Creating a Medium-Style Blog using WordPress

Medium is a popular publishing platform where you can instantly publish your articles. However, you don’t technically own your website because Medium has the ability to shut it down for any reason. For details, see our comparison of WordPress vs Medium.

That’s why most savvy journalists and bloggers use WordPress. We recommend using the self-hosted WordPress.org because it comes with the all freedom and features that WordPress is known for. See our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org).

To start a WordPress.org website, you’ll need a domain name and WordPress hosting account.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the officially recommended WordPress hosting providers, and they’re offering WPBeginner users a free domain + 60% off.

Once you have signed up for hosting, see our step by step guide on how to start a WordPress blog for complete set up instructions.

That being, let’s take a look at some of the best Medium-style WordPress themes that you can use on your website.

Note: Some of these themes may not look exactly like Medium. However, they follow the same design practices like clean typography, enhanced readability, lots of white space, minimalism, and clutter free layout.

1. Medium

Medium is a WordPress theme designed for bloggers, writers, and publishers. It features a three column layout on the desktop and a single column layout on mobile and tablet devices.

It is designed to work out of the box with fewer theme options. You upload custom logo, choose accent colors, add custom CSS, and more through customizer. It supports all media formats like images, video embeds, and photo galleries. It is super easy to use and includes a getting started guide to help you start writing without struggling with theme setup.

2. Simfo

Simfo is a WordPress blogging theme with clean white spaces and beautiful typography. It has a beautiful featured content slider on the top and a filterable grid of your content below it.

Other noteable features include 8 color schemes, multiple post layouts, social media icons, footer widgets and more. It has a custom theme options panel that will help set up your website quickly.

3. Suisen

Suisen is a minimalist WordPress theme suitable for blogs, portfolio, artists, and news websites. It has a clean black and white layout which uses Roboto Mono font for unique typography.

It includes a widgetized homepage layout, which allows you to just drag and drop widgets to setup homepage. It includes custom widgets and lots of customization options in live customizer. It works with all popular page builder plugins and can also be used to add an online store to your website.

4. Elegant

Elegant is a beautiful responsive WordPress theme suitable for lifestyle blogs, vlogs, and writers. It comes with a powerful drag and drop page builder which allows you to easily edit pages and create your own layouts as well.

It includes multiple layouts for your posts, multiple header styles, beautiful image filters, and a portfolio section. All theme options are neatly organized which makes it quite easy to use for beginners.

5. Corner

Corner is a WordPress theme for creative professionals with a minimal layout that allows you to showcase more of your content without any clutter.

It is ecommerce ready and allows you to use any colors you want. With a widgetized layout and custom widgets, you will be able to easily setup your homepage in minutes. It includes support for social media integration and works with tested with all major WordPress plugins.

6. The Chatter

Chatter is a Medium style WordPress theme suitable for magazine websites, blogs, and portfolios. It comes with 3 slider styles, multiple color schemes, different header styles, and multiple layouts.

For typography it allows you to choose different custom fonts that work great with the design. It also has a drag and drop page builder, 1-click demo installer, and a custom theme options panel for quicker setup.

7. Monochrome

Monochrome is a Medium style WordPress theme with a minimalist approach to design. It uses a simple black and white design with lots of white space and crisp typography. The simplicity makes your content and images pop out and creates a more enjoyable reading experience.

It is built on Genesis theme framework and includes custom headers, widgetized homepage, four widget areas, and full WooCommerce support. It also includes templates for pricing and landing pages.

8. Eagle

Eagle is a beautiful choice for a minimalist portfolio WordPress theme, a blog, or lifestyle website. Its homepage features a welcome message on top followed by masonry grid of portfolio items or your blog posts.

It includes support for Google fonts, contact form plugin, templates for about us and a separate blog page. It comes with 1-click demo installer and an easier theme options page.

9. Maker Pro

Maker Pro is a Genesis child theme with intense focus on readability and usability. It looks stunning on all devices and screen sizes, which makes it perfect for personal blogs, portfolios, and magazine websites.

It includes custom header, full width page template, full width cover images, and beautiful headings. It works out of the box and theme setup is quite straight forward.

10. Latest

Latest is a minimalist WordPress theme for authors, magazine websites, and online stores. It features beautiful homepage designs that put your product or content in front and center.

It has a beautiful blog template where you can put featured posts and pages on the top. It handles all your photos and videos gracefully and beautifully displays them. Despite many features, it is very easy to use and install.

11. Rikke

Rikke is a beautifully designed free WordPress theme for blogs, magazines, and authors. It has a clean black and white design with collapsible navigation menus on top.

It includes color selection, font options, custom widgets, blog options, and more. All theme options are neatly organized under live theme customizer.

12. TheMin

Themin is a clean minimalist WordPress theme suitable for multi-author websites, blogs, and magazines. It features a collapsible navigation menu and search feature on top, which is followed by an optional hero image with your call to action.

It has multiple layouts for single posts and blog page. It also includes full width page template that you can use with any page builder of your choice. Theme setup is quite beginner friendly with a custom settings page and live customizer support.

13. Writr

Writr is a free Medium style WordPress theme for writers and bloggers. It uses a simple two column layout with navigation and sidebar located in the left-column.

It has 6 color schemes turquoise (default), blue, green, grey, purple, and red. It has beautiful icons for post formats and support for author bio box. It is translation ready and can also be used with page builder plugins if you need landing pages.

14. Satchmo

If you are looking for a Medium like minimalist WordPress theme for podcasting then check out Satchmo. Crafted with care and attention to details, it would make your podcast episodes fun and easier to listen.

It has beautiful layouts to display podcast episodes, a section to add featured guests, hosts page, and more. Its audio embed looks great on all devices. For quicker installation it has 1-click demo install and simpler theme setup.

15. Wisteria

Need a free minimalist WordPress theme for your website? Take a look at Wisteria. This simple black and white theme features a black navigation menu on a white background. It uses beautiful typography and it is perfect for blogs and news websites.

It uses a simple two column layout, with basic theme customization features. It just works out of the box and would be great if you just want to quickly start writing.

16. Aesthetic

If you need Medium like readability with more styling options, then you’ll like Aesthetic. It is a WordPress theme for lifestyle, fashion, and personal websites. It includes unlimited color choices with different article listing styles like list, grid, masonry, multi-column, and full-width.

It is WooCommerce ready and comes with a page builder plugin as well. For easier setup you can use the 1-click demo installer or start from scratch using theme options panel.

17. Baskerville

Named after the renowned Baskerville typeface designer John Baskerville, this beautiful free WordPress theme is focused on elegant typography in a modern grid layout. It uses Wisdom Pro and Roboto fonts throughout site-design.

It comes with infinite scroll support, grid and list layouts, like functionality for posts, and beautiful author bio box section.

18. Pepper+

Need a simpler design but with all the features of multi-purpose WordPress themes? Pepper+ does exactly that. It comes with multiple website designs to choose from and a powerful modules based drag and drop interface.

This theme got everything sliders, portfolio, photo galleries, contact form, pricing tables, event countdowns, and more. You can install any of the available designs with a click and then just use drag and drop to edit your pages.

19. Journalistic

Journalistic is a Medium inspired WordPress theme for long form articles, storytelling, and magazine websites. It features a wide two column layout, a sticky featured content column, and a collapsible sidebar with navigation menus.

It ships with 19 color schemes and you can also define your own colors. It has integrated support for beautiful Typekit fonts. It is quite easy to use with 1-click demo installer, custom theme settings page, and live customization support.

20. Author

Author is a simple and free WordPress blog theme for authors. Featuring a two column layout, this theme is designed for better readability with engaging user experience.

It features author photo on top followed by site description and social icons in the sidebar. The content column uses large headings and featured images to make your content pop out. It has simple setup and works out of the box with minimal settings required.

21. Everly

Everly is another great minimalist WordPress theme with simple black and white design. Optimized for readability, it uses magazine style layout to feature your most important content on the top.

It includes 4 homepage and blog layouts, different header styles, 6 post formats, Instagram feed, and more. It has native areas to display ads on your website.

22. Flat

Flat is a free WordPress theme with a beautiful and unique design. It has a two column layout with a narrow sidebar on the left and a wide column for your blog posts.

It uses beautiful icons in navigation menus, large featured images, and works with all popular WordPress plugins.

23. Author Pro

Author Pro is designed as a WordPress theme for authors, writers, and publishers. It offers an enhanced readability experience with subtle colors, white space, and beautiful crisp typography.

Built on top of Genesis framework, it ships with Genesis Author Pro plugin which allows you ro create a book library within your site to attractively display book details in single and archive views as well as any widget area. It is very easy to use and works out of the box with very little effort.

24. Publisher

Publisher is a beautiful WordPress theme for magazines, multi-author websites, and blogs. It comes with multiple layout choices like masonry grid, two column blog layout, unique backgrounds for each post, and more.

It beautifully handles your media and displays them as featured image on top. It also includes beautiful templates for photo galleries, videos, and other content types. Inside you will also find a getting started guide to walk you through theme setup process.

We hope this article helped you find the best Medium like WordPress theme for your website. You may also want to see our step by step WordPress speed and performance guide for beginners.

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