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Gazette: A Free WordPress Magazine Theme from Automattic

on May 11, 2015

Gazette is a new WordPress magazine theme from the folks at Automattic, designed by Thomas Guillot. Since the majority of themes produced for WordPress.com are well-suited to single author blogs, Gazette’s fine-tuned focus on digital publications is a welcome addition to the collection.

Magazine themes are generally few and far between, because they have to be designed for a constant flow of content with a homepage that allows the reader to quickly scan multiple featured stories. Gazette takes a minimalist approach to the magazine style in that it isn’t cluttered with skinny columns of varying widths, obtrusive advertising slots, etc. It could easily be used for a personal blog or photography site.

Gazette: A Free WordPress Magazine Theme from Automattic

As you scroll down the page, the sticky navigation/search bar pins the menu to the top for easy access. Gazette makes a strong impression with fullscreen featured images that display above post and page titles. The content area has been decluttered for readability with post meta pulled out into a separate column.

Gazette supports image, gallery, video, and link post formats. The theme includes two optional widget areas (the right sidebar and footer), and two custom menus. With Jetpack active, Gazette adds an option to upload your site logo. The plugin also manages the featured content display, along with the related posts functionality seen in the live demo.

gazette author bioGazette includes a handful of layout and content options in the customizer:

  • Display header image on blog index only
  • Show author bio on the sidebar of single posts
  • Display content in the footer, i.e. basic HTML, links, et.

Gazette is responsive and maintains its striking visual appeal and readability on mobile devices. The design is similar to popular mobile news apps that display posts with titles overlayed on featured images.

gazette responsive

Check out the live demo on WordPress.com to see Gazette in action. The theme is not yet available on WordPress.org but should be soon. In the meantime, the zip file for self-hosted sites can be downloaded from the sidebar of the Gazette theme page on WordPress.com.

Related post: 10 Best Free WordPress Themes for Business

Source: WP Tavern

Gazette: A Free WordPress Magazine Theme from Automattic

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