Decided to start a news site and need the most suitable WordPress themes for looks and functionality? This is unsurprising. Over 64% of sites with a recognized CMS (content management system) use WordPress at the time of publication. This makes for over 43% of all websites on the Internet. Therefore, picking it in terms of future-proofing and capabilities was the right step. Afterward, you need to pick an eye-catching but adequate, responsive, and fast-loading theme. After all, readers want the information right now and in a neat format. With that said, let’s get into the best WordPress themes for news sites.
1. SmartMag
SmartMag is among multipurpose WordPress themes compatible with a wide variety of news sites. Thanks to a loyal user base (over 25K websites at this time), years of presence (published in 2014), and near-constant updates, it offers a myriad demos (15 from the get-go) you can import, repurpose, and publish. Some include general technology, gizmos, traveling, sports, and finance. They are all distinct, as opposed to being a minor variation of the base theme. Further, SmartMag is compatible with Elementor, the leading page builder plugin at this time, meaning you can make it unique without adding a line of code.
2. MagPlus
MagPlus is another multifaceted example of WordPress themes for sites focused on news, magazines, and blogs. It offers 30 templates you can import and edit based on your niche, including newspapers, fashion, sports, technology, food, travel, and music. You can even import elements such as premade headers, sidebars, and widgets. Like the one above, it’s unbelievably lightweight and fast, fully responsive, and mobile-ready. Moreover, it’s bundled with a template builder, review system, AdSense, language choices for translation (WPML compatible), and Google Fonts. It was designed with unlimited sidebars in mind and has a theme color picker,
3. Newspaper
Newspaper is a simple, lightweight, responsive, and mobile-ready theme with blazing-fast loading times, ideal for news-only sites that serve as news aggregators. You’ll surely recognize it, as its paid version is in use by 120K+ websites on ThemeForest alone. It comes with AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), translation, and mobile reading support and provides integration with YouTube, Instagram, and WooCommerce. Besides the primary purpose, boasting a plethora of news, magazine, or newspaper templates, it comes with prebuilt pages for stores, shops, eCommerce, reviews, and blogs/columns.
4. Zeen
Zeen is yet another collection of templates that specialize in news, newspapers, and online magazines especially templates named Zeen, Robots, Tech X, and The World Times. It was built from scratch, which means they release frequent free updates to the framework. Complete reworks happen at certain periods with v4 being the late 2021 update. Some demos score 100/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights, and none are under 90. Hence, besides great visuals and news-related features, they bring responsiveness and rapid loading time. They also added Google voice search functionality and use Tipi Builder to let users skip coding.
5. OceanWP
We know not everyone is ready to pay, though most themes are affordable and come with Customer Service and frequent updates. That’s why we present, OceanWP, the top contender among free WordPress themes for news sites. Though the base design isn’t adequate, there are a plethora of templates for news, newspapers, and magazines in all niches. Also, with over 700,000 users, you’ll never lack support or inspiration. Unsurprisingly, the theme is easy to modify, lightweight, brings translation and responsiveness, follows relevant SEO practices, and loads fast. Finally, it’s compatible with page builders such as Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Brizy, SiteOrigin, and Visual Composer. Thus, tailoring it won’t be an issue.
6. Newsup
Newsup is an ideal choice if you’re looking for the leading news aggregator WordPress themes. It’s clean, simple, and modern, but also loads fast and is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly. Moreover, the theme brings on-page translation, WPML, and RTL support. Most importantly, it delivers numerous widgets you can utilize to customize the look and functionality. If you get stuck, the extensive user documentation on the official website can help, too. Further, you’ll find several child themes on the WordPress.org theme repository (News Hunt is a well-known example) that retain the capability while changing the appearance.
7. HashNews
HashNews stands out for a handful of reasons. First, it incorporates a page builder, KingComposer, with 40 general add-ons and over 20 ones built for HashNews. Second, it comes with 3 distinct homepage designs and a multitude of premade pages for news posts, reviews, and columns. It also supports Ajax Contact Form and Google Fonts. Additionally, it permits adding social media or news feeds, Google Maps, and shortcodes from the get-go. One reason people opt for this theme, in particular, is the built-in but performance-optimized MegaMenu in all templates.
8. Blossom Magazine Pro
How do you like the design of online magazines for entertainment, lifestyle, fashion, finances, and certain high-end ads? If that’s your thing, Blossom Magazine Pro should be your preferred online news platform. It’s powered by Elementor page builder and supports easy visual appeal changes through color and typography. Additionally, it has a special add-on, News Ticker, that lets you customize multiple types of news posts to minute details. The theme also comes with translation through WPML and Polylang. Users also get SEO and Schema configurations to help their news site rank higher.
9. Soledad
Soledad is a news and magazine theme known for incredible speed—their demos all rank 90 and up on PageSpeed Insights. Speaking of which, Soledad is Elementor-compatible, letting you use regular elements plus 40+ custom ones. That’s not all, however. It supports importing any template, block, or element (e.g., headers or footers) from the Penci Templates (theme developers) cloud library. This lets you mix and match to individualize your news site as a child theme. To put things into perspective, Soledad is part of a collection of over 6000 homepage demos and 1000+ elements/layouts.
10. Neeon
Neeon also relies on Elementor page builder to tweak the appearance and functionality. It comes with 15 tailored add-ons and 45 premade layouts. During installation, the theme lets you choose one of 6 homepage demos. Plus, you can employ their one-click demo importer to add others from the Radius Theme library. As for making your news informative, easy-to-read, SEO-friendly, and good-looking, you’re lucky. You may select one of 5 category pages, 3 post page templates, 4 header styles (10 variations each!), and 3 footer elements. Like we noted, you can import others or mix and match by dragging and dropping. We also liked built-in image blending, translation, infinity scroll, and Dark Mode.