Revolution Magazine & CMS Wordpress Theme
Fancy your Wordpress looking like an online magazine, a sports portal or a news site? With the Revolution magazine theme, and variations of the theme, you can!
Developed by Brian Gardner, these themes break away from the common blog interface by changing the home page of your site. Depending on what you want, you can can totally modify your Wordpress theme to look like it belongs to some big news agency like CNN or USA Today.
Brian also has a collection of some really sweet free Wordpress themes, but these magazine-style themes are paid themes. It doesn’t come cheap either:
- Perfect for Wordpress blogs that do not add much content on a daily basis. It can transform your blog into a CMS portal, pretty much like what I did with EasyWordpress.com (with a lot of hacking)
- Retails for $59.95 single domain and $199.95 for multiple domains
- Footer credits can be removed for multiple domain license
- I got the multiple domain version for this theme, and with some hacking, will implement it to some of my other blogs.
- Perfect if you have a lot of content every day, and you focus on a more serious topic like business, politics, or other boring stuff
- Retails for $99.95 single domain and $249.95 for multiple domains
- Footer credits can be removed for multiple domain license
- Perfect if you have a lot of content every day, and you focus on a more relaxed topics like music, health, games, etc.
- Retails for $99.95 single domain and $249.95 for multiple domains
- Footer credits can be removed for multiple domain license
- I got the multiple domain license for this one too!
- Made for sports or sports-related content, but really it can be used for anything you want to use it or.
- Retails for $99.95 single domain and $249.95 for multiple domains
- Footer credits can be removed for multiple domain license
All Brian’s themes look good right out of the box, and at most you’ll just need to create a new header image for your blog. As good as these themes are, before you get them you may want to consider these:
- Professional Vs Friendly - If your theme is too serious, you may actually discourage people from commenting on your blogs. Sometimes, people prefer to comment on a websites that is owned by a “person” rather than a “company” and some of these themes will really make your blog look like it belongs to a news agency.
- Amount of Content - If your content production is high, these themes will definitely give equal exposure to all categories on your blog, since you can choose to customize the categories and amount of excerpts that appears on the home page. If your content is low, it’s best to try the Original Revolution theme.
Some things I didn’t quite like:
- No documentation - You’ll expect a theme as advanced as this to have proper documentation, but all it has is an online tutorials section with only a handful of questions answered.
- No “Theme Options” Page - It would be better if some of the hacking / modification you’ll need to do can be accesses via a “theme options” page in Wordpress dashboard under “Presentations”. I’ve seen a lot of themes include this page and I will be using it too for the latest version of the Super Adsense Wordpress theme.
- Inadequate support - You better be confident of looking into PHP code if you’re planning to get these themes. On the website it says that you need to submit your support inquiries as a comment on the support page, and your question will be answered in the form or a blog tutorial. In other words, it can take you forever to get a problem solved.
Overall, these magazine Wordpress themes are perhaps the best I’ve seen to far. I’m sure in newer versions, it will be much easier for newbies to use and customize the theme. For now, however, please make sure you have some technical help on your side before investing in these themes.
There has been a lot of talk about Wordpress being used as a CMS or Content Management System, as a magazine, and even as a complete web portal. With Brian’s themes it’s finally taken a serious step towards realizing that idea!
9 Comments »
Gobala Krisnan is a direct-response marketer turned blogger who makes over $10,000 a month from his blog empire. If you want to make money online from blogs, he is the only person who can reveal the secret of merging time-tested direct marketing strategies with web 2.0 traffic. Read more about him >>
Hi Gobala,
You sure have some fantastic information on this blog.
I check you site out regularly for info on wordpress.
Many thanks
I did want to ask you a couple of questions Gobala.
1). I do have and use your easy wordpress themes for some other blogs I have. and I wanted to have a blog theme designed so I can use it as a basis for a network of blogs I have and wanted easy functionality regarding ad spaces etc.
Can you recommend someone who will do that ?
2). Would you be able to tell me if and when you intend releasing your new version of super adsense ready themes ?
Take care
Hamant
Many Thanks Gobala.
I look forward to it
As soon as I move my home I am thinking of getting something dome on Elance or Guru.com possibly we’ll see
Take care
Hamant
there is also the South African Premium News which is also a paid WP theme
I personally like the globalvoicesonline.org blog. a very beautiful design
Hi Sami
May thanks for that link
Really liked that theme
I may contact him for some custom work
Thanks
Hamant
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whether or where can I find a trial on your theme? it’s interesting.