variety of header styles
- mega menus
- WooCommerce compatibility
- no coding required
- color settings
- Ajax settings
- custom widgets
- and more!
13. The Voux | Stylish & Responsive WordPress News Theme
The Voux touts itself as a stylish, professional magazine WordPress magazine theme that’s simultaneously comprehensive and lightweight.
The theme is responsive and retina-ready, meaning it looks beautiful no matter what devices your visitors use to view your content.
Some of this theme’s features include striking highlighted images which help draw your readers in, infinite scroll, the ability to share your posts on social media built into the theme, and so much more. To top it all off,
The Voux comes with Visual Composer which allows you to completely customize the look and feel of your pages.
14. NewsTube | WordPress News Portal
NewsTube is a clean and well-organized theme perfect for video oriented sites. It is fully responsive, retina ready, includes flexible theme layouts, extensive theme options, and supports videos from many popular sites including Youtube, Vimeo and Daily Motion.
With this video theme, you can submit a video from the front end, create great video channels and playlists, or import YouTube Videos and Channels to your website.
15. Flex Mag | Responsive WordPress News Theme
Flex Mag features a mobile first design which gives your readers the option to browse through the articles sorted by featured or latest posts via secondary navigation. The theme is packed with features which include a custom Fly-Out Navigation, custom scoreboard, auto-load posts, four different preset skins, nine different Featured Posts options, eight different article templates, 700+ Google Fonts, integration with WooCommerce and bbPress, and so much more.
This theme is the perfect combination of power and simplicity in a WordPress news and magazine theme, giving you plenty of options and flexibility to customize your site without being totally overwhelming.
16. Bimber | Viral WordPress Magazine Themes
Bimber is the perfect WordPress magazine theme for creating a site similar to BuzzFeed.
Bimber is responsive, SEO optimized, compatible with SEO plugins, optimized for Google PageSpeed and comes with support for microdata and rich snippets as well as several ad widgets.
What’s more, the theme can be easily modified via WordPress customizer and comes with a child theme which allows you to safely modify the theme without worrying about losing your changes with the next theme update.
On top of that, it comes with one-click installable demos to get your site up and running as quickly as possible.
17. Herald | Best News Website Design Theme
Herald is a professional WordPress news theme crafted especially for news and magazine sites. It offers a high level of customization with more than 500 variations for your article listing layouts, as well as many options to suit your needs with no coding knowledge required.
Herald integrates with WooCommerce and bbPress and it even allows your readers to leave a rating on your services or products. It’s optimized for speed and ensures your website will load fast. And it supports a wide variety of image sizes to make sure your images always look great.
18. GoodLife | WordPress News Theme for Sports Content
Goodlife comes with seven different layouts to choose from depending on what kind of site you want to create. All of the homepage layouts are responsive and include three different header styles and smart ad areas.
The theme is bundled with several different plugins such as Visual Composer, Viral Quiz Builder, Maintenance Pro, Essential Grid and Rankie, which give additional interactive features and the ability to create unique layouts. On top of that, Goodlife is SEO and speed optimized with you plenty of customization options.
19. Bitz | Responsive WordPress News Theme
If your website relies on publishing the most up-to-date news, look no further than Bitz. With built-in functionality for custom timing, your readers will know your website is the go-to place for the most recent news.
Pair that with a review functionality with rich snippets with a powerful front-end and back-end editor which lets you customize any aspect of your website (and see the changes as you make them) and you have a truly powerful theme on your hands.
Bits also supports attractive article labels, SEO, and has WooCommerce integration.
20. Metz | WordPress Magazine Themes
Metz is a fashion-oriented editorial magazine theme for WordPress that features an elegant and clean design with carefully selected typography that is sure to appeal to a female audience.
The theme’s top features include a mobile friendly, responsive design, a sleek slider that can be used in three different positions, support for WooCommerce, five different layout options, four different header views, as well as 13 custom widgets.
21. Read and Digest | Modern WordPress Magazine Themes
With 14 different homepage layouts, four slider types, a fully responsive design, and bold typography, Read & Digest is everything you need in a theme to create a visually appealing magazine or news website.
The included comprehensive options panel lets you easily tweak any option in an intuitive manner and allows you to give your website your own personal touch. Other notable features include integration with WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, and a child theme so you can safely change theme files at any time.
22. Soledad | Multi-Concept Blog & WordPress News Portal
Soledad is a multi-concept blog and magazine theme with over 200 slider and blog layout combinations, three sidebar layout styles, five article layout styles, and six different layouts, giving you a wide range of possibilities to create a unique and stunning design.
This theme also comes with the ability to have video backgrounds as well as WooCommerce support and plenty of customization options, which are sure to please even the most demanding website owner.
5 Free WordPress News Portal Themes to Download in 2023
You’ve seen some of our best news website designs for WordPress to get from Themeforest, our single purchase marketplace. You won’t regret buying a premium theme that’s professional, really easy to customize and with the best news website design.
But don’t worry if you can’t spend on a premium WordPress news portal template. You can still create a good website. I’ll show you some cool free WordPress magazine themes.
But wait! Don’t forget to check our WordPress themes free on Themeforest, which change every month. Now, let’s get to business!
1. Free WordPress Magazine Themes
Magazinenews is a free WordPress news portal that helps you create a WordPress news site.
This responsive WordPress news theme is speed optimized and highly customizable. The responsive layout of the theme gives your website an elegant look on all device and screen resolutions.
2. Free Responsive WordPress News Themes
Axis Magazine is a cool, free WordPress news portal that stands out thanks to its minimal and modern design.
The responsive WordPress news theme is perfect for your personal and professional blog, magazine , online newspaper, book review, photography or any topic you’d like.
3. FocusNews | Best News Website Design
This free WordPress news portal lets you write articles and blog posts quickly and easily. The responsive WordPress news theme is excellent for newspapers, magazines, publishing or other editorial websites.
4. Newsmandu Magazine Free WordPress News Theme
Check this clean, modern responsive WordPress news theme focused on magazine and news portal sites.
With organized and attractive layouts, it’s much easier to display your content in this free WordPress news portal.
5. Stylish News Free WordPress News Theme
This free WordPress news portal features a magazine and entertainment blog design.
Use this responsive WordPress news theme for any project you’ve got in mind: a travel magazine, fashion, news, entertainment, fitness, business or any other idea!
Magazine and News Sites Best Practices
Creating a visually appealing magazine or news site is no easy task. Aside from making sure the theme follows the latest best practices, there are three main things you need to keep in mind when choosing a theme for a magazine website.
- The content needs to be front and center and easy to read on all devices, including assistive technologies
- Content demands to be presented in a visually appealing way with striking imagery that will draw your visitors in
- The design should be well organized and structured, rather than feel busy and overwhelming
Once you’ve chosen a theme that fits the above requirements and gives you the features you need, your next step is properly installing and setting up your new magazine WordPress theme.
If you’re new to WordPress, you can check this useful guide we’ve made for you: A Beginner’s Guide to Using WordPress.
Additionally, if you wish to keep learning more about the best news website design practices, we’ve got for you this helpful resource:
Discover More Cool WordPress Themes
We hope you’ve found our selection of WordPress magazine themes and WordPress news portal templates useful.
Now, to get you more inspired in your next WordPress project, let me share with you some of my favorite WordPress themes from Envato:
Choose the Best WordPress Magazine Theme
With so many responsive WordPress news themes available, and the complexity of magazine and news sites, deciding on the best theme for your website may take some consideration.
Choose a theme that fits your branding needs, showcases your content in a style that matches your design goals, and that displays perfectly on all devices.
With Themeforest’s huge WordPress news theme selection your website can be up and running in no time.
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