Flex Mag is a beautiful blog, magazine and news template created in September 2015, by the American Envato Power Elite author, MVP Themes. This elegant item is available on Themeforest, a market that uses different templates and styles to create a highly stimulating news, blog, portfolios, and journal website. Flex Mag is loaded with features and pre-built layouts designed to help you create an appealing site.
Design
This template was carefully designed with multiple Featured Post layouts for showcasing your content on the homepage, infinite scrolling with auto-loading, and can be used to create a one-page website using Parallax visual effects.
Loaded with features like Sticky Sidebars, custom-built widgets, four skins to change the general aspect of your website, Flex Mag is an interesting theme to explore and discover.
The usage of the logo location is a smart solution the author applied in Flex Mag. Without being able to change to header style, you can choose between three different ways to display your logo in the main area of your website, Leaderboard, Nav or Wide. Flex Mag can have four general skins, featured post layouts and templates perfect to add fluidity to your site.
Functionality
Flex Mag Options panel includes all the usual, basic settings. In a separate tab, called ‘Background’, you’ll be redirected to the theme’s customizer where you will discover that an image can be set as background. This background image can be fixed or can scroll down as you navigate.
The theme authors also included an ad system that allows you to use your ads and adjust their size, in height and width.
If you are an experienced WordPress user, willing to fully customize your website and not lose the primary file data, you’ll be glad to know that the template has a child theme included.
Combining the Flex Mag Options panel and the theme’s customizer, you can set up a beautiful website, using simple settings and no coding skills. The theme design is responsive and Retina Ready, opening your site to mobile users. Flex Mag is also compatible with WooCommerce and bbPress forums.
| GENERAL | |
|---|---|
| Item name | FlexMag |
| Category | News / Blog / Magazine / Editorial |
| Type | Premium |
| Author | MVP Themes |
| Envato elite author | - |
| Tested version | 1.08 |
| COMPATIBILITY | |
| Content width | 1400 px |
| Browser compatibility | IE8+ / Chrome / FF / Opera / Safari |
| WooCommerce | Yes |
| bbPress | Yes |
| BuddyPress | Yes |
| WPML | Yes |
| FONTS AND TRANSLATION | |
| Integrated translation | - |
| Google fonts | Yes |
| Custom fonts | - |
| Typekit fonts | - |
| RTL support | - |
| POST FEATURES | |
| Video posts | Yes |
| Audio posts | Yes |
| Post templates | 8 |
| Review system | - |
| Post view counter | Yes |
| Smart lists | - |
| Social share | Yes |
| Custom image lightbox | - |
| Custom image galery | Yes |
| PAGE FEATURES | |
| Page templates | 6 |
| Blocks | 9 |
| Widgets | 10 |
| Header styles | 1 |
| Footer styles | 1 |
| Category layouts | 9 |
| Masonry layout | - |
| Mega menus | - |
| Sticky menu | Yes |
| Sticky sidebars | Yes |
| Social networks | Yes |
| Social counter | Yes |
| Video playlists | - |
| Instagram widget | - |
| Currency widget | - |
| Pinterest widget | - |
| Weather widget | - |
| OTHER FEATURES | |
| Mobile theme | - |
| Demos included | 1 |
| SEO optimized | Yes |
| ADS | |
| Ad system | Yes |
| Adsense support | Yes |
| Background image ad | Yes |
| Custom ads | Yes |
| PERFORMANCE | |
| CSS file size | 97 kb |
| Overall speed | Medium |
| Performance documentation | - |
| USER EXPERIENCE | |
| Total ratings | 138 |
| User rating | |
| Learnability | Medium |
| DESIGN | |
| Responsive design | Yes |
| Retina ready | Yes |
| DOCUMENTATION | |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Explanations | Less Detailed |
| Explicit screen shots | Yes |
| Video tutorials | Yes |
| Search option | - |
| Extra documentation | - |
| VALUE | |
| Price | $59 |
| Value for the money | Good |
Performance
In our era, time has become a precious commodity. We value a product by the benefits it offers, but we also judge it by the speed its output is delivered. We have tested Flex Mag default demo on different page speed tests, and it loads the content at a low speed.
Downsides
Flex Mag theme doesn’t have a page builder, but you can combine the website predefined templates (skins), nine homepage layouts with featured post option to reach the structure you desire. This process can be time-consuming and frustrating especially for beginners. Although you can customize this combination of options, layouts, and templates, somehow a News and Magazine website could use more versatility in the page building process.
Lightbox effect, video playlists, reviews system and support for RTL are, also, missing from Flex Mag theme.
