The internet is a dynamic place where things are always changing and adapting. And just like the internet, the blogosphere is also changing rapidly and seems to be particularly susceptible to trends. One prominent blogger will create a theme and the whole blogosphere will rush to follow.
One of the most recent trends in the blogosphere is the rise in popularity of many magazine-style WordPress themes. Many of them are paid themes, but there are also several free magazine style WordPress themes as well for people to download. Here are a few of my favorites:
Options Theme
Structure Theme
Rebel Magazine Theme
Massive News Theme
Jello Wala Mello Theme
Visionary Theme
Mimbo Theme
Morning After Theme
Zeke 1.0 Theme
Forte Theme
The Studio Theme
If you know of a good one that you’d like to see added to the list, please let me know in the comments below!
My Best WordPress Themes Series
- Premium WordPress Themes Gallery
- 2-Column WordPress Theme Gallery
- 3-Column WordPress Theme Gallery
- 4-Column WordPress Theme Gallery
- K2 WordPress Theme Mods and Styles Gallery
- Google AdSense Optimized WordPress Theme Gallery
- Search Engine Optimized (SEO) WordPress Theme Gallery
- Magazine Style WordPress Theme Gallery
- 125×125 Button-Ready WordPress Themes Gallery
- 50 Best Free WordPress Themes Gallery
I've been using WP as a CMS for several small sites I have done for friends and relatives...
My question is ...
very nice thanks. 
Hayes must play a lot of World of Warcraft. 
Thanks Kyle!
Others: Justin Tadlock and Play Work Play.
Another good tutorial site I noticed recently is The Wordpress Guru ...
It is superb that my blog, SilentBits is on your list !!! 
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Thanks for posting my theme (Visionary). I haven’t seen the Mimbo Magazine theme yet. Looks like I have a little more competition than I thought.
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 10:32 am
They’re beautiful themes and I’ve actually toyed with the Morning After theme on a test site. However, I’m still a bit torn about magazine style themes. Do you think they’re more appropriate for one type of blog over another?
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Justin - Thanks for stopping by! Yes, the Mimbo theme is nice as well, plus there is always the Revolution (paid) magazine theme to compete with, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You have a great theme there!
Robert - Excellent question, but not an easy one to answer!
It really does depend on the type of blog in my opinion, because its basically replacing the standard blog homepage.
I am using a magazine style look on my personal blog (which is not ready for public consumption yet, so I can’t link to it to show you). This blog will be a page that basically points to everything me, including various sites I admin or author, latest twitters, my personal profiles, etc. The blog portion (single pages) is useful for posting pictures and whatever else I feel like sharing I guess.
If you are in need of a landing page of sorts, I do recommend the magazine style themes to those people. If it is truly a blog, then you might be better off sticking with a standard blog theme.
Hope this helped a little bit!
Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Thanks for the mention, Kyle. I hadn’t visited HackWP before - lots of good info here.
Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Recently, I released a magazine style theme called WPortal. You can see a demo here.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Kyle - Thanks for the response. I’ve toyed with the idea of a magazine style theme for my guitar related site. I cover a number of sub niches which I think would work well with a magazine style theme. My one big concern is making the layout overly busy and confusing the reader.
I’d love to hear from bloggers who have switched over to magazine style themes to see if they’ve seen any impact in terms of visits, pageviews, depth of visits, etc. You haven’t by chance come across anything like that? It might make for an interesting article…
Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 7:44 am
I think Mimbo is one of the best magazine wordpress themes. I use it on my site ( http://www.hoodgrownonline.com ). Originally, I was going to use “The Morning After” until I came across Mimbo in a similiar article. Apart from my Mimbo bias… I’ve found another great FREE magazine theme.. that I might use on another site I’m building….
Structure…
http://justintadlock.com/archives/2007/12/09/structure-wordpress-theme
Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 7:46 am
Hey.. sorry.. didn’t notice Structure was there.. the first one. lol
Hey.. i’m just waking up
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I have to say, I’m really loving the trend towards “Magazine”-style themes. It really pushes the bar in terms of creativity, especially since most standard blog themes look far too similar.
I’m using Kiwi 1.1 on my personal site (http://www.raviudeshi.com), which I think was one of the first themes to push the trend of non-standard presentation of posts. Shame I’ve spent so much time customizing it as some of these new themes definitely give it a run for its money!
Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Great themes you have here!
Like Ravi, I also customized a WP theme for my e-zine, (www.tinig.com). How I wish I could make it look like the themes here. :p
Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 1:15 am
Thanks for the feature Kyle
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Here is an amazing rework of the Quadruple Blue Theme. http://collegian.csufresno.edu They made two columns out of the main column thereby creating a very nice 5 column newspaper style theme with lots of additional media content.
Any chance of getting your esteemed analysis of how all this was accomplished?
Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Thanks for the mention!
Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
WOW..there are alot of amazing themes here..
polaroids is my choice..
thanks for the sharing
Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Excellent list of themes! One of the best resources I’ve found for free downloads! Thanks.
Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
An advantage of Justin Tadlock’s Options and Structure themes is that they can be configured as a magazine theme or as a traditional blog.
After some consideration, I decided to switch my site to Structure as a traditional blog. However, I now have the ability to leverage all my current mods and testing and easily move to its magazine layout at some later point in time.
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Hi I am using TMA theme on my website http://www.iitdreams.com have a look..
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Great Collection! Nice Post. Thanks a lot.
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
thanks man
Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
A true pleasure to explore your site. Thank you for sharing such great work!
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 8:29 am
good job. i like this themes.
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 10:09 am
These themes look great! The Massive, Zeke, and Studio themes would work especially well for “traditional” type blogs.
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 11:08 am
wow thanks so much for providing these great themes for free. thank you thank you thank you!!!!
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
lots of great magazine style themes in your list. the one i like from your list is option theme. I will be trying it out on my blog.
You might also want to include a new theme i found.
http://www.gabfire.com/wordpress-magazine-theme-released/
It is great. I use it in one of my blogs and I love it. lot easier that mimbo for customizing.