How to create an editorial magazine website with WordPress

Decide which sections your magazine will publish regularly, then create matching categories under Posts > Categories. Keep the top-level navigation short. For example, use News, Features, Culture, Reviews, and Opinion rather than creating a category for every subject.

Use posts for articles that should appear in archives and feeds. Reserve pages for fixed information such as About, Contact, Advertising, and Privacy. Give every article a featured image, a clear excerpt, and one primary category so your homepage sections have useful material to display.

Create a page called Home, then choose it as the homepage under Settings > Reading by selecting A static page. If you want a separate article archive, create an empty page such as Blog and select it as the Posts page. The Home and Posts pages must be different.

With a block theme, a Front Page template can control the homepage independently. Check Appearance > Editor > Templates before changing Reading settings, because a Front Page template can take precedence over the page selected there.

Edit the Home page or Front Page template and add a header, navigation, an introductory featured story, and separate sections for each editorial category. Use a Query Loop block for each section, then set its taxonomy filter to the relevant category and choose the number of posts to show.

Inside each Query Loop, use Featured Image, Post Title, Excerpt, Date, Author, Categories, and Read More blocks as needed. Change the Post Template to a grid or list, and use Group, Columns, or Row blocks to create a lead-story layout beside smaller cards. Set the post count deliberately; the default result count is a common reason a section shows too many or too few articles.

Use Appearance > Editor to edit the header, footer, templates, and template parts when a block theme is active. Put the site logo, main navigation, search, and social links in the header. Put newsletter prompts, secondary navigation, copyright details, and contact links in the footer.

Save repeated sections as patterns. Use an ordinary pattern when each copy will have different content, and a synced pattern only when one edit should update every copy. Be careful when editing a header or footer template part: the change can affect every template that uses it.

Set global colours, typography, content width, spacing, and button styles before fine-tuning individual blocks. Keep article titles prominent, use consistent image ratios, and make the lead story visually different from secondary cards. Add a navigation link for each important category and test the menu on a narrow screen.

Preview the homepage, category archives, single posts, search results, the 404 page, and pagination. Check that posts without featured images do not leave awkward blank spaces, that excerpts do not repeat the full article, and that each Query Loop has a useful no-results message.

The manual route is suitable when you are happy to assemble the homepage from core blocks and maintain the layout yourself. For a faster starting point, install and activate Hunted, then adapt its magazine-focused layouts, widgets, and page-builder support to your categories and publishing workflow.

After activation, replace demo content, check the homepage sections, set your navigation, confirm the single-post layout, and review the site on mobile. A theme reduces layout work, but it does not replace your editorial structure: you still need well-organised categories, strong featured images, consistent excerpts, and a publishing routine.