For this article, we’ve collected the best WordPress video magazine themes currently available. Initially, it was our aim to only cover themes with a YouTube-style aesthetic and features set, but we’ve expanded our criteria to include some of the better video magazine themes as well.
The requirements for a magazine video theme are fairly cut and dry: you need a theme that will allow you to easily post videos and provide an enjoyable user experience to your visitors. As with the video sharing themes, one thing you might wanted to consider is whether or not you want to self-host the videos. Not all of the themes here support that functionality out of the box. We make a note of it when they do not. But this isn’t a must-have feature, particularly if your intent is to host the videos elsewhere, like Vimeo or YouTube, and simply embed them into your content.
We researched and selected these templates by hand. Our criteria, as always, was based lon the quality of the design and the depth of the functionality, though we almost always prioritize a gorgeous design. If you have to, you can always pick up functionality with third party plugins.
Anyway! We’re going to begin with…
TrueMag
Top honors this time around go to the TrueMag theme. This is a massive product, with ten distinct, great looking layouts to choose from out of the box, and an unlimited number of custom layouts and colors to play with after the fact.
The developers have implemented the latest best UI practices here, so your visitors will find the site a pleasure to browse and use. Like the previous themes on our list, TrueMag supports both embedded and self-hosting videos.
This is theme is likely the most feature rich theme on our list. Even the BuddyPress plugin is supported, to assist you in building a robust, engaging community.
It’s both retina-ready and 100% responsive. TrueMag also includes the popular plugins Visual Composer and Slider Revolution. Because of course it does. Why wouldn’t it?
VideoMagazine
It’s strong, bright & bold design and lightweight codebase earns VideoMagazine second spot on our list. It comes with a choice of five different homepage styles, five different header styles, and five different footer layouts. Every content element is a widget, so you can easily move things around.
There’s lots of additional room for customization using the backend options panel, too. VideoMagazine is WPML ready and also supports Contact Form 7.
VideoMag
One of our favorites, VideoMag zeros in on a contemporary, flat design aesthetic. It’s minimal, but maintains character, and the design team made some really great choices when it comes to typography and layout. The sensible navigation, lightweight code base, and omission of unnecessary gimmicks results in a better-than-average UX. Performance is snappy and responsive. Note the cool tabbed sections on the home page! We like ’em.
VideoMag is mobile-ready, and built on the Bootstrap 3 framework. This one is integrated with the WordPress Customizer, for making and previewing changes to colors, layout, and fonts in real-time.
Video News
Another bold design, hitting similar notes to Video Magazine, above. Heavy blacks & reds dominate this high-contrast design, and the varied layout provides lots of opportunity for your content to grab visitor attention.
Video News includes some very nice features like front-end submissions, live searching, and a review system and disqus support. Options on the back-end leave things open to customization & branding, and unlimited sidebars + 10 custom widgets add even more value.
Responsive, well-documented and translation ready.
GigaWatt
This theme is stripped down and simplistic when compared to others on our list, but really truly love the design. Minimalistic, but effective.
GigaWatt is responsive, as you’d expect, and comes with eight page templates, a lovely homepage slider, and eCommerce support (thanks to WooCommerce). Self-hosting videos are supported, using the jPlayer plugin.
SEO is built in, as well as short URL support. There’s a selection of handy color options available, and the entire homepage is widgetized.
SocialPlay
SocialPlay is another magazine style video theme that works best when syncing video from third-party sources like Vimeo, YouTube, Blip.tv, etc. This one lends itself well to audio, too.
There’s light and dark color options to choose from, and a bundled page builder and extensive options panel makes it extremely customizable. If you’re the type to tweak options endlessly, you could potentially waste a lot of time with SocialPlay.
Vidiho
Vidiho is promoted by its developer, CSSIgniter, as a video blogging theme. It uses WordPress own video functionality, so users familiar with WordPress will take to it intuitively.
This is a simple solution for video sharing. Notable features are the high-definition homepage video slider, and lightbox previewing. As far as we can tell, Vidio supports embedded video only out of the box.
CSSigniter themes come with a lot of standard features, like theme options and shortcodes. This theme is best suited to WordPress beginners, or users who are looking for a simple, no fuss option.
Video Mag
VideoMag is a responsive, retina-ready theme. It’s appealing design and classic layout make this theme a winner, and it’s got a lot of great features to offer besides.
Self-hosting video is supported, as well as embeds, and VideoMag comes bundled with some excellent extras like Visual Composer and a selection of useful shortcodes for assembling your layout. A Mega Menu is integrated, and the video player is a custom HTML5 that will allow for custom logo overlays. That’s a cool feature that will help with branding your site.
The developer has provided a Quickstart package, so VideoMag is easy to get up and running. Just import the demo content, and you’re ready to go.
Viduze
Viduze is a fully responsive video magazine theme. It’s designed specifically for video related sites, but can also be used to build a community site with BuddyPress. Viduze was built using the popular Twitter Bootstrap framework.
The theme supports embeds from Youtube, Vimeo and DailyMotion, as well as self-hosted videos.
Viduze is SEO Optimized and WPML compatible. WooCommerce and BuddyPress are supported.
That concludes our collection of the best WordPress video magazine themes. As new themes are released that deserve a spot on the list, we’ll add them. Have suggestion? Leave it in the comments!