In today’s online world, where there are literally countless of websites jostling with each other for top rankings in the various search engines, themes play a massive role in deciding who eventually comes out on top.
While it goes without saying that quality content and easy navigation are vital parts of a website, it is also key that the site looks clean, sharp and overall professional. This is where WordPress themes come into play.
A top theme can elevate your site to the next level in terms of the traffic it generates and, more importantly, what the traffic actually does once it arrives on your site – i.e. click on affiliate links, enter emails into squeeze pages, comment on blogs etc.
Below, in no particular order, are the top 15 WordPress magazine themes that I have encountered to date.
Boulevard Theme – created by ThemeSector
Cost: $48 for a regular licence
Key Features and Details:
- Built-in review system that allows visitors to rate a site
- 3 post formats – videos, music and galleries
- Unlimited skins to choose from
- Custom theme options panel which allows complete control over the ascetics of a site
- 7 custom widgets – recent posts, recent reviews, tabs (popular, comments and tags), recent tweets, Facebook like box and flicker widget
- Capable of translation into any desired language
- WordPress 3.2.1 ready
- Easy thumbnails with WordPress built in function
Marroco Theme – created by Peenapo
Cost: $58 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Possesses a clean, minimalist design that can be used for any blog, newspaper, editorial or magazine website
- Flexible layout
- Responsive design that adapts to mobile devices
- Sticky main menu navigation
- Megamenu with latest post and slider
- Drag and drop content builder
- Custom CSS and JavaScript sections in the theme admin panel
- Contains WooComerce support
- Review system
- Styled typography and flexible page columns
GoMedia Theme – created by ThemeJunkie
Cost: $39 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Clean and presentable theme
- Perfect for news websites, personal or community blogs
- Features posts slider which displays the most important or up-to-date articles
- 3 formatting options – image, video and gallery
- 6 custom widgets – Feedburner, Twitter, Flickr and more
- Ad management feature enables various sized banners to be placed in the sidebar and other built-in ad positions of the website
- Fully responsive for mobile compatibility
- A localization support allows the possibility of reaching a multilingual audience
Novelty Theme – created by Telsa Themes
Cost: $39 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Modern design that is suitable for news, sports or any type of magazine content
- User-friendly theme which allows easy set up and customisation of the site
- Employs a scrolling ticker which adds a breaking news feel to the site
- Includes an image slider
- Custom short codes
- Social media integration
- Responsive design
- Tabbed widgets
- No prior technical knowledge of themes needed
Avenue Theme – created by Solo Pine Designs
Cost: $43 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Review system for users to rate the site
- Responsive design that ensures the theme looks great on all devices
- Paginated posts
- Tons of layout and appearance options which allows complete customization
- Supports Schema Search Micro data
- Supports Google Headshot
- 4 post types available – regular, video, gallery and review
- Lots of custom widgets for both the homepage and a sidebar/footer
Braxton Theme – created by TemplateTrackers 
Cost: $58 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Retina ready
- Translation ready
- Fully responsive for any device
- Fly-out mobile navigation
- 600+ Google fonts
- Sticky navigation and sidebar
- 4 different ad units which include a wallpaper ad
- Post and page slideshows
- Super quick demo which guides user through the process of installation
- Named among Top 10 Best Paid WordPress Themes in 2013 by Forbes.com
- Compatible with WooCommerce and BBPress
- Infinite scrolling
- Featured slider on each category page
MagXP Theme – created by MyThemeShop
Cost: $35 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Responsive theme
- Comes with 4 homepage layouts and 2 single post layouts
- WooCommerce capable for any eCommerce needs
- Integrated review system which allows visitors to add reviews and rating to the posts and pages on the website
- Drag-and-drop homepage builder
- Unlimited sidebar
- Demo content available
- Suitable for entertainment, health, sports and many more adaptions
MH Magazine Theme – created by Creative Market
Price: $55 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Beautiful and powerful responsive magazine theme
- Includes widgets, multiple layout options and advanced options such as colour pickers with unlimited colours to customize a site
- Demo content of 3 different styles to help with a quicker setup – standard, extended and news
- Includes several integrated ad units that work well and doesn’t detract from the content
- Several custom widgets
- Available with Flex Slider 2 with touch control and built-in styles that accommodate Contact Form 7 plugin
Magazine Theme – created by Themify
Cost: $49 (buy 1 get 1 free).
Key Features and Details:
- A three-column responsive and retina ready theme with a whole host of features
- An impressive 42 pre-built layout options including mobile slide navigation, Mega Menus, widgetized areas for banner ads, icon fonts, social share buttons, and many more
- Homepage showcases a breaking news ticker that draws visitor’s attention to important stories. Ticker can be paused or advanced at will
- Comes with 6 colour skins built-in, but the appearance of the site can also be changed further by the use of the admin’s styling panel
- Content alignment on the homepage allows several different ways to group and break up different types of content
SimpleMag Theme – created by ThemesInDep
Cost: $45 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Clean and minimal responsive magazine theme that puts the focus on content
- Easy to setup
- Simple drag-and-drop page composer
- Configurable drop-down Mega Menu
- Employs an off-canvas navigation and sidebar to make the mobile experience better
- Ability to lay out each category differently – can include the slider, have two or three post columns, or decide to show or hide the sidebar
- Built-in review system to help people rate and review the website
- A self-configurable footer allows content to be included in one, two or three widget areas
Presso Theme – created by Envirra
Cost: $45 for a regular licence.
Key Features/Details:
- A bold responsive theme that aims to stand out
- Chunky headlines and divider lines gives the theme a definite newspaper quality
- Large images help to convey a music or entertainment theme
- Powerful features that suit both small and large publications
- WooCommerce and BBPress ready
- Includes integrated review system
- Mega Menus include images and video
- Instant search function displays results while a visitor is typing into the search box
- Standard customization options
- Includes 3 site layout, 2 header layout and integrated advertising units
WP-DaVinci – created by Solostream
Cost: $59 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- A flexible and responsive theme that can be used for many different types of magazines
- Can accommodate the needs of a larger magazine site, the theme is also flexible enough to be used for a personal or business site
- 5 different layout styles that are already built-in can be used, or else the theme setting can be accessed in order to customize everything from the basic options to navigation, advertisements and subscription forms
- A wealth of slider options
- Ability to showcase featured pages, photos and videos, or else use a featured articles slider in either narrow or wide format
Magazine Pro Theme – created by StudioPress
Cost: $99.95 for a regular licence (includes framework).
Key Features and Details:
- Mobile responsive, fixed-width theme that’s ideal for anyone looking for an easy-to-use publishing platform
- Built on the powerful Genesis framework, this theme has a very clean and minimal design – simple black-and-white styling
- Comes with 4 accent colour options – blue, green, orange and red
- 6 layout choices that allows owner to specify content and sidebar location as well as the ability to use full-width content
- Media ready
- Optional ad locations for users who want to advertise on their site
Immunity Theme – created by MyThemeShop
Cost: $35 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Comes with 6 different layout styles targeted at different types of businesses or content – ideally suited for a magazine site focusing on health, weddings or blogging.
- Responsive and WooCommerce enable
- Integrated with social media
- Optimized for Google AdSense
- Once a layout is chosen, further customization can be done to the theme with the unlimited colour schemes, background patterns, short codes and 350+ icons
Ciola Theme – created by ThemeForest
Cost: $45 for a regular licence.
Key Features and Details:
- Responsive theme
- Featured stories are placed at the top of the page layout and given large image treatments with hover animations
- Theme possesses a modern design that compliments content about fashion, art or even video games
- Includes 5 blog styles, unlimited colours and 5 different featured image styles
- Integrated review system includes 3 different styles, placement options, pros, cons and more.
- Homepage is set up with a unique module layout so that it’s possible to combine with grids, 50% width, sliders and 100% width content
