WordPress Plugins For Publishing Your Own Magazine
A look at some top-notch plugins for publishing your magazine on WordPress.
Your content should be presented as well as it is written. Whether it’s the articles you’ve painstakingly written and researched, work you have commissioned from professional writers, or submissions from community contributors who have spent their free time creating valuable and interesting content, it should always be presented to the reader in the best possible format.
And, as good as your WordPress website is and as cool as your theme looks, you might want an application that will allow you to show off your content in the best light and share/distribute it as simply as possible.
One way around this issue is to configure your website as a magazine.
With the suitable free WordPress magazine themes, you can get most of the way there. But what if you really want the website to show off your content, not your content to show off your website?
A dedicated magazine plugin can put a high-quality publication on your site that lets your users get the most out of the content you have worked so hard to gather and curate.
This article looks at some plugins that can turn your WordPress site into a quality magazine format. So, let’s flip through them…
PublishPress Series
PublishPress adds a taxonomy (so, in addition to “categories” and “tags,” you also have “series” as a taxonomy type) that allows you to link articles that are part of a series and display a listing of those articles as a widget or in the post itself as a meta box.
This plugin is particularly helpful if you publish a multi-part series or display indexed documentation. Perfect for authors, comics, photographers, or any media that would look good as a magazine format.
It’s a highly rated plugin with thousands of downloads. Plus, it’s updated regularly, so your magazine site will run smoothly.
IssueM
Maybe the most comprehensive solution available in the market, IssueM is an award-winning plugin that uses custom post types to turn your WordPress website into a publishing machine.
This plugin works with any theme and creates web-based articles that promote sharing. It even includes a page-flipping feature for the ultimate magazine experience.
Used by over 1000 publishers, IssueM is a plugin worth checking out and experiencing for yourself.
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Calameo
Calameo is another excellent service that allows you to upload publications to their site and share them across platforms. Their WordPress plugin helps you easily embed Calameo documents in your WordPress website.
One of the most exciting features that Calameo offers is its specialized support for tablets and smartphones, allowing your users also to be able to view your documents effortlessly.
You can easily imbed music and videos into your content, enable a zoom feature for easy reading, include a table of contents, and much more. Be sure to view all of their examples to get a good idea of all the features.
3D FlipBook
3D FlipBook is a 5-star, very popular plugin that allows your viewers to images, PDFs, and HTML as a flipbook — giving the content the ultimate magazine treatment.
It’s coined as the most exact model of a book or magazine for the web. Its simulation of being able to read via a WordPress site that is high quality. Plus, this plugin is free to use.
The 3D feature makes it a top contender for a magazine plugin and is worth trying out.
News & Blog Designer Pack
The News & Blog Designer Pack can get a news or blog page created for you quickly and easily. Its made for magazine-themed WordPress sites and is free to use (although there are Premium upgrades available).
It consists of shortcodes, which can do various things (e.g. display a news post in a grid view).
This plugin is straightforward to use. However, there’s not a ton of bells & whistles to it (e.g. social sharing), but it still may fit the bill for your magazine site. It has 5-stars and is used by over 20K users.
Magazine Plugins are Something to Flip For
When you want your readers to experience the sensation of flipping through a magazine, a good magazine plugin can do the trick. Hopefully, one of the plugins featured in this article can subscribe to.
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Hassan Akhtar Hassan Akhtar is the lead dev for Smush and HummingBird. In his free time he enjoys writing about his development adventures at WPGurus.net.