Newspaper WordPress Magazine Theme Review

Social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp can make any interesting content viral. However, the format of viral content is very important for easy readable, especially on the mobile. The need of socially sharable viral content created a big scope for magazine style themes in WordPress. These themes can help you to create different styles of content and allow users to read with ease.

Related: Highend WordPress theme review.

Newspaper WordPress Magazine Theme

There are hundreds of magazine style themes available for WordPress. This is comparatively higher than any other type of themes. You can easily find a good magazine theme from WordPress repository for free. However, Newspaper magazine theme stands out from the crowd with the following reasons.

• Almost 80K sales in themeforest.
• First published 6 years back and updated continuously.
• Around 6K user rating with average rating of 4.85.
• Quality award from envato marketplace.
• 50+ demo templates.
• Show page view counts and social counter.
• Good customer support.

Installing and Activating Newspaper Theme

You can purchase the theme from themeforest marketplace for the price of $59. The price includes lifetime free updates and free six months of support. Additional support will cost of $17.63 for one year.

After purchasing the theme, install it on your WordPress site similar to any other WordPress theme. You need to activate the theme using the purchase code from themeforest.

In addition to purchase code verification, you should also create an account with the forum site of the developer’s. We don’t understand why this step should be mandatory part of verification for commercially purchased theme.

Unfortunately Newspaper theme does not offer automatic updates. The updating process is manual:

• Deactivate the current version and activate different theme.
• Download the latest version from themeforest.
• Delete the old Newspaper theme and upload the newer version on your site.

This is a surprising fact that a theme with 80K sales needs to be updated manually in this manner.

Related: Uncode WordPress theme review.

System Requirements

Newspaper theme needs additional requirements on the server side to function properly. You can go to “Newspaper > System Status” section and check all the requirements are compatible.

• Ensure to have maximum input variables limit as 2000 to save the theme panel settings.
• Increase the PHP memory limit as 128MB per request.
• Setup the maximum PHP execution time as 60 for installing demo content.

Bundled Plugins with Newspaper Theme

Similar to many commercial themes, Newspaper theme also comes with the following bundled plugins.

• tagDiv Composer – mandatory page builder plugin for creating pages.
• tagDiv Cloud Library – mandatory plugin to get predefined templates.
• tagDiv Social Counter – mandatory plugin for social counter.
• tagDiv Mobile Theme – optional, required for AMP
• AMP for WP – optional, required for AMP
• tagDiv Newsletter – optional plugin for creating newsletter subscription boxes.
• Revolution Slider – optional
• Visual Composer – optional

You can activate the required plugins after activating your theme or going to “Newspaper > Plugins” section. As you can see, most of these plugins are custom made by the developer. When your site grows in size, you may not be able to switch the theme easily due to these custom plugins integrated with Newspaper theme.

Installing Demo

After installing required plugins, go to “Install Demos” tab and choose the demo you like. Newspaper theme offers 50+ predefined demo content and you can preview the demo before installing. However, be careful when installing the demo content. You shouldn’t modify the demo content and use on your site. Otherwise, when you change or uninstall the demo, all the demo content will also be deleted. Hover over the demo style and uncheck “Include content” option to only import the styles without content.

Related: Discy WordPress theme review.

Cloud Library

Newsletter theme offers a Cloud Library to import predefined post, header, footer and other template. Go to “Cloud Template” menu and click on “Add New” button to get a new template.

You can view hundreds of predefined templates and import the needed ones for your site.

You can edit the imported template and customize as per your need. It is possible to add new elements and delete or rearrange the template elements to create a custom template. You can assign the custom template as your default post template in “Theme Panel”.

Though cloud templates are good it has some drawbacks. For example, the developer mention infinite scroll as a theme feature in the product page on themeforest. However, you need to create template and add the infinite scroll feature. This means it can’t be applied to all posts on theme level. If you apply the template with infinite scroll as a default template then other features like smart list will not work.   

Related: Disputo WordPress theme review.

Theme Panel

Here is the place you can setup individual elements of your site. It has exhaustive options for header, footer, ads, templates, blocks, mobile, analytics, etc. You can either use the default templates or assign the cloud template for header, footer, categories and posts.

In addition to template settings, you have the following feature in theme panel.

• Setup advertisements like Google AdSense.
• Insert custom codes like Google Analytics.
• Customize translations, fonts and colors.
• Customize blocks and backgrounds.
• Setup breadcrumbs, custom post types and social networks.

AMP Mobile Theme

One of the important features of Newspaper theme is the custom mobile theme. It seamlessly works with the official AMP plugin for WP. You can choose the required options under “Mobile Theme” in “Theme Panel”.

Creating Post and Pages

In order to have a magazine style page, you should create a page and use that static page as your front page. You can either use the tagDiv composer or use Gutenberg editor for creating content. You can create content with one of the post templates or choose reviews/smart list.

Getting Support

There are multiple ways to get support from the theme developer.

• For presales queries, you can use the comment section in themeforest.
• Raise your questions in the support forum.
• Refer the documentation and video tutorials.