best writers themes

6+ free WordPress Themes for Writers, Bloggers, and online Magazines

As someone who writes for a living, I know that writers can be cheap on occasion. That’s not a problem, but this frugality often pops up randomly. Particularly when having to spend money on items that writers aren’t particularly knowledgeable with. Websites come to mind.

Start With a Free Theme

In order to bring in clients, sell books and share articles, writers need to be online for people to find them. However, a writer doesn’t necessarily require a complex website, so looking into the realm of free WordPress themes is completely reasonable. Think about it. When you just get started writing, all of your content is based on putting words to the page. It doesn’t necessarily matter whether or not you have access to a ton of plugins, fancy features or payment processing. You simply want to focus on making your writing better.

Will A Free Theme Be Enough?

Therefore, free WordPress themes for writers and bloggers are exactly what you need. Sure, if you want to start making money with your writing it’s a good idea to go with a premium theme, but in general, a free website with lots of writing is all you need. A free site works even if you’re trying to convince clients to hire you for freelance writing services. They don’t care if you spent a bunch of money on a theme or not, because all that matters is your written content. We will say, however, that you’ll want to keep an eye out for some features that are required when building a blog or a writing website. You may want a portfolio to feature your work, or simply a list of blog posts that have multiple post formats. Regardless of your design, we have the choices for you to look at.

Best Free WordPress Themes for Budget-Savvy Writers

Keep reading to learn about the best free WordPress themes for writers and bloggers.



Crawford

Crawford

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The Crawford WordPress theme is a nice place to start since it’s a super minimalist theme designed just for writers. The overall design is completely responsive, meaning it looks great on all mobile devices. You can bring up the website on a phone and not have to worry about zooming in or squinting to read the content. The logo sits in the middle of the header and the entire menu is customizable for people to quickly move around your website. We really like this theme for beginner writers since it has all the tools you’ll need to start pumping out content. You don’t have to worry about any of bells and whistles. Just sit down and start creating articles and chapters for your next book. The custom colors are fun to play around with if you have a brand identity in mind, while the black and white shades are the default colors if you don’t want to move or change anything.

Modifying all of your settings happens on the backend, so there is no drag-and-drop editor. This shouldn’t be a problem for a blogger, however, considering most of the design elements are already implemented upon installing the theme. The homepage displays featured images, along with descriptions from each blog post. When someone clicks on one of your posts they get to see the entire post. It works as a one-column feed of your most recent blog posts, but you do have the option to create somewhat of a landing page if you’d rather have that style. The responsive layout doesn’t have to be setup on your end and the sticky posts keep people focused on the written content. Visitors can also leave comments to give you feedback on your writing and talk about what they like about it. Although the features are slim, we enjoy the Crawford WordPress theme, because of its simplicity and modern look.



SAGA from just themes

SAGA from just themes

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The SAGA theme is another theme with minimalist elements. The theme has a responsive layout with an elegant design and various tools to help you present your writing in an organized fashion. It has a one-column layout so that the user’s eyes remain focused towards the middle of the website. The featured images require minimal editing since they get pulled from the blog posts and are delivered directly to the homepage. All theme options are managed on the backend of your WordPress site and the SAGA theme is built on the Hybrid Core for a fast and beautiful interface. As you might have already assumed, the theme is completely free, making it one of the more premium looking options on the list. In addition to that, the theme includes translation files, which come in handy when you’d like to reach out to people who don’t speak your language. Imagine having people all the way across the globe reading your articles, simply because they can translate it into their own language.

Along with that, the theme also includes nice social media icons that you can place in your navigation menu. These help with bringing people to your social platforms and they only require you to link to your favorite accounts. Speaking of the navigation menu, this theme provides a menu that doesn’t actually show up until someone clicks on it. Therefore, it creates more space for the articles you plan on writing and it doesn’t distract people who are simply trying to read a brand new post from you. It looks great on mobile devices since it moves in and out of your vision as people scroll over it. Several post types are provided. You can make a post that’s dedicated just to quotes or galleries. Integrating with third-party plugins isn’t that hard and the entire homepage is pretty much a large feed of your blog posts. The featured images are huge and they take up the majority of the page. The descriptions and titles overlay on top of the images, making for a beautiful style. We give this theme a big two thumbs up.



Editor

Editor

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Check out the Editor WordPress theme if you’re interested in a clean website with few features that aren’t going to weigh down your site. The theme includes a couple social media buttons to interact with fans on Facebook and Twitter and the menu sits on the left-hand side of the page, prompting people to move elsewhere throughout the site. Your entire blog feed is displayed on the homepage, with descriptions, titles, and large featured images that grab attention from visitors. The custom background is a handy feature for customizing the brand of your site and it helps out with showing people what you plan on writing about on your site. The infinite scroll tool means that when users scroll down on the homepage they will continue seeing new content, regardless of how far they scroll down. This helps keep the visitors on your website and showing them that you have lots more to offer. Change your site logo right from the backend and use the threaded comments for having discussions with your most loyal followers.

The translation ready files are nice for connecting with people from all over the world. You don’t have to do any translating on your end. People simply open up their browsers and hit the translate button, or the browser automatically detects the language they speak. Going back to the social links menu. This is one of the more unique features we’ve seen on a free WordPress theme, considering the menu doesn’t actually bring people to other parts of your site. It mainly focuses on sending users to your social pages and many of those platforms are supported. You can send folks to Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, or even create a YouTube page where you highlight some of the cooler videos you have made. Along with Instagram, LinkedIn, and Flickr, the Editor theme’s menu is pretty cool to play around with.



Sublime

Sublime

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We like the Sublime WordPress theme because it has a modern, minimalist feel to it. The responsive design enables people to view your writing while on mobile devices and the custom header looks great on all of these devices. Change your menus to better reflect the types of pages you have on your site and use the translation tools for expanding your reach to everyone in the entire world. Threaded comments come with the Sublime WordPress theme, meaning that anyone can leave a comment and start chatting with you.

The theme also includes various widget-ready locations, turning your backend into somewhat of a drag-and-drop interface. The majority of your WordPress posts are going to show up on the homepage. At least all of the most recent posts are going to have featured images and bits of the article included. A search bar is placed at the top for people to find other articles, while the logo is placed in the middle of the header which is great for building brand recognition.



Kyan

Kyan

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The Kyan WordPress theme is an interesting take on the free template since it’s a child theme and it provides a more professional look for people who may be freelancers or small business owners. The responsive theme provides a beautiful header module with overlaying text and buttons. This allows you to create calls to action for when you need to send the visitors to landing or product pages. The logo resides right in the middle of the header and you can upload your own image directly from the backend of the website. Your welcome header comes right below the header and you can customize the menu to ensure that everyone knows exactly where to go.

The welcome section is where you’ll explain all about your business and maybe talk a little about yourself. We like this for bloggers who need to make a personal connection with the user. The client testimonial module is great for showing users that you’re worth working with, and the three widget areas in the footer work perfectly when you need to show off About information or contact details. Display your services in a block of text next to icons and utilize the full-width page template when you want to put all of the focus on one service or product. What’s more is that the Kyan WordPress theme has social media buttons so that you don’t have to go out and find your own.

























Amadeus

Amadeus

Not Available.

Amadeus is a free WordPress blogging theme that will cater to your content needs. With its elegant menu design, your readers will cruise through your site with ease and access every piece of content your craft. What’s more, you can easily embed videos from places such as Vimeo and YouTube inviting readers to view some of the best video content the web has to offer.

The responsive design lends to perfect site rendering, a social header creates a point of access for readers across all social media platforms, and of course, this theme is built with clean and validated code for optimal speed and security. Translate your best work to reach a global audience, rest assured all major browsers will display a perfect website, and don’t forget to customize every element with the easy to use Theme Options Panel using this exceptional free blogging theme.

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About the Author

Brenda Barron is a writer from southern California. She specializes in WordPress but she’s really not all business. In fact, she spends her free time outside with her family or on the couch knitting.

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3 Comments

  1. Denis Avatar

    Denis

    August 31, 2016 at 8:38 pm

    I just released a new magazine/blog theme, It’s absolutely free and you can check it out here https://thepixeltribe.com/draft_portfolio/magazeen-theme/

    Reply
    • Sarah Bishop Avatar

      Sarah Bishop

      September 1, 2016 at 1:35 am

      Congrats on the new release! We will definitely check out Magazeen.

      Reply
  2. Mark Henry Avatar

    Mark Henry

    April 22, 2018 at 10:19 pm

    Grand collection of themes!
    I also want to share another free WordPress theme called Bloggers Lite. It is a fully responsive and user-friendly theme suitable for personal bloggers, authors and writers. It offers many astonishing features like advanced customizer panel, elegant blog page design, amazing portfolio design, custom page templates and many more

    Reply

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