WordPress newspaper themes: Top 20 picks for news websites

WordPress newspaper themes: Top 20 picks for news websites

Customizable layouts, excellent readability, and advanced ad management are some of the qualities of a good WordPress newspaper theme.

But with so many options available, how do you narrow them down to the best choices? And even if you have your top 20, how do you decide which newspaper theme suits your website?

Each WordPress theme offers something unique. But finding that uniqueness can often be unnecessarily time-consuming and overwhelming. So, we did the work for you.

We have compiled the top 20 WordPress newspaper themes to help you choose the one that matches your needs.

Ready? Let’s begin.

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The 20 best WordPress themes for news websites

We shortlisted these themes after reviewing their SEO, newspaper templates, custom widgets, mobile responsiveness, regular updates, customer support, and plugin compatibility.

We also checked with third-party review and rating websites to confirm our findings with users’ experiences.

Finally, we tested each theme’s unique features to give you a versatile list of the best WordPress newspaper themes.

1. Astra

Astra stats:

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Active installations: 1+ million
  • Best features: 30+ magazine and news starter site templates, compatibility with popular WordPress plugins, high customization, SEO-friendly, and optimized performance.
  • Price: Freemium, with pricing plans starting at $49/year. You can also get Astra Pro for life for a one-time payment of $199.

Astra is a highly customizable, SEO-friendly WordPress theme with over 30 starter site templates for news and magazine websites. It’s great for a news website because it’s lightweight. This means your website will load fast and provide a better user experience to keep visitors longer.

Another reason is Astra’s blog layouts. You can display news in Grid, List, and Masonry. Highlight the first post if you want readers to focus on breaking news, turn on Infinite Loading, or showcase more news clips as Related Posts or Trending News to hold readers’ interest.

Key features:

  • Multiple category layouts: Organize news by sections, category, trending news, must-reads, and next posts.
  • Highlight news: Connects with the Ditty News Ticker plugin to instantly highlight top stories.
  • Advanced typography: Get many font options to ensure unique branding and readability.
  • Ad management: Seamlessly integrate ads to earn ad revenue.
  • Post navigation & archives: Easy access to past articles and related content to maintain readers’ attention.

Verdict

Astra is perfect for creating a newspaper website. It’s lightweight, offers tools to engage readers, and allows seamless ad integration without disrupting the reading experience.

2. Soledad

Soledad stats:

  • Rating: 4.8/5
  • Active installations: 52,000+
  • Best features: RTL-ready, GDPR compliance, AMP compatibility, and AI integration to help you brainstorm ideas, write posts, and create placeholder content.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $59/license.

Soledad is a well-documented, lightweight, and AI-integrated WordPress theme with many features that will attract readers to your website. First, you can use its free Penci AI Smart Content Creator to generate new ideas, content, and titles.

Then, it lets you activate the Text to Speech plugin to include an audio version of your articles for visitors who prefer listening. You can also use the Penci Bookmark and Follow plugin to allow readers to personalize their feeds.

Finally, take advantage of the Live Blog plugin to share real-time updates during events and encourage readers to check the site more often.

Key features:

  • Elementor friendly: Soledad integrates with Elementor to empower no-code customization.
  • Well-documented: It has detailed documentation and video tutorials, so finding answers to questions and troubleshooting are easy.
  • High performance: It’s optimized for speed with a 90+ PageSpeed Insights score for desktop and mobile sites.
  • Header and footer builder: You can choose from many layout options for headers and footers.
  • Responsive and AMP-friendly: Improve your website’s performance for mobile readers.

Verdict

Soledad’s integration with AI tools makes it a great option for busy news sites that publish many articles daily. It’ll help you get over writer’s block and effectively share new updates:

3. SmartMag

SmartMag stats:

  • Rating: 4.7/5
  • Active installations: 19,000+
  • Best features: Sticky menu, one-click layout imports with Smart Studio, responsive images, dark mode, and auto-load features.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $59/license.

SmartMag includes over 50 news, magazine, and blog layouts with one-click import functionality with Smart Studio and core web vitals optimization. You can edit your site design using Elementor’s drag-and-drop features, which help you quickly create a fast and beautiful news site.

The theme also includes notable features like categorizing posts as sponsored without adding URL, automatic image lazy loading, various blog layouts including Gallery, Grid, and Masonry, social media sharing icons, and dedicated profile pages for authors.

Key features:

  • Schema support: Built-in schema markup for rich snippets to improve search visibility.
  • Hide on phones: Hide specific elements for a simpler mobile experience.
  • Mega menus: Create organized menus for better navigation, perfect for news sites with many categories.
  • Review system: Built-in star ratings as well as pros and cons for review posts.
  • Customizable headers: Multiple header layouts, presets, and sticky options for a modern site design.

Verdict:

SmartMag supports multiple authors with dedicated pages, which makes it an excellent choice for community websites that many people manage. You can create an opinion column and invite guest writers to share their expertise.

4. Jannah

Jannah stats:

  • Rating: 4.8/5
  • Active installations: 22,000+
  • Best features: Lifetime free updates, category grid widgets, one-click imports, subcategory sections, header buttons, and many preset and gradient styles.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $59/license.

Jannah is a powerful newspaper theme with inline ads in the AMP version, so you can monetize your site and earn ad revenue. You also get ad spaces in both sidebars, archives, below titles as well as images.

For more authentic appeal, it lets you showcase a review box that contains ratings based on different factors and third-party votes. This helps your site get picked up by Google bots for higher rankings.

Jannah offers top-quality features to keep users engaged, such as a built-in Google search option to simplify search functionality, an ad block detector to identify if the users are blocking ads, and mobile-friendly navigation for a responsive and easy-to-use site for readers who are on the go.

Key features:

  • Unlimited header styles: Choose from different header styles and apply your branding.
  • Multiple post layouts: Display articles in various formats such as grid, list, or masonry styles.
  • Advanced Theme Options panel: Modify colors, typography, and background settings using Jannah’s Theme Options dashboard.
  • Custom widgets: Including weather, social media feeds, and trending posts.
  • Built-in mega menus: Mega menus with categories and subcategories to organize content effectively.

Verdict

Jannah includes over 50 demo layouts with one-click import and Elementor support, which makes it easy to design a custom website quickly. It’s perfect for those who want to build a visually appealing website without touching code.

5. Indigo

Indigo stats:

  • Rating: 4.9/5
  • Active installations: 150,000+
  • Best features: WooCommerce support, RTL-ready, mobile responsive, retina-optimized, sticky menus, and the ability to hide or display custom widgets.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $69/year. You can also pay $199 one time for a lifetime license.

Indigo has a featured slider that makes selected news clips stand out and encourages readers to click and read. You also have the flexibility to mix and match different blog and magazine layouts to build a unique website.

But it isn’t just the blog layout. With different custom widgets, such as email opt-in forms, social follow buttons, Instagram feed integration, featured snippets, and related posts, you can encourage readers to subscribe for regular updates, follow you on social media, and explore more of your articles.

Key features:

  • Category-based color coding: Improve reader experience by assigning colors to different categories.
  • Advanced advertising management: Place ads in the header, sidebar, or within articles for better monetization.
  • Integrated social sharing and comments: Includes built-in social sharing buttons and a commenting system to increase user interaction.
  • Customizable mega menu: Organize content in categories and subcategories.
  • Breaking news ticker: Highlight breaking news and share real-time live updates.

Verdict

Indigo is excellent if you’re looking for a visually appealing design. Its featured slider section makes highlighting important news easy, and color-coding different categories simplifies the browsing experience.

6. News Portal

News Portal stats:

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Active installations: 7,000+
  • Best features: Live chat support, multiple color schemes, retina-ready, mobile-responsive, built-in live customizer, and many page layouts.
  • Price: Freemium, premium plans starting at $59/year. You can also pay $119 once for a lifetime license.

News Portal is an SEO-friendly theme with magazine, news, and blogger layouts and custom widgets. It includes built-in pagination and breadcrumbs to help search bots skim through pages faster, improving rankings.

Advanced customization features include image hover effects, animated sections, over 600 Google fonts, three unique header layouts, and four single-page layouts. You can place an ad banner in the header and make it sticky.

With the premium version, you can also enable post reviews to display ratings and collect third-party reviews.

Key features:

  • Archival search functionality: Users can browse the archives using the search bar.
  • Category-based content organization: Categorize content in different topics for easy navigation.
  • Editorial and opinion sections: Dedicated editorial and opinion sections to add authenticity.
  • Multimedia integration: Add images, videos, and audio to your articles.
  • Subscription and paywall features: Monetize by selling exclusive access to special content.

Verdict

News Portal is ideal for building subscription-based membership sites. You can limit access to specific content to paid subscribers only. Its live chat support, which responds within minutes, makes News Portal a good option for beginners who need help working with their website.

7. TheGem

TheGem stats:

  • Rating: 4.8/5
  • Active installations: 79,000+
  • Best features: Fully animated, dynamic content, Elementor compatibility with 30+ unique content elements, and multi-author support.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $59/license.

TheGem is perfect for a technology news blog because of its modern design and fast loading times. It also offers over 400 pre-made templates you can mix and match with Elementor starter sites to make a stylish and organized website that looks good on all devices.

You can do a lot with TheGem to make your site interactive, such as moving elements when readers scroll or adding hover-over effects to show article snippets to readers.

Want to optimize your site for personalized experiences? TheGem lets you create dynamic content based on users’ past interactions and preferences. Or maybe you want to keep users hooked to your site? You can add animations and effects to every website element.

Key features:

  • Custom widgets and sidebars: Add elements like recent posts, ads, or social media feeds.
  • Customizable typography and colors: Choose font and colors that reflect your brand.
  • Premium sliders: Includes Slider Revolution and LayerSlider to create eye-catching slideshows.
  • SEO friendly: Clean code and compatibility with SEO plugins like Yoast.
  • One-click demo import: Import over 200 pre-made templates in one click with Elementor.

Verdict

TheGem offers notable features like animation and dynamic content to deliver engaging user experiences that keep readers on your site longer.

8. ColorMag

ColorMag stats:

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Active installations: 60,000+
  • Best features: Multiple ad spaces, WooCommerce compatibility, many widget areas, advanced typography, and page builder compatibility.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $55/year. You can also pay $199 one time to use the theme for life.

ColorMag is a beautiful magazine theme with multiple ad spaces and widget areas to optimize your site for better revenue generation. It also integrates with WooCommerce, which is perfect if you want to earn money by selling products.

You get sidebars on both sides to add widgets like newsletter subscription forms, social media follow buttons, and RSS feeds. What’s even better is that you can place ads in the header, footer, or sidebar, which helps prevent interrupting the reading experience.

Key features:

  • Sticky header: Help users navigate your site faster with a sticky header that is always visible and accessible.
  • Translation-ready and RTL support: Supports WPML and right-to-left (RTL) languages to ensure accessibility for a global audience.
  • Multiple post layouts: Grid, list, and full-width post layouts for better flexibility.
  • Custom widgets for news: Sort news into recent, popular, and other categories.
  • Advertisement-ready widgets: Built-in ad spaces within the layout to earn revenue.

Verdict

ColorMag is ideal for monetizing your site with ads. It includes multiple built-in ad spaces, such as the sidebar, header, and footer, to ensure your site earns revenue without annoying readers with inline ads.

9. Digiqole

Digiqole stats:

  • Rating: 4.6/5
  • Active installations: 3,000+
  • Best features: News slider widget, dark mode, AMP compatibility, infinite scroll, Elementor compatibility with 20+ unique Digiqole content widgets.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $59/license.

If you’re looking for a classic newspaper layout similar to The New York Times, Digiqole is perfect. It also allows you to place ads between widgets and create a membership site to sell premium content.

Digiqole provides an app-like reading experience that loads within two seconds on mobile.

The mobile reading experience is simple with AMP mode, and it also lets users turn on dark mode whenever they want. It’s also RTL-ready, which makes it accessible to a global audience.

Key features:

  • Advanced search functionality: Multiple search options to allow readers to find articles.
  • Social share integration: Built-in social media sharing buttons to help promote articles.
  • Review and rating system: You can attach reviews and ratings for product-related articles.
  • Video post format: Embed videos seamlessly into news articles to increase page time.
  • News carousel: Showcase featured news or specific categories in a rotating banner.

Verdict:

Digiqole offers a classic newspaper look, which makes it perfect for a literal newspaper website. The theme also supports monetization using ads, WooCommerce, and subscriptions.

10. TheFox

TheFox stats:

  • Rating: 4.8/5
  • Active installations: 5,000+
  • Best features: Live customizer with drag-and-drop functionality, header builder, multiple single post layouts, and co-author support.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $59/license.

TheFox is a great choice for newspapers because of its Dynamic Featured Area, which lets you showcase important stories, breaking news, or featured articles right on the homepage.

It also offers different layout options, making it easy to highlight top stories to grab readers’ attention.

Using WordPress Customizer, you can change the theme’s colors, fonts, and layouts to fit your brand’s style. It lets you drag and drop elements, modify header and footer sections, and allow users to turn Dark mode on or off.

Key features:

  • Custom post types: Create custom post types for interviews, opinion pieces, and editorials.
  • Pagination and infinite scroll: Choose between pagination or endless scroll for your articles.
  • Author bio section: Display author bios at the end of articles with links to their other work.
  • Comment system: Engage readers to interact with posts via comments.
  • News carousel or slider: Add a news carousel or slider to showcase top stories or trending articles.

Verdict

Choose TheFox if you don’t want to design your site with a separate page builder like Elementor. Its built-in customization features are more than enough to create a unique site without bloating WordPress with page builder plugins.

11. Swyft

Swyft stats:

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Active installations: 800+
  • Best features: PageSpeed-optimized, edit and view changes live, multiple featured post layouts, and a SmartMode toggle button for dark mode.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $69/license.

Swyft is a performance-optimized theme designed with clean, lightweight code and advanced caching to help your pages load faster.

The Gadgets theme demo is perfect for tech magazines, and you can install it using the one-click import. You can also choose from the many post blocks, featured images, and layouts to display your content in various ways.

Plus, it offers over 800 Google fonts and unique color options, giving you plenty to customize your site’s look.

Key features:

  • Lazy loading: Speed up your website by only loading images when users view the area.
  • Global sections: Create sections that can be reused across different pages and posts.
  • AJAX search: Provides an AJAX-powered search feature for faster and more dynamic search results.
  • Mega menu: Create complex menus with images, icons, and multiple columns.
  • Dynamic color schemes: Easy customization and switching between multiple color schemes.

Verdict

If your priorities are optimized performance and faster load times, then Swyft is a great option. Its clean code, advanced caching system, and automatic image lazy loading make your website load quicker for a better user experience.

12. Newspaperss

Newspaperss stats:

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Active installations: 2,000+
  • Best features: Left and right sidebars, multiple post layouts, ad placeholders in headers, pop-up search functionality, and 24-hour support response time.
  • Price: Freemium, starting at $49/year.

Newspaperss is a good choice for a news site because it’s fast, compatible with most browsers, and mobile-responsive.

The theme offers many fonts and colors, so you can create a look that matches your brand. It strikes a great balance between visual appeal and performance.

Newspaperss also has different layout options for displaying posts – Grid, List, or Masonry layouts, so you decide how your content is shown. You also get to choose from several header styles to style your site further.

Key features:

  • Built-in review system: You can add reviews with ratings for more content authenticity.
  • Translation ready: Ready for translation with PO and MO files.
  • Sticky navigation: Menus remain visible for easy access while scrolling.
  • Parallax scrolling: Moves page elements at a different speed than the background for enhanced visual appeal.
  • Gallery and video support: Create image galleries and embed videos.

Verdict

Newspaperss offers decent features with a 24-hour service response time, which makes it a great option for beginners who may need support with theme customization.

13. NewsMarks

NewsMarks stats:

  • Active installations: 100+
  • Best features: WooCommerce support, Elementor compatibility, dark mode, advanced typography, and various styling options.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $59/year. You can also pay $99 one time to get NewsMarks for life.

NewsMarks is built to be fast, so your website will load quickly for a smooth user experience. NewsMarks Pro lets you customize your site’s branding, including logos and colors, within the WordPress Customizer without needing any coding skills.

NewsMarks Pro also offers many advanced features, like branding customization, WooCommerce support, and left and right sidebars with an option to display and hide both. Choose from six header layouts and use a sticky header to help readers easily navigate through your site.

It also includes features like displaying the date and time, weather forecast, and a scrolling news ticker.

Key features:

  • Social sharing integration: Built-in social media sharing buttons for easy content promotion.
  • Sticky header: Add a sticky header that stays in place while scrolling down the page.
  • Customizable footer: Multiple footer layout options with widgets and social links.
  • Dark mode: Option to switch the site to a dark theme to improve nighttime reading.
  • Newsletter integration: Built-in support for newsletter signups and integration with email marketing services like Mailchimp.

Verdict

NewsMarks is compatible with most WordPress plugins, which is great for adding more functionality to your site. For example, by installing the PublishPress Series plugin, you can convert your blogs into series for increased page time.

14. JNews

JNews stats:

  • Rating: 4.8/5
  • Active installations: 25,000+
  • Best features: AMP support, pay writer system, built-in like and dislike buttons, paywall, multiple sidebars, featured posts, and single post layouts.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $59/license.

JNews is an excellent choice for creating a newspaper website because of its easy-to-use built-in visual editor. You don’t need to use a third-party page builder like Elementor to design your site.

It includes several handy features that can make your site more engaging. It supports video stories, a custom gallery, and a review system.

The theme also offers social login for easy access, built-in like and dislike buttons, and video embedding. They all help boost user interaction on your site.

Another notable feature is Pay Writer. It helps you manage writers’ payments, which is great if you work with multiple writers on your website.

Key features:

  • Video and gallery support: Embed videos or create photo galleries within your posts and pages.
  • Schema markup: Improve SEO with built-in schema markup to help search bots analyze your content.
  • Custom sidebars: Create and assign different sidebars for different pages or posts.
  • Lightbox and popup builder: Create popups or lightboxes for special promotions or announcements.
  • Custom CSS: Add custom CSS for more advanced styling and design tweaks.

Verdict

JNews is a perfect newspaper theme if you’re looking for advanced functionality without installing too many plugins. It includes impressive built-in features like a review system, a like/dislike button, and video embedding.

15. The Voux

The Voux stats:

  • Rating: 4.3/5
  • Active installations: 8,000+
  • Best features: Shop the Post for affiliate links, Lightbox Gallery layouts, video monetization, and WooCommerce support with custom page layouts.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $99/license.

If you’re looking for a more feminine look, The Voux is a great theme with many elegant magazine templates.

It’s also integrated with WooCommerce. It comes with WooCommerce pages and the Save the Post feature to help you set up your online shop.

The best thing is that you can monetize videos and images with product links. Simply highlight hotspots and add links to WooCommerce products so users can easily find product listings.

You can also add banner ads above the header, enable infinite scrolling, and publish sponsor articles. Choose from six single-article layouts and nine unique header styles.

Key features:

  • Lazy loading images: Improve page load times by loading images as they appear.
  • Advanced theme options panel: A robust options panel for customizing the theme’s appearance.
  • Lightbox image gallery: Integrated lightbox that allows images to be displayed in an elegant, full-screen view.
  • Custom widgets: Includes custom widgets for social media feeds, as well as recent and popular posts.
  • AJAX navigation: Provides smooth, asynchronous page transitions and navigation.

Verdict

The Voux offers a minimal look and various monetization options, making it an excellent newspaper theme for earning ad revenue and starting an online store.

16. Color MagazineX

Color MagazineX stats:

  • Active installations: 500+
  • Best features: Primary and secondary category color options, Elementor support, mobile-friendly, and a pre-loader that appears when site pages are loading.
  • Price: Freemium, with premium plans starting at $60/year.

The Color MagazineX theme is a good option if you’re looking for a freemium magazine-style theme. Even on its free version, it provides good speed and essential features.

It’s designed to load quickly, has various magazine layouts, and is compatible with Elementor for easy customization.

If you need advanced features, the Pro version of Color MagazineX has a lot to offer. You will get 14 header layouts, over 600 Google Fonts, various typography options, animations, a custom 404 page, and footer background and banner options to style your site.

The paid version also works well with WooCommerce to set up an online shop.

Key features:

  • Typography options: Select options from Google Fonts and adjust the font size, line heights, and weights.
  • Editable footer widgets: Multiple footer widget areas with options to adjust columns and content.
  • Social media integration: Built-in support for social media icons with links, colors, and hover effects.
  • Customizable breadcrumbs: Enable or remove breadcrumbs and adjust their styling and placement.
  • Unique 404 page: Create a unique 404 error page with custom content, images, and links.

Verdict

Color MagazineX has essential features a newspaper theme should have, including header and footer options. You can also place ads, newsletter forms, social media links, and post links in footers, which is great for navigation.

17. Prime News

Prime News stats:

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Active installations: 150,000+
  • Best features: Carousel slider widget, featured widget categories, homepage widget areas, header bar, and video section on the homepage.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $69/year.

Prime News is a flexible newspaper theme by WPZOOM that works well with Elementor. It makes it easy to design your site without coding.

Its Visual Customizer lets you customize your site’s branding using five different color schemes. The easy-to-use Theme Options Panel makes adjustments simple, and the Video Section allows video integration.

The theme is fully responsive and retina-ready, so your site will look great on any device.

Key features:

  • Header banner: Display news clips, headlines, or breaking news above the header.
  • Customizable footer layouts: Adjust footer widgets, modify the copyright notice, and include additional links.
  • Custom backgrounds: Upload background images or select from preset patterns and colors.
  • Various post formats: Use post your preferred post format, which includes standard, gallery, video, audio, and quote.
  • Translation-ready: Translate your site using plugins like WPML to make it readable for global readers.

Verdict

Prime News includes a header banner, which is great for highlighting breaking news and attracting readers’ attention. You can also monetize the banner and earn revenue.

18. NewStar

NewStar stats:

  • Rating: 4.2/5
  • Active installations: 660+
  • Best features: AI content generator, Article Teaser to launch articles on the homepage, custom headers and footers, and a child theme.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $69/license.

NewStar offers many beautiful templates designed specifically for online magazines. Its AI content generator helps you create catchy titles, brainstorm new content ideas, and even write articles, making content creation easier and faster.

Newstar is easy to customize. It lets you choose from different icon sets and header layouts, including sticky headers.

The theme supports full-width and boxed layouts for blogs and portfolios, and you can add left or right sidebars.

Key features:

  • Category templates: Customizable category templates with different layout options.
  • Review system: Add user ratings and reviews on articles.
  • No-code builder: Easy no-code customization with Elementor.
  • Social sharing integration: Built-in social sharing buttons for article promotion.
  • Sticky sidebar: Option to enable sidebars that stay visible as users scroll.

Verdict

NewStar is an excellent choice for busy sites because of its AI content generator. It helps you write content faster, which is crucial for newspaper sites that publish a lot of content daily.

19. Disto

Disto stats:

  • Rating: 4.4/5
  • Active installations: 1,100+
  • Best features: Pre-built online shop pages, various category layout styles, unlimited sidebars, 100+ homepage layout combinations, and lightbox image galleries.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $39/license.

Disto is a user-friendly WordPress theme with over 100 homepage layout combinations, giving you plenty of options to create the perfect look using the WordPress Customizer.

Disto offers unlimited color choices, multiple sidebar menus, and options for AJAX post loading.

You can customize the typography with over 800 Google Fonts, upload video or image backgrounds, and add sliders in the sidebar.

Key features:

  • Infinite scroll: Supports infinite scroll for increased interaction.
  • Add contact form: Compatible with Contact Form 7 for easy form management.
  • Email marketing: Works seamlessly with Mailchimp for email marketing automation.
  • Customizable page layouts: Includes customizable page layouts for better design flexibility.
  • Social media integration: Add social media sharing options to get more exposure for your website.

Verdict

Disto integrates with popular WordPress plugins like Contact Form 7 and Mailchimp – the perfect combination for turning your site into a lead-generating machine.

20. Atlas

Atlas stats:

  • Rating: 4.8/5
  • Active installations: 800+
  • Best features: 30+ content layouts, date and time, RTL support, AJAX mega menu, live search results, and dark mode.
  • Price: Premium, starting at $35/license.

Atlas has a mobile-friendly design that gives your newspaper website a modern app-like appearance.

It features web story widgets, over 30 unique content layouts, and custom colors that make your site more engaging and visually appealing. This theme is perfect for creating a standout news website.

Atlas also includes helpful features like image lazy loading, dark and light skins with customizable colors, and a sticky sidebar and header for easy navigation.

It’s simple and lightweight but packs useful features, including five article layouts, infinite scrolling, social sharing buttons, and a reading progress bar.

Plus, Atlas is ready for rich snippets and OpenGraph – both enhance your content’s visibility and presentation on search engines and social media.

Key features:

  • Free lifetime updates: No need to pay extra to keep the theme up-to-date.
  • Fully compatible with WooCommerce: Start an online shop with WooCommerce integration.
  • Grid and Masonry blog layout: Choose between grid and masonry layouts for the blog.
  • SVG logo and icons: Upload SVG logos and icons to create a consistent brand.
  • Google fonts support: Choose your fonts from hundreds of Google fonts.

Verdict

Atlas is an ideal newspaper theme for creating a modern and simplified user experience. With its mobile responsive features and AMP compatibility, it loads quickly on any device and provides an excellent user experience.

Benefits of using a newspaper theme

You could use any paid or free WordPress theme to create a newspaper site, but you have the upper hand with a newspaper-specific theme.

Here are some of the reasons why:

Customizable layouts and design

A newspaper has many headlines, links, and images, which, if not organized well, can easily become overwhelming. Newspaper WordPress themes include newspaper-specific layouts designed with readers in mind.

These layouts help you arrange headlines, articles, images, and videos in an organized and visually appealing way. This flexibility helps you create a unique and professional look for your site while effectively sharing a lot of content.

Responsive and mobile-friendly

Newspaper readers want to get access to the latest information quickly. That’s why newspaper WordPress themes are designed to be fully responsive to make sure that your website looks and performs well on all devices, including smartphones and tablets.

SEO and performance optimization

An SEO and performance-optimized news site is crucial for attracting more visitors and providing a smooth browsing experience. Newspaper WordPress themes are often optimized for search engines and speed.

Astra, for instance, comes with built-in Schema markup, AMP compatibility, and optimized coding to help improve your site’s visibility and loading times.

Built-in monetization options

Many newspaper themes feature ad spaces, affiliate links, and advanced monetization tactics, giving you the tools to get improved conversion rates.

For example, The Voux includes video and image monetization features. This makes generating revenue from your content easier without extra tools.

Conclusion

Your newspaper website needs a fast, responsive, and attractive WordPress theme that encourages readers to check out more pages.

  • If you have a limited budget, Astra is an excellent choice. It offers great flexibility and speed, with an option to upgrade whenever you’re ready.
  • If you’re focused on monetization, The Voux provides conversion-optimized ad placement slots for inline content, videos, images, and affiliate marketing.
  • If optimized performance is your priority, Swyft ensures quick loading times and a seamless user experience, with PageSpeed Insights scores of 99 for desktop and 98 for mobile sites.

Whichever WordPress theme you install, make sure it offers many newspaper demos, is easy to customize, and offers good-quality support. If you plan to use the theme for the long term, you will have queries down the line, even if you’re tech-savvy.

WordPress newspaper themes FAQ

Do I have to use a WordPress newspaper theme?

No, you don’t have to use a WordPress newspaper theme, but it’s a good idea to do so. WordPress newspaper themes are optimized for news content with easy article management and reader-friendly layouts. 

Are WordPress newspaper themes free?

Some WordPress newspaper themes, like Astra, have a free version that can be sufficient for simple news sites. However, premium themes usually provide more advanced features, better support, and customization options, which might be necessary for a more complex news website.

Can I use WordPress to build a news website?

Absolutely! The WordPress content management system (CMS) is perfect for building news websites due to its flexibility, ease of use, and huge collection of themes and plugins. It also supports various content types, making it ideal for publishing articles, managing multimedia, and organizing news content efficiently.

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Ekta Swarnkar

Ekta Swarnkar is a content writer and strategist for B2B SaaS and marketing brands. She's helped various companies grow their visibility, authority, and revenue with long-form, actionable content. Connect with her on LinkedIn.