Skip to content

15+ Best News WordPress Themes for 2016

When it comes to creating a news website that stands out and is easily readable, using optimized news WordPress themes is a must.

But why do you specifically need a news WordPress theme? Can’t you just use any WordPress theme?

From a technical standpoint, yes, you could install any theme you want, but that makes about as much sense as going to a heart surgeon to fix a cavity in your tooth. Sure, your tooth might need some kind of surgery, and the heart surgeon does do surgery, but it’s not exactly the kind you need.

Best News WordPress Themes.

The same idea applies when it comes to choosing a theme for your news website. You don’t need just any theme. You need an optimized news WordPress theme – and that’s exactly what we’re going to give you in this post!

We’ve compiled a list of the best news WordPress themes on the market. Truth be told, you can’t go wrong with any of these, but read through the list yourself and take one for a spin when you’re ready.

Best news WordPress themes to check out in 2016

Neve

Neve

It’s often been said that you can’t please everybody, but whoever said that, hasn’t met Neve. Beginners building their first news site love Neve for its ease of use and compatibility with popular website builders, while seasoned web developers appreciate it for its full gauntlet of features, fast performance, reliable code, and consistent updates. With its mobile-first approach, Neve can really make your news website shine.

Features:

  • Lighting fast (can load in less than one second)
  • Simple to set up and easy to use
  • Seamlessly integrates with all popular page builders
  • Extremely lightweight (Google will love you)
  • Customizable header and footer
  • Quality code and full support
  • Reliable updates
  • Over 100 ready-to-import starter sites
Get It Here Demo Price: $0 🦜
Trendy News WordPress Theme

Trendy News

With a few thousand active installations under its belt, Trendy News is making a name for itself in the WordPress news theme space. Besides the obvious fact that it was designed with one purpose in mind – which happens to be the purpose you need it for – it also comes with a host of useful features. While the Pro version of this news theme is certainly impressive, the free version holds its weight comfortably, and offers enough to launch a successful news website.

  • Three pre-built news sites; seven in the Pro version
  • One click import of the above, so you can quickly get started
  • Pick specific posts to be featured that you want readers to read
  • Feature news based on time periods (last week, month, year)
  • Readers can find previously published news with the search bar
  • Ticker news feature provides a true news channel aesthetic
  • Comes with menu hover effect, sticky sidebar, and sticky header
  • GDPR compliant
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
Mission News

Mission News

Mission News is on a mission, and that mission is to help people like you build a news website that will be seen and heard. This theme’s premium-quality design will add credibility to your every word and is inspired by classic news sites you’re probably already familiar with. Did we mention it’s fully compatible with the block editor and other popular page builders?

Features:

  • Packaged with clean layouts to put all the attention on your content
  • Built responsive so your news site will look great on laptops, tablets, and phones
  • Battle-tested to look amazing on real websites, not just the demo version
  • Coded following WordPress best practices and has passed manual code reviews
  • Actively maintained and always updated before every major WordPress release
  • Same-day support from the developers who make the theme
  • Tons of tutorials with step-by-step instructions in the Mission News Support Center
  • Plays well with page builders like Elementor and ecommerce plugins like WooCommerce
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
GeneratePress

GeneratePress

Do you want your news website to generate success? Well then look no further than GeneratePress. With an extensive library of pre-made, professionally designed websites that can be activated within minutes, you can simply swap in your own photos and text, and your news site will be generated in record time. GeneratePress is sure to leave you impressed.

Features:

  • Lightweight and built with a focus on speed + usability
  • Fully responsive and uses valid HTML/CSS
  • Compatible with all well-coded plugins, including WooCommerce
  • Compatible with all major page builders, including Beaver Builder + Elementor
  • Over 60 color control options
  • Five navigation locations and five sidebar layouts
  • Dropdown menus (click or hover) and nine widget areas
  • Availability in over 25 languages
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
ColorMag

ColorMag

ColorMag is tailor-made for developing any kind of news website. It comes with over 25 pre-made website templates, so you can start faster than the flip of a page. For the more creative types, it’s also compatible with numerous page builders, which means you’re free to tap into your artistic genius. Build a news website from scratch without touching a line of code.

Features:

  • Compatible with the block editor, Beaver Builder, Brizy, Elementor, and SiteOrigin
  • Tested and proven to render a consistent visitor experience across all major web browsers
  • Optimized for SEO
  • Built with speed in mind and has shown in testing to load in less than one second
  • Multiple widget areas and the ability to create custom widgets
  • Color and font choices under your control
  • Option to integrate with WooCommerce, so you can also sell things if you want to
  • Forum, chat and support tickets available for assistance if you need help
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
Customify

Customify

As its name implies, Customify is a theme that was made to bend to your will. Openly advertising itself as “the most customizable WordPress theme on the market,” it has a lot of flexibility as you’d expect, but the advantages don’t stop there. It’s also compatible with all the popular page builders, optimized for speed and SEO, and offers email support if you need help while building your news website.

Features:

  • Dozens of available pre-made sites ready to import
  • Edit and see the changes in real-time with the built-in visual editor
  • Elementor, Brizy, BeaverBuilder, ThriveArchitect, and other page builder integration also available
  • High-level of customization including unlimited typography settings
  • Create a header or footer exactly the way you want it to be displayed
  • Plus a unique header specifically for mobile devices
  • Responsive edit modes to customize how you want a page to look on desktop, tablet, and mobile
  • Pro version offers even more, including infinity scroll and mega menu for large sites
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
Zakra

Zakra

Zakra’s tagline is “the only theme you’ll ever need.” That’s a bold statement, but Zakra backs it up with a host of features and close to 100 pre-made starter templates. You probably won’t even get through all of them before you find one that will fit your future news website. You will also love Zakra for its ease of use, where custom coding is welcome, but completely optional.

Features:

  • User support for both free and pro versions of Zakra
  • Optimized for speed to keep site loading time to a minimum
  • SEO-optimized and works with major SEO plugins
  • Compatible with the block editor and Elementor site builder
  • Tested with all major browsers to ensure a consistently clean aesthetic look
  • Widget areas are available on important areas of the theme from header to footer
  • Translation-ready so that any hardcoded English text can be translated to another language
  • Option to use custom CSS to tweak the look and the design of the theme
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
Blocksy

Blocksy

If you’re a WordPress beginner and feel intimidated at the thought of building your own news website, then Blocksy’s tagline will speak to your soul: “Build your next web project visually in minutes, without coding skills.” Blocksy doesn’t only make you feel at ease, but also offers plenty of features for both beginners and seasoned WordPress users to get excited about. Check them out below.

Features:

  • Built to work with popular WordPress page builders like Elementor, Brizy, and BeaverBuilder
  • Hyper-intuitive options to customize and change every part of your website in real-time
  • Ability to manage and access color and background options where and when you need them
  • Freedom to change the typography in each part of your website – globally or locally
  • Five types of modern and clean archive layouts for your blog posts
  • SEO ready right from the first line of code
  • Modern page hero/title sections with parallax effects and more
  • Related posts section to reduce the bounce rate by displaying more recommended content
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
Kadence

Kadence

Kadence is a theme with a lot to offer for anyone looking to build a news website. Right off the bat, there is an extensive library of no-code-required, ready-to-use starter site templates. You can import one of these, swap out some text and photos, and have your news site live in no time. If you’d rather march to the beat of your own cadence, you can do that too. Kadence is compatible with many popular page builder plug-ins, including Elementor, and Beaver Builder. See more features below.

Features:

  • Header & footer builder with an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface
  • Global color palette so you can change colors site wide with a few mouse clicks
  • Global typography with any Google font or web-safe font applied to your whole site
  • Global button settings to create the perfect button style that will apply to buttons across your site
  • Built-in breadcrumb generator to enable breadcrumbs and keep visitors on your site longer
  • Social icons for your header and footer so you can connect your site with your community
  • Fully responsive from tiny screens to large monitors and you can customize to your liking
  • Built with the best SEO Practices for markup and schema where needed
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
PopularFX

PopularFX

PopularFX is simple, but powerful enough to help you build a quality news website. It uses Pagelayer, which is a drag-and-drop page builder that makes it easy for even the most beginner WordPress user to create a website quickly. With visual editing, every change you make appears right in front of you in real-time. This way you know exactly what you are getting without having to use code.

Features:

  • Lightweight and provides great performance
  • Includes hundreds of pre-made templates to build your dream website fast
  • Fully responsive layout so it will fit your desktop screen all the way down to your smartphone
  • Translation-Ready” and RTL language support, so you can use whatever language is best for you
  • Choose your width layout with left sidebar, right sidebar, or full width (no sidebar)
  • Customize various aspects of your news site, including the background, logo, and menu
  • Use threaded comments to organize conversations with your visitors
  • Beautify your page headings and titles with a variety of typography options
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
Phlox

Phlox

There are many themes in the WordPress landscape that offer pre-built templates to give you a quick start on building a website. Phlox is no exception, but in a way, it is an exception, in that it offers an exceptional quantity, that’s matched only by each template’s exceptional quality. Spend a few minutes browsing through the more than 190 demo themes and it’s virtually impossible that you won’t find something to fit the vision you have for your news site. If you still want more, check out the features below.

Features:

  • Build your site to your specifications using the Elementor page builder
  • Comes with over 30 exclusive widgets to augment the functionality of your site
  • Change the theme options and see the result in real-time
  • Built to be an out-of-the box responsive website solution, designed to work on any screen size
  • Choose gallery layout style using either the Grid or the Masonry layout
  • Highlight your posts with a unique touch and respond slider
  • Turn your news site into an online store with WooCommerce integration
  • Variety of additional customization options to let you customize any part of your website with ease
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
Astra

Astra

Ad astra” is a Latin phrase meaning “to the stars,” and with the type of numbers this WordPress theme has put up on the board, “to the stars” is fitting. With over a million active installations on the internet, it’s no wonder that the official Astra page braggadociously bills itself as the most popular theme of all time. If you want your news website to reach the moon, Astra might be just the theme to get you there.

Features:

  • Lightweight theme with excellent performance based on test results
  • Pixel perfect website demos available in the Astra library to reduce web design time
  • WordPress Customizer so you can customize your news site without relying on code
  • Seamless integration with Elementor, BeaverBuilder, Yoast, LearnDash, and other popular tools
  • Ability to turn off the page title and sidebar to create full-width pages with design freedom
  • Several header layout options built-in (Pro version has even more)
  • Full control over width, content and even the meta of blog posts & archive pages
  • Brand continuity through global color and font settings to maintain a consistent look
Get It Here Demo Price: $0
X

X The Theme

X marks the spot, and if your spot is a fast, responsive news site that’s been built to your exact specifications, then X is the theme to get you there. It’s an intuitive, beginner-friendly theme with no coding required. With the in-house Cornerstone page-builder, you’ll be able to “build in the browser” so what you’ll see is what you’ll get. However, for those of you who do prefer to play with code, you’ll also have access to the custom code feature, which will allow you to see your tweaks in real time.

Features:

  • Over a decade of updates and continuous improvements by the team behind the theme
  • Comes with a unique slider element to build everything from testimonials to pricing tables
  • Advanced responsive settings to set breakpoints for when to display each version of your site
  • Custom font uploader to allow you to use whatever fonts you’d like
  • Global blocks for items that you plan to use multiple times throughout your site
  • Includes 30 additional premium plugins
  • Free updates for the theme and the extensions
  • Role manager to limit users’ access to specific components of your site
  • Undo and redo features so if you make a mistake, you can easily rewind it back
  • Toggle between a vertical, horizontal, docked, undocked, big or small workspace setup
  • A simple mode option to display only the most essential elements to help you focus
  • WooCommerce integration and four unique shop designs are also included if you want to sell

Pricing:

  • $79 for a regular license
  • $2,900 for an extended license
Get It Here Demo
Ultra

Ultra

Going beyond others or beyond due limit. That is the dictionary definition of ultra, and the Ultra theme lives up to the definition in every way. The developers at Themify went above and beyond to give you a theme that includes design skins, pre-made demo sites, responsive layouts, slider backgrounds, video backgrounds, parallax scrolling, custom styling, animations, and more. Check out a partial list of some additional features below and get excited about building your news site. It’s gonna be ultra!

Features:

  • One-click demo setups containing pre-built settings, content, menus, widgets, etc
  • Unlimited layouts using the drag-and-drop builder, responsive options, animations, etc
  • Parallax scrolling, custom styling, and animations are all at your disposal
  • Site-wide or page-specific customizations are made with ease
  • 15 header styles, including both the no-header option and the sticky-header option
  • Six header background choices ranging from image, video, slider, transparent, or color-based
  • Six footer layout choices let you toggle visibility of the footer logo, menu, widget, and credit text
  • Single post layouts have a default setting, with four additional unique layouts to pick from
  • Beautiful typography, a few pre-sets, and the option to upload over 600+ Google Fonts
  • Full section scrolling feature allows visitors to view your page one row at a time like a slideshow
  • Mega menu allows you to show recent posts, multi-column drop-downs, and even add widgets
  • Easily display a coming soon page on the front-end of your site while you craft your masterpiece

Pricing:

  • $59 one-time fee for the standard purchase, which includes a 30-day money back guarantee plus one year of support and updates
  • $69 for the developer option
  • $89 for the master club option
Get It Here Demo
Avada

Avada

If someone told you there is a theme out there that can do it all, you might react with skepticism at first. Well, get ready to have your skepticism tested, because Avada truly leaves no stone unturned. It comes loaded up with every feature you’ve ever thought of and probably many that you didn’t even know were possible. Stack those features on top of an ultra user-friendly interface, and you can design your new news site without typing a single line of code.

Features:

  • Intuitive front-end design and editing tools will allow you to quickly create a beautiful website
  • Easy-to-use builder for every aspect of your site – header, footer, layout, and even for forms
  • Dozens of professionally designed demos that can be imported fast with the click of a button
  • Always compatible with the latest WordPress versions and third party integrated plugins
  • 100% SEO optimized and perfectly compatible with plugins like Yoast SEO
  • JavaScript files are automatically combined and minified for added performance
  • Adherence to strict WordPress and PHP coding standards
  • Cross-browser compatibility with FireFox, Safari, Chrome, IE9, IE10, and IE11
  • 100% fluid and responsive across all device types – from mobile through desktop to tablets
  • Built-in performance wizard to analyze your news site from every angle prior to launching
  • Over 550 help files and 200 tutorial videos to make building your website with Avada even easier
  • Six months of free support are included, with an option to upgrade to 12 months (at additional cost)

Pricing:

  • $69 for a regular license
  • $2,950 for an extended license
Get It Here Demo

Final thoughts on these news WordPress themes

When we compiled this list of the best news WordPress themes for you to choose from, there were a few key considerations we had in mind.

The first was to ensure that each theme would be capable of prioritizing your content. It’s crucial that your readers are able to find and engage with the information they are looking for in a frictionless way. Each one also needed to be functional, easy to navigate, and optimized for readability.

Another important factor we considered was the visual design of the themes. While some could be modified to be overly flashy – which is what you don’t want with a news website – they are all capable of producing a professional looking, clean site. Furthermore, the news WordPress themes we featured here are responsive and mobile-friendly. More and more readers are accessing news websites on their mobile devices so you need to meet them where they are.

Finally, we tried our best to choose news WordPress themes that are well-supported and regularly updated. This helps ensure that any bugs or security issues that might come up will be addressed, and that the theme remains compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

In conclusion, as we said at the beginning, you really can’t go wrong with any of these news WordPress themes. If we were building a news website, we’d probably choose Neve, but of course the decision is yours. Drop us a comment if you end up using any one of these and let us know how it goes. We’d love to hear from you.

Don’t forget to join our crash course on speeding up your WordPress site. Learn more below:

 

* 🦜 themes developed by our sister company, Themeisle

* This list of news WordPress themes contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the links and you choose to purchase the premium version of a theme, we’ll receive a small commission. No worries though, you’ll still pay the standard amount so there’s no additional cost to you.

Yay! 🎉 You made it to the end of the article!
Martin Dubovic
Share:

1 Comment
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
WpHound
February 16, 2018 2:59 pm

much obliged to you for an extraordinary educational blog. It’s gratitude to individuals like you that assistance beginners like me Much valued.

Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals. Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (it’s free)!

1
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x