Best Free Drupal 9 Themes for Media and Publishing websites

| | 3 min read

Drupal is always the first choice for technical architects to design a content-heavy website. Drupal's ability to handle high traffic volume influenced the decision to use it for The Whether ChannelAl Jazeera, The News Minute etc.

Drupal can also act as a Content as a Service (CaaS) platform, which makes it suitable to build a collection of specific micro-media portals that pull content from a central repository.

You can read more about why Drupal 9  is a good fit for the media and publishing industry here and how important Drupal 9 themes to have a responsive website today.

Media MVP and ready-to-use Drupal 9 themes

Drupal's capability to build a media site quickly with a ready-to-use theme enables publishers to test its capabilities and define more exclusive features. Finding a good theme that fits this purpose is always a challenge. We need to pick one that allows the stakeholders to review the capabilities - even before the final look and feel are finalized.

Here is a curated list of the best free drupal 9 themes suitable for the media and publishing industry.

 

 

Best Free Drupal 9 Themes For the Media and Publishing Industry

1. Barrio

Bootstrap Logo

Barrio is a Bootstrap 4/5-based theme, valid for the media and publishing industry. This free Drupal 8/9 theme serves as a base theme on which you can add different styles. It has configurable column layouts, automatic 1, 2 and 3 column layouts, customisable twig templates, message customisation and predefined Google font combination. It also offers Colour module integration on subthemes. It enables you to use a variety of styles for different elements like dropdown menus, fonts and more. Drupal markup is completely overwritten as standard Bootstrap 4/5 markup using from roots twig templates referencing only Bootstrap CSS, and little custom CSS. Barrio is Flex based on whatever is not covered by Bootstrap.

2. Showcase Lite

Showcase Lite

Showcase Lite is a Drupal theme based on Bootstrap 3 that offers mobile-friendly layouts. The theme includes clean HTML5 and CSS3 codebase, 1, 2 and 3 column layouts, 34 configurable block regions and superfish menus. It also offers intuitive navigation with touch-enabled and keyboard-accessible dropdown menus.

 

 

3. Creative Responsive Theme

creative responsive theme desktop version
Creative Responsive Theme in various devices

Creative Responsive theme is a modern and lightweight Drupal 9 compatible theme. It does not depend on any core themes and is a minimalistic yet responsive theme. It has clean HTML5 markups, a multi-level dropdown menu, responsive hero banner, 16 block regions and social media integration. It also offers a choice between 1, 2 or 3 column layouts and Nivo Slider that helps feature banners and add slides to the slideshow.

4. NewsPlus Lite

News+ Lite

NewsPlus Lite is a mobile-first Bootstrap 3 based lightweight and responsive Drupal 9 theme. It is designed for the media industry, specifically the news and magazine websites. It offers 3 column layout, clean HTML5 and CSS3 codebase and a rich footer. 

5. Magazine Lite

Magazine Lite Drupal Theme

Magazine Lite is a Drupal 9-compatible theme based on Bootstrap 3 that helps create stylish and sleek news and magazine websites. It uses HTML5 and CSS3 languages, provides mobile-first layouts, offers superfish menus and supports 1, 2 and 3 column layouts.

6. Photographer

Photographer theme

Photographer is a responsive and modern one-page Drupal 9 theme based on the Drupal blank theme. It offers a responsive and mobile-friendly layout, easy navigation, jQuery Drop Down Menu, Font Awesome Integration and social media integration. It also allows customisation options to insert copyright and to set the style for links, body and more.

7. Electra

Electra mockup

Electra is a SAAS based Drupal 9 compatible theme that uses modern design to help you attract visitors to the site. It uses the latest Bootstrap 4 version and was specifically developed for media websites. It allows more control over the website with custom block types and customised theme options. You can change header colours, set default article headers settings, manage link styles and choose a background image. It also offers unique login, the latest Font Awesome 5 free icons, registrations and forgot password page.

8. Easy News

Easy News Theme

Easy news based on Uikit scripts and styling is a lightweight and responsive theme suitable for news publishing websites. It offers features like responsive grid layout and right sidebar, dropdown menu for small and medium devices, image optimisation, responsive inline images, and hover effect for buttons, thumbnails and badges. You can customise colour schemes, teasers, comments and user profiles.

If you are interested in creating an MVP for your media portal idea in Drupal, you can schedule a meeting with our digital consulting team and contact our team for any Drupal Theme Development and Drupal Migration Services. We are working with many high-traffic media websites including The News Minute and Benzinga.