ColorMag is a free, responsive magazine-style WordPress theme. Its design is well suited for online magazines, newspapers, and other publications, but it can be used as a multi-purpose theme as well. Read our ColorMag review to find out all about this popular theme’s features.
About ColorMag
ColorMag is a magazine-style theme by ThemeGrill, designed to let you customize the look of your site without have to learn any code. The free version of the theme is among the most popular in the WordPress.org directory, and there’s also a Pro version if you need more customization options — more on that below.
ThemeGrill is also behind other popular themes and plugins, including the Spacious theme. If you like their themes, consider investing in the ThemeGrill All Themes Bundle to save money on all their pro themes, and get access to all their new premium themes.
Features of ColorMag
ColorMag includes a good variety of features to customize the look of your site without having to touch any code. Here are some of the highlights:
Customize Your Site Design
You can choose all your site options in the Appearance » Customize menu, including:
- header image and background image
- header image position (above or below the site title)
- enable “breaking news” header at the top of the page
- enable sticky header menu
- upload favicon
- display related posts (by category or tag)
- enable lightbox effect for featured images in single posts
Plenty of Color Options
ColorMag allows you to easily customize the colors on your site. You can choose one primary accent color for your site under Appearance » Customize » Design Options » Primary color option. The color picker allows you to choose any color you want, or enter the hex code for your desired color. Your menus, links, and buttons will be displayed in the color you choose.
Under Appearance » Customize » Category Color Options, you can also select a different color for every post category. The category color will be used for the category label in the post meta, both on the front page and individual post page.
Flexible Page Layout Options
You can choose a default page layout of full-width, left sidebar, right sidebar, or both.
And different layouts can be chosen for your archives, pages, and single posts. Individual pages can also use different page templates to override the default.
Social Options
In the Appearance » Customize » Social Options menu, you can enter your social media account URLs and enable a social links area to display icons in the very top-right of your website.
16 Widget Areas
ColorMag comes with 16 widgetized areas.
There are separate widget areas for your left and right sidebars, a header widget area above the main navigation, and a widget area to place advertisements right above the footer.
The footer has four widget areas, for the four columns in the footer. The first column is about twice as wide as the remaining three.
There are also separate widget areas that only display on your contact page, and your 404 error page.
And there are 6 widget areas for the front page content alone.
Custom Widgets
ColorMag also includes some special theme-specific widgets:
- Featured Category Slider: displays either latest posts or posts by category
- Featured Posts (in 2 styles): display latest posts or posts from a specific category
- Advertisement: in 125×125, 300×250, or 728×90 sizes
The options for these widgets are very limited, so if you need more advanced options we recommend using Soliloquy for your image sliders.
You can also check out our Adsanity review if you’re looking for a more advanced plugin to display advertising with widgets.
ColorMag Pro Features
ColorMag is available for free from the WordPress.org directory, but there’s also a Pro version available that adds more features:
- More font options: choose from over 600 Google fonts and change font size with a click
- Unique posts option: prevent the same posts from showing more than once on a page, even in separate widgets
- RTL support: displays languages that are written right to left
- More color options: change the color of every element on your site individually, instead of choosing one primary color
- Extra widgets: includes featured posts, tabs, random posts, videos, and other widgets
- Footer editor: edit the credits text in the footer from your WordPress dashboard, no coding necessary
The Pro version starts at $59 for a 1-site license.
Documentation and Support
ThemeGrill provides detailed documentation for ColorMag, including tutorials with screenshots that will walk you through how to install and set up the theme like it is in the demo.
If you need troubleshooting advice or other support, you can post in the free support forums on the ThemeGrill site. Most threads are replied to by the developer within a day or so. There are also thousands of existing threads, so you may be able to find the answer you need just by searching the forum.
Users of the ColorMag Pro theme get access to private support via a ticket system or email, and can also access dedicated premium forums. Your license purchase includes premium support for 1 year.
Alternatives to ColorMag
1. SeedProd
SeedProd is the best drag and drop theme builder that lets you customize any page or website without any coding.
There are beautiful templates and the visual builder makes it so easy to customize your own magazine website.
The best thing about SeedProd is that all these designs are fully responsive. This means your magazine website will look good on mobile and other devices.
SeedProd has a comprehensive knowledge base full of tutorials, documentation, and more. It also offers a responsive support team that will answer your queries as soon as possible.
To learn more, you can see our full SeedProd review.
Thrive Themes is one of the most popular WordPress themes + theme builder out there. It makes it easy to design a website you’ll love but also optimize it for conversions so that your audience will be engaged with your brand.
Thrive comes with predesigned themes and page templates but you can also build your website from scratch.
If you’re serious about getting subscribers and sales, Thrive is the way to go. It’s packed with tools to create a conversion-focused website complete with stunning landing pages, sign up forms, quizzes, evergreen marketing campaigns, and more.
Get started with Thrive Themes!
Our Score
ColorMag is a among the most popular free themes in the WordPress directory. It may be a good choice for your site if you need a basic magazine-style theme and you like the look of the design.
Typical of magazine-style themes, the design places a lot of focus on your posts’ featured images, so it’s best suited as a free blog theme that uses at least one image for every post.
Customization options are available but somewhat limited in the free theme, but you can update to the Pro version if you want the additional options that are included.
We give ColorMag 4 out of 5 stars. Here is the breakdown of our review scores:
4.0 / 5.0 3.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0 4.0 / 5.0
hi, here in my site one issue. when i install and activate it. my https conection not seccure after activate colormag theme. how i fix it. please reply me.
How to add pagination.?
Yes but your cannot add a form because the wordpress form plugins will make colormag bug.
I tried adding a form with Formidable and wp-forms, but the issue was the same.