DigiMag Lite Theme Review

General design

This free theme Digimag focuses on content display, therefore, each element is made to highlight the article at best. That can be seen through the well-organized slider, header, top trending articles, and all other stuff on the homepage.

Especially, this digital magazine theme comes up with a modern, robust and dynamic design. That can be seen through the square and straight line and the tone of color in the design.

Other elements

You will feel so fresh and cool right away with the blue color - the main tone of Digimag. This color is the emphasis of this free theme, while others like light grey, white and black helps the whole appearance somewhat elegant.

Poppin - the simple and rounded typeface - is the sole font of this free theme. It's used with different style and suitable size so the texts can be readable. This is also the only font in default so you can't change it.

This grid-based free theme has a very smart organization. All the pieces of the homepage can be seen both clearly and intuitively despite the fact that there is a lot of things in the header and the first screen area.

Home page design

Scrolling down, your readers can keep up with the latest posts and prominent posts easily. The main posts are in a list with large featured images together with both sidebars. I think that the two sidebars keep the symmetrical design of the whole page when you scrolling down so you should use it wisely.

Along with the list style for the blog post on the homepage, there is another style: the masonry style with 2 columns. If you use it, the left sidebar disappears to make room for the main posts. However, I think that this style makes this part of the homepage quite cramped.

The grid style of archive page

Similarly, the archive page has masonry-style but this is the only one you have.

The single post looks quite humble with a small featured image like this:

The single post page without header image

But when you enable the header image, single post pages can be prettier and so stunning with a full-screen parallax header image. That's brilliant! I recommend you use a header image.

The single post page with header image

Responsive design

When you use this free digital magazine on mobile devices, it looks still good. But you won't have the menu on the right of the top bar. It disappears because the topbar is so narrow.

The design on mobile device without the menu on the right of the top bar

You can see the responsive design in all kinds of the device here.

Responsive design

Because Digimag Lite is the free version of Digimag, it doesn't support one-click demo import like the pro version. Thus, you have to manually set it up.

You have to install and connect to Jetpack to have this Content Options in the Customizer first and then select a static homepage.

Options in Customizer before installing Jetpack

Options in Customizer after installing Jetpack

It's not so difficult to set up this free digital magazine theme, but you may find it confusing and time-consuming to set up the front page widget to have a complete homepage like the demo.

Jetpack compatibility helps you have the slider carousel, but other modules included like related posts, portfolios, and testimonials don't run on this free WordPress magazine theme. Moreover, the Mega Menu is only compatible with the pro version.

However, Digimag still has what you need for a simple digital magazine theme.

The only tool you need to work with is the Customizer with live preview. It includes all the basic options, moreover, the homepage widget to set up a stunning homepage.

But look at the color section first. It has only one section for the header text. Thus, generally, the appearance seems not to be changed at all.

Customizing color

There is also no section for a background image. That's a disadvantage of this free theme when you can't change the color and typography.

The header image will keep the default frame although you crop it. So, you should resize your image before upload to have the desirable display.

Customizing header image

There are some sections to display the small elements of the blog, post, and pagination. It's easy to do so I won't write much. I will focus on the homepage elements as it's quite complicated.

Different from most of the other themes I reviewed, Digimag uses special widgets to build the front page. Here they are:

The frontpage widgets

I don't say that it's difficult to set up these widgets. But I find that it's confusing for you to arrange and choose a suitable widget among many special widgets from Digimag here:

The special widgets

There are many extraordinary widgets besides the basic ones from GretaThemes. Surely they broaden your choices for any widget areas. But they're most helpful if you can select and arrange them reasonably on the homepage.

Digimag has all the standard blocks from the Gutenberg editor. They're easy to use and looks decent.

This code is written on a blackboard and has a navigation so you can read it fully easily.

Code inside a post

The table is spacious and nice.

Table inside a post

A video embedded is full-width but looks a bit small.

Video embedded

Because Digimag Lite is already optimized for SEO, you can write better content and get a higher rank without installing an SEO plugin. But the author even recommends SlimSEO to make your SEO more perfect.

Testing the theme's speed by PageSpeed Insights, I saw that the performance is not good. But it's still acceptable for a video-based theme.

Website speed checked by PageSpeed Insights

The documentation is easy to understand with step-by-step guides for all the needed sections to set up, install, and customize this free theme.

Through the free support ticket system, every user can access to the supporting team easily and quickly receive a response in one or two days.

However, I don't find the answer from GretaThemes to any ticket in the WordPress support forum at all.