“Magazeen”: Free Magazine-Look WordPress Theme
We love our readers. We respect the hard work of designers and developers across the globe. And we do our best to make the web design community stronger and the Web a little bit prettier. Therefore we ask talented artists and creative professionals to showcase their skills and release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community. And when designers agree, truly impressive works see the light of day.
Today we are glad to release Magazeen — a free advanced WordPress-theme in a magazine-llok created by the talented WeFunction Design Agency. This bold magazine 2-col-theme was designed with the main focus being on typography, grids and magazine-look. It was created especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Download the theme for free!
The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.
- live demo
- large preview (.jpg, 1.7 Mb)
- download the theme (.zip, 0.3 Mb)
- download the PSD-sources (.zip, 4.5 Mb)
- release post on WeFunction.com
Inspiration behind the design
As usual, here are some insights from the designers themselves:
“We’ve created the Magazeen theme to try and pump as much style and functionality into a WordPress theme to give people something they might not expect from their standard WordPress theme. There really is very few limits to what WordPress handle, so we’ve built in a lot of custom features and options to give people a little taste of what is possible, and how some small functionality tweaks can make a huge difference to the overall experience of browsing a blog. On top of that we’ve wrapped all that functionality up in a really cool and modern theme, with nice big title fonts, and a stylish colour scheme.
The Magazeen theme is packed full of cool features to really encourage your readers to explore new posts and similar items. The first thing you might notice is the jQuery image showcase at the top, which is fully automated and will display the image from the latest post, and the title above it without you having to do anything other than define the image URL in the custom field we have created which will appear on in your admin post area.
Drop-Down Menu
The other cool and fully automated feature is the related posts drop down effect. It’s a simple idea, if you click the category of the full posts a drop down will appear with some related posts from that category. And if you don’t see a post you like you can always view the full category by clicking view more.
Sidebar
The sidebar area’s have been created to give you a lot of control over the featured posts, and recent posts. Once you’ve installed the theme, you need to go to your Widgets area, and simply activate the “Magazeen Latest Posts”, and “Magazeen Featured Posts” widgets. You can easily control how many posts each feature displays, and using this widget will ensure the area is styled correctly with the post image showing correctly.”
Footer
Thank you, guys. We appreciate your great work, your attention to details and the brilliance of the execution.
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You may be interested in the following free WordPress-themes as well:
Richard Spencer Davies
February 24th, 2009 1:32 amVery very nice, best WP theme I have seen! Thanks.
Matthew
February 24th, 2009 1:42 amNice! Amazing theme.
officialstupid
February 24th, 2009 3:28 amgreat theme!!
Franz König
February 24th, 2009 4:47 amcool theme
idale
February 24th, 2009 5:26 amGreat theme design guys! I’m having a problem though. When I activate the theme, and browse to a post page, the sidebar and footer do not show.
???? what gives?
Raymand Martin
February 24th, 2009 5:58 amAmazing Freebie, Thanks!
Dainis Graveris
February 24th, 2009 6:03 amvery cool and modern-looking theme, I’ll study through and thanks for sharing! :)
Tyler
February 24th, 2009 6:15 amGreat theme!!! Absolutely love it!!!
gio
February 24th, 2009 6:27 amThx guys for this amazing Theme I love it and I’ve already use it, thx for sharing.
liam
February 24th, 2009 7:11 am@120 iDale: If you have no sidebar, or comments, or image previews please follow the following steps:
1. Make sure you Have defined the image URL for the thumbnail. When you create a new post you will see the box to paste the image URL, or when you go to edit post you will see it too.
2. Ensure you have enabled the Magazeen widgets in the Widgets section of WordPress. This will ensure the correct sidebar items are shown, and gives you more control over them.
3. If you have done all of the above and still have problems you need to upgrade your WordPress to 2.7.1 as there are issues with some versions.
Thanks, these should fix the problem. Cheers.
Patrik
February 24th, 2009 7:24 amTotally awesome! Amazing!
Mirco El-Nomany
February 24th, 2009 7:56 amOh cool, this theme is very nice ! Great Work man
Stellan
February 24th, 2009 7:59 amOMG. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. But it won’t even show in the admin section! What is the problem – I’ve never experienced this before.
liam
February 24th, 2009 8:06 am@Stellan – That sounds very strange, did you upload the theme to wp-content/themes/magazeen/ ?
Nino
February 24th, 2009 10:21 amBeautiful theme!
With your permission the reviews on my blog.
Thank you.
Srdjan
February 24th, 2009 10:27 amGreat theme…congrat for the amazing work!
One question…i have two issues…
1. somehow jscript is not working (i have 2.71. WP installed)
2. comments are not showing at all on the end of the post
thanks!
Permana Jayanta
February 24th, 2009 11:04 amI love this theme .. thanks smashingmagazine and wefunction …
Factoriatalio Design
February 24th, 2009 11:31 amGreat WordPress theme, thanks!!
Ethan
February 24th, 2009 11:39 am///////////////////////////////
For all those having problems with the thumbails (or any pictures at all displaying), you need to CHMOD the ‘cache’ directory in the Magazeen theme dirctory to make it writable, otherwise timthumb can’t create thumbnails.
//////////////////////////////
dark_angel_7
February 24th, 2009 12:29 pmExcellent theme and a real help for me as I was looking for something unique, fresh and modern. This fits that description! Well done to the designers and this site!
frank achon
February 24th, 2009 12:47 pmVery nice WP theme. Thank you.
Rui
February 24th, 2009 1:05 pmVery nice theme~
rob
February 24th, 2009 1:24 pmthanks guys brilliant!!
Steph
February 24th, 2009 2:50 pmpsd download does not work?
Steph
February 24th, 2009 2:52 pmWould love to see this for Drupal!
Igor Putina
February 24th, 2009 4:04 pmAwesome theme! Thank you for your generosity,
GPL rocks! You rock!… Smashing!!.. :)
Shannon
February 24th, 2009 4:28 pmI love you guys! Great theme.
Sean
February 24th, 2009 7:08 pmHow did you guys know I would need this theme lol?
This is the exact theme I was looking for to revamp my blog. Thanks for the great design.
bayonian
February 24th, 2009 10:41 pmAbsolutely outstanding.
helpmygf
February 25th, 2009 12:20 amnice templates!
many sleepless nights
East
February 25th, 2009 12:39 amreadme.html is missing :’(
HANi
February 25th, 2009 1:06 amwooooow i like it
great work guys
Peter Deisinger
February 25th, 2009 3:18 amCheers, that’s really gorgeous; I’ll happily give it a trial!
TheGreyMan
February 25th, 2009 4:02 amGreat work, guys. Very nice indeed.
RolsRice
February 25th, 2009 5:54 amLove this magazine-look wordpress theme! Is really well designed, good taste. I´ll try it for my magazine…lets see how it looks!
Prabhjeet Singh
February 25th, 2009 6:00 amVery nice… :)
issam
February 25th, 2009 6:49 amThx for sharing..
nice theme
Karol Adamczyk
February 25th, 2009 8:07 amSeweeet!
The PSD is a nice touch! Very well constructed design, useful inspiration.
Jimmy Rittenborg
February 25th, 2009 8:55 amIm sure that the “submit comment” buttons could be fixed for IE by this trick http://trevordavis.net/blog/tutorial/input-vs-button/
Miss Tique
February 25th, 2009 9:01 amThank you, guys.
I’m no coder/designer or anything close and I still made it in implementing the theme on my website. I love the clean feel and looks. And colours, too. Everything is great!!
Laure Dai
February 25th, 2009 9:29 amVery nice wordpress theme. very professional indeed.
Brad Mahaffey
February 25th, 2009 10:58 amGreat release! Thanks smashing.
Wish the theme had a bit more originality, but still a good clean UI.
Daril
February 25th, 2009 1:09 pmI have installed 5 times this theme. 5 times my footer disappears ? What is a probleme plz.
a1e2n
February 25th, 2009 3:15 pmPage Navi plug-in don’t work :(((( How i can go to oldest posts???
RolsRice
February 25th, 2009 4:43 pmWell, Im having the same problem as DamirK.
I put the URL of the pic below the post in wordpress panel, but image doesnt appears on the top thumbnails menu…
Other problem is that the comments box doesnt appears over the pic like in the demo…and the pic is not being resized neither… :(
if can help:
http://www.stylecandymagazine.com
Kevin
February 25th, 2009 5:38 pmOut of curiosity how long did the PSD take to make? Is there anyway of finding out?
Megan
February 25th, 2009 7:39 pmThese free WordPress Themes that you feature on Smashing are one of the (many) reasons
I keep coming back to the Smashing site. Thank you. Even when I don’t utilize them directly, they are
inspiring and fun to check out. Awesome!
Arunprasad
February 26th, 2009 3:26 amLovely design!
Thank you for the theme.
This is one of the best wordpress themes I came across.
I wish to get a similar theme fully customized for b2evolution.
Claudio
February 26th, 2009 4:37 amwow, amazing theme
those thumbnails in sidebar are a great innovation
Thanks for free releasing it
anas ismail
February 26th, 2009 5:11 amBeautiful,Thanx
Wilfrid
February 26th, 2009 9:55 amgreat theme!! I’ve already use it, thx
Unruly
February 26th, 2009 11:45 amClassy. Needs a bit of tweaking but the result is well worth the trouble.
Of course, your magazeen-enabled blog will also need content to match the theme, which is the hard part…
Thank you, Wefunction and Smashing.
Darren
February 26th, 2009 8:21 pmThis theme is AWESOME, however I am having the same problem as RolsRice and others with images not showing
(See http://www.zirazira.com for example of what is happening…)
My cache folder is CHMODed 777. There are no images in there. I have enabled all the Magazeen widgets and pasted the image URL in the field when posting. Still no luck.
It would help at least if the readme.html file existed, but it was not included in the download, as others have mentioned… Not sure what else to do, but this theme is so good I really, really would like to use it for my blog…
Kathy Marino
February 26th, 2009 11:08 pmwow this is so cool, new here.
Is there a way to integrate this magazine into ning.com? free online social network?
I would like to know how to merge the two?
Matt Mullenweg
February 27th, 2009 3:43 amI love it, and thank you guys for putting this theme under the GPL.
Jhangora
February 27th, 2009 4:03 amNice theme. Would probably migrate to WP after the next page rank update.
Free Vector Logo
February 27th, 2009 9:23 amI never have any other premium magazine theme like this for free. It’s really awesome! How was it build? Do you built it from the sandbox theme? Or mimbo maybe?
aminhers
February 27th, 2009 12:03 pmgood job !
thank you smashing magazine
Shawn
February 27th, 2009 12:16 pmTHIS IS FANTASTIC! Quick question though, my image showcase at the top of the page is working fine BUT it isn’t showing the titles…any ideas?
Also having the same problem with the Featured News widget – always defaults to the first category.
Otherwise – LOVE IT!
Shawn
February 27th, 2009 5:43 pmOkay – an update: now it’s actually loading up the title’s, but isn’t making the ‘old’ title disappear (so they’re all mashed up on top of eachother…) Any ideas?
Juanel
February 27th, 2009 6:53 pmIs there a way to completely ditch the thumbnails/pictures and place an AD instead there? If so, pls. show me how pls. Thanks in advance.
Michael
February 27th, 2009 11:45 pmAn excellent WordPress Theme indeed. Looks great, easy on the eyes — just wish I had a blog that I could use it on, though I’m sure our customers will find it useful!
Elahn
February 28th, 2009 12:57 amI’m getting two of the same image in every post now that I’m copying image URL to the Magazeen Post Option in writing a new post.
How can I stop this from happening?
Yogesh Goel
February 28th, 2009 5:39 amgood and useful theme..
i am still finding a place where i can use its usability….
have to bang my head on it…
Yogesh
123 Network
David Binovec
February 28th, 2009 6:02 amIt is really beautiful, but the code quality is not perfect. As it was mentioned, there are bugs in IE7 and also on 800×600 px screen. It is a pitty…
WPDONE
February 28th, 2009 6:08 amFinally I found the perfect theme for my website!
John
February 28th, 2009 12:16 pmHow do I get the text that says ‘submit’ from being overlayed on the ‘submit’ graphic on comments?
Joe
February 28th, 2009 2:19 pmThanks for sharing friends
Betty Boo
February 28th, 2009 3:36 pmAnyone get CForms to work with this theme?
The theme is awesome, but with CForms, the post titles don’t display over the post images….
Iskwew
February 28th, 2009 5:37 pmBeautiful theme.
However, I am not able to unzip the files properly with my built in Vista unzipping. It just constantly says that it already has a file by that name.
Thomas
February 28th, 2009 8:27 pmFantastic theme! I’m impressed!
Prompt
March 1st, 2009 4:01 amAwesome theme! I am trying to get “Featured Articles” working but no luck.. I cant even see it in widgets panel, so i cant activate it. Any ideas? To be honest I dont see how it would work, because in the zip there is only a theme and no widgets.. Where can I download the mentioned widgets?
Buddy
March 1st, 2009 4:40 amNice Theme, I will try this in my upcoming new site..
Cheers
Raj Kumar Maharjan [Razer]
March 1st, 2009 9:44 amIt’s really loving wordpress themes. Thanks guys for such fabulous work
E.R.
March 2nd, 2009 12:40 ama premium theme:) free for download! thansk smashing magazine!
Olivia Bell
March 2nd, 2009 2:57 amHi,
this is brilliant – but unless I’m hugely mistaken, there isn’t a readme file, you do link to one, but it isn’t found. Am I missing something?
sean
March 2nd, 2009 8:47 amHello. This theme is awesome however I am also having the same problems as others. Any help would be more than appreciated.
- The graphics aren’t loading into the thumbnails or main image areas. I changed the permissions on the folder and I tried removing the “http://” from the posting form.
- It looks like this same thing is happening to only a few of us. I am using a Mac and using a server from aplus.net. I am really a novice when it comes to the technical stuff but I can maneuver my way around with a little help.
Thanks in advance for any help at all. I am feeling a touch desperate here. Thanks everyone.
Bosom Betty
March 2nd, 2009 9:02 amAdding this fixes the IE6 “submit Comment” Problem:
input {
font-size: 0;
line-height: 25px;
}
Good luck!
Ajay
March 2nd, 2009 11:37 amA wonderful theme. Love the ajax showcase at the top. But then using jquery for such a small effect is probably an overkill.
Mary
March 2nd, 2009 2:30 pmThis is my first time using a wordpress theme… can anyone tell me how to upload an image from my hard drive to add to the background of the main header? I would like to fix the image to fill in the entire “black” area.
rob
March 3rd, 2009 3:52 amHI GUYS, LOVE THIS SITE.
Jason O'Brien
March 3rd, 2009 5:24 amFantastic theme! Found a mispelling in the comments template:
“It’s quite in here. Why not leave a response?”
Quite should be quiet.
Just thought I’d let you know. ;)
Sean Kernick
March 3rd, 2009 7:14 amMagazeen image posting fix.
I decided to switch the server platform to see if the Linux server was causing the problem. Once I switched to a Windows server the problem was fixed. I don’t know enough about the technical reasoning behind this but it worked.
Thanks again for such a dynamic theme. I am thrilled to have the ability to work with it finally.
yulius
March 3rd, 2009 5:10 pmnice themess
Ben Herson
March 4th, 2009 12:12 amGreat stuff! Is there a readme file? Having some trouble with the images etc. A tutorial page would be great!
Tobias
March 4th, 2009 2:45 amThanks so far, what a nice looking and working Theme. But, the text mouse over of “Check out Latest Articles” doesn’t work any more, so permalinks are still active, but the titles doesn’t change.
Tato
March 4th, 2009 6:16 amAWESOME work. I love this theme. But after the firsts issues with the images (solved) only have one problem…
…i miss the capacity for create links in my post!
Only in post. In fact all links works properly, but when i try to put one in the post wordpress delete it…
The window that create the links in the dashborad apear in white and i can’t create links via HTML because wordpress delete it again…
Any idea?
PD: i’m spanish, sorry about mi english, it’s really bad… that’s all can i do, i learn english by the videogames. LOL :P
thirsty
March 5th, 2009 5:03 amI can’t get images to load in the dock, even though I can get them in the post. Shouldn’t the post feed the dock with this image? Any help?
Adam
March 5th, 2009 2:45 pmAnyone fixed the images not loading problem yet?
onelargeprawn
March 6th, 2009 4:59 amIt’s certainly a great looking theme, thanks. That readme or a tutorial would be very helpful to me.
Matthalamue
March 6th, 2009 7:19 pmI can’t open or upload the “inc” folder.. Anyone else having this problem?
g
March 7th, 2009 1:36 amawesome theme! curious if there is a way to add previous/next navigation links even though multiple loops are being used? is that just a limitation we have to live with? in any case, really nice!
Peter vdHamer
March 7th, 2009 3:31 am@Matthalamue
“can’t open or upload Inc folder”. The problem is that there is both a folder and a file with the same name. See my explanation and solution here here. If you don’t like scrolling, search for the text “strange error messages”.
Adam
March 7th, 2009 12:19 pmCan someone explain how I can replace the small RSS image with my own? I tried simply replacing the template rss image but my new image just gets squashed down to the same size. I can’t seem to find where I need to change the image width/length in the template files…..thanks very much!
Great theme by the way, I love it.
wecostumizedweb
March 7th, 2009 6:26 pmYES, A nice collection again :) keep it coming guys
Michael Leung
March 8th, 2009 2:11 amAnyone else has the problem where when you hover over the different stories in the dock, the titles get messed up? And no pagination!
danny
March 9th, 2009 6:17 amgreat theme!!!!!!!!!!
a readme file would be appreciated though.. where is it?
cr3ate
March 9th, 2009 2:44 pmI have the ‘cache’ directory in the Magazeen theme dirctory writable but it doesn’t display the images anyway. I also don’t have readme.html file in the folder so I’m not sure if I’m missing something.
Joshua
March 9th, 2009 8:12 pmAgain, great theme.
I have also not been able to get images to display in posts. I’m using 2.7.1, cleared my cache and have full permission (777) on all files and directories in my wp-content directory. Any hints?
Ristyle
March 10th, 2009 4:07 amAwesome theme, I’m gonna customize this one right away!