Nicely styled theme with a few neat features, like auto image resizing, and a homepage that manages to get a lot in, but keep it organized looking. Both page and category-based-navigation (drop down menu bar and the middle menu bar), as well as a robust footer.

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By the same maker as minimalist Visualization and the Gridline series, Monochrome is a visually arresting theme that places a lot of emphasis on images. So if your photos are not as great as the ones featured on the site, then you may way to think again. Monochrome has a lot of solid magazine-style features, like category-based-navigation (with dropdown subcategories), as well as category representation under the main feature and above the big footer. Check out variations Monochrome Gallery, Monochrome Author and Monochrome Lite.

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This paid theme’s primary magazine feature is a featured articles capability — articles categorized under “featured” occupy the main well. While that’s a neat way to deal with the issue of which stories get prominent/more real estate, the downside of this approach is that articles are bucketed under one category instead of perhaps the categories that they would more naturally fit in. Category navigation is in the big footer.

Sites utilizing the theme:
http://jaypeeonline.net/
http://www.outlawdesignblog.com/

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Gorgeous and clean Wordpress theme with a two tiered-navigation menu — page-based and category-based. The majority of the homepage is taken up by the featured story (appears to be the latest story). Nice features include a slick “most popular” sidebar with popular, comments, latest and tags. Another unique feature is the robust footer which manages to pack in six stories in three selected categories. Currently does not come with advertising already implemented.

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Beautiful theme. Definitely in the design-y camp and probably less for those who are interested in a text-heavy site. But I see applications of this including a recipe site, an agency website, or perhaps a travel site — anything where a visual representation of the information would have more of an impact.

Unique features: LOVE the text and # of comments overlaid on images, simple and effective color scheme, and the list of categories with counts of posts elegantly implemented in the footer.

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This Wordpress theme by Solostream offers critical magazine-style features with some emphasis on community. A big check to my #1 must-have — a category-based nav — as well as a large and potentially auto-scrolling main feature. But prominent too is the “most popular”/comments/tags/etc block on the HP; recent comments and gravatars get play as well. Comments on the article pages are nicely color-blocked.

The version I’m referring to is the version in the live demo; the theme comes with several different layouts for its HP and category pages.

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What I like about this paid theme is the great job it does showcasing a lot of content very effectively. The HP manages to squeeze in 13+ article options (1 main well, 5 recent stories, 4 secondary stories with image (in slider), and then 3 more articles (with 3 links each!), yet maintains a clean and balanced feel. Same goes for category/subcategory landing pages, which very gracefully highlights one story, gives another four stories less emphasis, then finally offers up 8 story headlines. Some other very nice touches include a breadcrumb, except in English — i.e. instead of Category > Subcategory > SubsubCategory, this theme has “You are here: Home -> Election ’08 -> Huckabee Angling for Debate With McCain”. Another nice touch is the article -level pages, where color zoning highlights “More from this category” and “More from this author.”

Comments are currently located in the robust footer, which may not be ideal for some, but is probably easy enough to change. Another benefit is the auto image resizer described as follows: “custom script that automatically crops and resizes images – no more creating two or three versions of each image.”

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I already droned on and on about the brethren of this theme, so you can read all about it here or here.

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No, the screenshot you are looking at is not CNN. Can’t tell whether it’s the font, the red or something else, but this theme certainly lives up to its name. Gazette is a solid mag-style (or should I say, news-style) theme in a three-column HP design, with some standout features, such as the arresting auto-scroll main feature as well as most-recent posts from different categories as the secondary featured articles.

As with many of PremiumNewsTheme themes, Gazette has prominent search, rss/email and “most popular” module — all tops for me.

More Info | Live Demo

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