Magazine themes???

Magazine themes continue to grow in popularity - both for personal and “professional” blogs. They have become easier to use and better for multiple types of bloggers. There is a misconceived perception by many bloggers that they are only for blogs that have multiple authors or dozens of posts published each day. While you can adapt upon the theme’s core design to customize it into a fully functional “blog” theme, there are many more options available in the advanced themes on the market today.

Magazine Themes vs. Basic Themes
Mimbo Pro and Dojo

Technically speaking, magazine themes are no different than regular themes, there is simply more coding involved and more options when you look at the feature sets and time it takes to code and edit the theme’s functionality areas.

However, there are several distinct characteristics of these themes that make them stand out when you dissect the different types of blogs competing in the same niche.

Note: For any future references to the term “premium,” it means that you are paying a price for the theme, not simply in quality.

1. Approximately 70% of Magazine Themes Cost Money - For this reason, they may not suit every price point and require you to pay someone to develop additional features for the theme, such as additional columns, areas, and so on, which may simply make your site appear more cluttered than it should be. Free options lack support, one of the main reasons that I advise you to stick with premium themes in this case.
2. Quality of the Theme - Although not all premium/magazine themes are created equal, many premium magazine themes feature the same options, such as the ability to rearrange content through the use of sidebar widgets, color schemes, etc., which all help you avoid editing the hard-coded functions, leaving your site looking as though it hasn’t been professionally edited (defeating the purpose of paying someone to design your theme). You should be able to take a look at the coding/design of the theme before purchasing, including through the use of a demo site the designer has set up.
3. Time to Build Your Site - If you have just started your blog but don’t have much time to spend waiting until you “officially” launch your site, it may be best to start with a basic theme, then evolve from there to add the features that your site requires. For example, many magazine themes include the ability to add drop-down navigation menus, which may help if you have dozens of pages that fall under the same category, or want to place more internal pages visibly in the header of your site.
   On your side, many magazine themes require hours of setting up the theme before you can ultimately publish daily without much additional coding. You first have to set up where specific categories are displayed, how the columns will work, and the ifs and hows of monetizing your site. On the other hand, these same areas will draw in more visitors and revenue, as visitors will be viewing more content.
4. Layout - Magazine themes don’t conform to web usability standards like basic, two or three column themes do. They may require that visitors click or browse through multiple categories before they are able to find the post that interests them, has been recently published, or hasn’t already been read in their feed reader (assuming they are also subscribed). In this respect, the layout can be both more problematic when designing your site. On the main page of a magazine layout, the same content is displayed that would be displayed on multiple pages of a one or two column theme.
5. Back-end Features - The Options Panel, as many designers and theme users call it, creates a separate area for the user of the blog to customize the way the theme looks on the front-end, in the same way that widgets work. Rather than editing the theme’s CSS and (X)HTML, all you need to do is add your Google Analytics tracking code to the “tracking” area, for example, and you never have to worry about where you need to add this information - a huge time savings. Plugins, additional areas, and functionality can be activated/deactivated through this method, meaning additional “child” themes can be implemented should you or the original designer choose to add them at a later point.
6. Content/Categories - Because magazine themes focus on a few categories, then disperse them throughout the main page, it is important that you will be able to focus on between 5-10 main categories, then branch off and use tags for distinguishing the rest of your content. If not, you may need to re-label all your posts, working from the ground up to layout the navigational structure. Everything will appear messy and unorganized if you don’t do this. Another main aspect of this process is that outdated content will stick out for visitors, so you’ll want to focus on posting new content into each category at least every three days - leading to more “work” in the end if you only publish new content to a few categories each week. You’ll become more productive and focused once you have established the main concentration of your blog’s content.
7. A Longer-lasting Design - Over time, two and three column themes lose their appeal, as visitors tend to become attached, then detached from a site’s design, going out of style. Magazine themes generate more appeal, through the use of ever-changing thumbnails for each post, sidebar content that constantly changes, and an overall more professional design. Initially, your budget may be broken, but in the long-term, your site will reap more visitors and potential revenue as a result of the investment.
8. Professional vs. Blog Look - Magazine websites have a more distinguished look than blog layouts, as the template looks like the themes of news websites, rather than the millions of blogs using the same structural design - with right-aligned sidebars, and a main content area. I’d recommend personal blogs from staying away from magazine themes for this reason, unless you are able to produce the level of content required.
9. Other Reasons - There are a few other reasons why you should move or consider switching your theme over to a magazine-type site, including: your content becomes “pushed back” to previous pages before enough of your visitors get to read it, especially on multiple author and high post-frequency blog; you can’t highlight enough information with a typical 1/2/3/4 column theme; pages, categories, and tags have become unorganized and you want added accessibility and usability for all your visitors, not just those that visit your site from search engines; and/or the ability to change which content is placed with the most spotlight on - with magazine themes, you are able to customize which post is displayed in the “featured” area, as well as the excerpts displayed on the main page.

Before delving into the process of choosing a magazine theme, be sure you are prepared to constantly tweak and modify your theme before you get the “look” you want. People who purchase one of these themes are generally more successful in the long-term, but it’ll take more time to specify what content, features, and add-ons you want to display initially. You also have to look at the design from the screen of your reader - can they quickly visit your latest post, or do they have to jump through multiple pages before they find the post they are looking for? All of these things must be taken into consideration, or your blog, in the transformation to a “professional” design will continue to shout “blog.”

In a future post, I’ll cover some of the best themes, as well as options for each type of blogger.