The ColorMag WordPress theme is a free theme designed for news, magazines and other online publications but can also be used as a multi-purpose theme.

It’s one of the most popular themes in the WordPress directory with over 100,000 active installs.

And with over 430 5-star reviews we decided to dive into this free magazine-newspaper style WordPress theme to help you figure out if its the right theme for you.

So without further ado, here’s our ColorMag theme review. Enjoy!

ColorMag | About

The ColorMag theme is the brainchild of Theme Grill designers and founder Sanjip Shah and Rabin Shrestha.

Since the start of ThemeGrill, this duo has created over 15 different Free and Pro versions of their WordPress themes. Including the other widely popular Spacious theme, which is ideal for any type of business (especially SaaS businesses).

The themes cover everything from restaurants to fitness clubs and have a variety of built-in features. You can download any of their free themes, upgrade to pro versions (where available) or purchase all 16 of their premium WordPress themes for $249

ColorMag | Features

The features of the ColorMag WordPress theme are great for a free theme. So we’re going to take a look at the few that are at the core of this article-driven free WordPress theme.

(Oh and if you just want to skip to the full list of features, go right ahead )

ColorMag | 15+ Widgets Areas

ColorMag comes with 16 “widget areas”.

What are “widget areas?”

Widget areas allow you to customize your layout with widget areas for your left and right sidebar, contact sidebar and even for your advertisements above the footer.

In addition, you have access to custom widgets that include a featured category slider, featured posts and advertisements.

Advertisement display options come in 125×125, 300×250, and 728×90 sizes.

While these widgets provide a degree of customization for this free theme, we suggest you check out our free page builder to give you a lot more design flexibility.

Pro Version: In the ColorMag Pro version you have access to additional widgets like a video widget, tabbed widget, breaking news widget and added featured post widgets.

ColorMag | Color Options

ColorMag gives you the ability to customize the colors of the theme through its Primary Color Option feature.

You can set the primary color option and it will then be reflected in the menus, buttons, and links.

In addition, you can choose a different color for your post categories. The color will then be shown as the category label and individual post page.

Pro Version: The pro version allows you to go beyond just a single primary color option to change the color of any element on your site. All without having to dive into the code.

ColorMag | Design Customization

Despite having a Pro version of the product the free version of ColorMag gives you a range of design customization to make the theme your own.

You can edit the following aspects of the ColorMag theme:

• Add your site logo
• Place a header image (and change the position)
• Enable a sticky menu
• Show/hide home, search and random post icon in the primary menu
• Add a background image or color
• Enable a lightbox effect for featured images or single post view
• Choose between a boxed or wide layout

ColorMag | Customize Your Layout

Beyond the boxed vs wide layout option, you can also choose between 4 different page layout options of full-width, left sidebar, right sidebar or both.

You can also choose different layouts for your archive page, pages, and single posts.

ColorMag | Extra Goodies

Who doesn’t love the extras? The free Colormag Theme for WordPress includes a few goodies that we feel were worth mentioning that include:

• WooCommerce Compatibility – Not that you’d need it for a news site but the compatibility is there if you want to use it as a store.
• Search Engine Optimization – More or less the theme is set up for SEO optimization
• Social Icons – You can add and link up to 6 social icons in the header and footer.
• Custom CSS – Tweak the CSS code to edit the way you like
• Speed Optimizations – Updated theme code with latest best practices to keep load time down

ColorMag | Documentation

The documentation for ColorMag found on the ThemeGrill website is very straightforward.

The page has an outline in the sidebar that makes it easy to progress from installation to the customization of the theme for your brand.

All of the instructions are split into numbered sections with detailed descriptions and images to show what’s being explained in the instruction.

ColorMag | Support

ThemeGrill provides free support through their forums however to access email support (and a dedicated premium forum), you’ll need to opt for the Pro version ($69).

The pro version comes with 1 year of this premium support.

ColorMag | Score Breakdown

The free ColorMag WordPress Theme by ThemeGrill is an excellent newspaper/magazine theme for anyone starting out. It’s no wonder why it’s the #1 most popular magazine-newspaper style theme beyond it being free.

As highlighted by one novice’s review “my blog metamorphosed from a caterpillar into a butterfly within an hour.”

The Pro version provides some additional ways to customize and design. And the 1 year of dedicated support is a nice-to-have when the forums go quiet.

Overall we give this theme 4 out of 5 stars. It allows a good deal of customization, is easy to use, doesn’t cost anything and includes enough features to get you where you need to be if you’re just starting out.

Now it’s your turn to be the judge. Give it a try for yourself.