The gaming industry is huge right now. People meet all over the world at conventions, and sometimes they just sit on their couches to chat with people from across the globe while shooting up zombies or other creatures we’ve never seen before. One thing you’ll notice about the gaming world is that people love talking about the games they’re playing. So if Call of Duty is coming out, you’ll see that thousands of bloggers, publications and gamers are taking to the internet to speculate on what they can expect to get out of the game. It’s a beautiful market, and since it’s such a profitable and active one, why not try to make some money out of it yourself?
If you’ve got an idea for a gaming website, you first need to start by figuring out how to launch that idea. Some might have some development experience, or a friend who says they can build a site, but the best route to take is with one of the WordPress gaming themes we’re going to outline below. Why should you go with a WordPress theme? Because there’s no point in reinventing the wheel. If someone has already made a stunning template for you, why would you try to develop a gaming website from scratch? Since so many gaming themes are available for you to choose from, we did the dirty work for you and compiled a list of beautiful and engaging options. These have ratings systems, responsive elements and media support like you wouldn’t believe. Therefore, keep reading to find the best gaming themes on the market.
What Features to Look For In a Gaming Theme
Anyone who is interested in creating a gaming website should bear in mind the content requirements. As such, you will most likely want to show off game screenshots as well as video gameplay. When choosing a theme, make sure the theme supports embedding videos from third-party websites. Adding a built-in gallery is also crucial or at the very least, integration with a gallery plugin. If you’re focused on game reviews, make sure your theme has the option to allow for custom rating. And if you’re focused on building a website for your guild or a clan, choose a theme that supports those features.
Who Should Use a Gaming Theme
Gaming themes aren’t reserved just for game critics or bloggers who are passionate about reviewing their favorite video games. Game shop owners can benefit from gaming themes, especially if they integrate with WooCommerce. Even gamers looking to create a website for their clan can create a community-based website with themes that bring social features to the table with BuddyPress or bbPress support. Finally, you can launch your own website featuring various arcade games and attract fellow gamers to your website.
Game Portal WordPress Theme
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The Game Portal WordPress Theme is an option from the folks at Template Monster, and it starts with a responsive design for people to look at your gaming articles from their mobile devices. And let’s be honest, gamers are known to do stuff on their tablets and phones, so this is a huge benefit. This is a fixed width theme, with some colorful items and stunning graphics. Most of the graphics are from the demo content, but this is a great start to seeing what you can do with your own images. Users can login and register to your site, while also searching at the top to find the exact game they want to check in on. The menu bar is easy to manipulate, allowing you to make pages for things like reviews, videos and cheats. A sleek slider sits at the top of the homepage, revealing images and links to your most recent reviews.
You’ll notice that the majority of the Game Portal WordPress Theme is powered by widgets, which makes it simple for dragging and dropping elements throughout your site. For example, if you want to implement an email subscription form on your homepage, there’s no reason to code one yourself. Just take the widget and find a good spot on the homepage. Show off the latest updates to your blog, and create a feed of the best reviews that have been recently added to the site. People are allowed to comment on your reviews to generate discussion. In addition, the rating system is handy for having a visual analysis of the certain games that come in. The full blog is actually where you’ll do most of your work, and it’s all optimized to ensure that Google knows that you have good content. Recent tweets can be showcased in one of the widgets, and you can even place social media buttons anywhere you’d like. In general, the Game Portal WordPress Theme works well with all third party plugins, so the options are limitless.
Hikari
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Try out the Hikari WordPress theme if you’d like a responsive design with a page builder on the backend. This is a theme that’s been built on Bootstrap, so you know it runs well. Not to mention, the page builder is the ideal tool for advanced users and beginners alike, since you can pump out pages without knowing any code. The Hikari theme has a beautiful header image that takes up most of the screen, and the parallax backgrounds are nice for grabbing attention and showing that you have some creativity. Over 600 fonts and color combinations are provided to you, and the responsiveness of the theme means that people can look at your gaming articles when on the train, bus or in the back seat of a car. We really like the header because it has overlaying text and buttons, which are great for using call to actions that link to articles or potential product pages.
A huge portfolio is provided, and it has filters for guiding users to the most relevant content. In addition, the portfolio uses a grid based system with links and animation for a fun and engaging atmosphere. Oh yea, and users can like the portfolio pieces to show that they approve. The social media buttons are nice for building your followings, while the drag and drop interface on the backend comes with various blocks for things like news and shortcodes. The Hikari theme is compatible with bbPress, which is for building a forum and making it so that all of your users can chat with others about games. The ratings system is one of the standout features, since it lets you and the users rate based on stars, while also writing reviews to show which games they like the best. Along with Font Awesome icons and support for WooCommerce, the Hikari theme is packed with possibilities.
Gonzo
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The Gonzo WordPress theme is a viable solution for gaming blogs, since it uses plenty of white space to differentiate it from the many darker colored themes on the market. Dark isn’t a bad thing, but many blogs see this shade as more mysterious, so it works with the gaming industry. However, you can standout from the crowd with this layout. The rating system comes into play when a new game comes onto the market. For example, if you wanted to review one of the Halo games, all you would have to do is play the game, write your review and then give it a rating. The publication would release it to all of your users, then these people could even give their own feedback on how they liked the game. The responsive design is great for viewing on smaller devices, and the comments area gives you two options to choose from. The first is the Facebook comments module, which is nice since people don’t have to create brand new accounts in order to write a comment. In addition, it expands how many people see your comments. The second commenting module is through WP Comments, giving you the trustiest solution out there.
The category slider works wonders for showing people what they can view on your website. In fact, some would argue that it keeps people on your site for a longer period of time since it almost provides a second form of menu navigation. The bbPress plugin works with the Gonzo theme, presenting a beautiful forum for people to chat in. Also, a connected author page gives your writers the credit they deserve. The Gonzo theme is filled with widgets for you to play around with. For example, you can share information about your Facebook followers, videos, Flickr images and more. Keep in mind that you can implement banners and ads throughout the layout of the Gonzo theme. If you’d like to start making money through your website, this becomes an essential part of doing so.
Rhino by Teslathemes
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Rhino is an option from the folks at TeslaThemes, and considering they do such good work on their themes, it’s no wonder they killed it on the gaming front. The responsive solution has functionality for bbPress, allowing for users to go on your forum and talk to others who want to debate about a certain game or explain how they got past a certain level. The subscribe widget comes into play when you start building your email list. You should technically start building the list right from the start. This way, whenever a new blog post comes out, people hear about it and can click through to read and share. The Revolution Slider plugin is packaged into the Rhino WordPress theme, helping out with beautiful animations and graphics that slide around like a presentation.
You also gain access to over 30 Tesla shortcodes, which are pre-built modules you can place throughout your site. The true benefit of a shortcode is that you don’t have to know anything about coding to make something look really nice on your site. For example, a button shortcode cuts your time in half, as opposed to a developer who tries to make that button from scratch. Font Awesome icons are included with the Rhino theme, and you can make color customization to meet your branding standards. The Rhino theme is also fully translatable, coming in huge with the fact that gamers are located all over the world. Just because you speak English doesn’t mean that your users do as well. Overall, the Rhino theme is a stunning solution, so give it a try if you’re into games.
GamingZone
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GamingZone has everything you need to create a professional gaming website. The homepage allows you to present your latest and most popular game reviews in an organized fashion. All the blog posts have attractive featured image options and the very top of the page is dominated by a responsive slider. Embedding videos is extremely easy and adding your own game ratings is a matter of minutes. Social media features encourage sharing of your content with the careful placement of social sharing buttons right below the content.
Customizing GamingZone allows you to upload your own logo, change the color scheme, add custom widgets, and more. This theme also has several dedicated areas for ad display which means it’s easy to monetize your website. The menus can be setup with the use of drag and drop editor. Built-in SEO options and integration with the most popular SEO plugins will make sure your ranks better in search engines. Naturally, the theme has a responsive design and is cross-browser compatible. On top of that, you can take advantage of several built-in page layouts to create a completely custom look and feel for your website.
Romero - Magazine Style Theme
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Romero theme features bold and vibrant imagery and is a great choice for a gaming website. The large featured images are sure to grab the attention of your visitors while still looking good on mobile devices and across different browsers. Your most important posts are displayed right at the top of the page, along with a full-width header image. The theme features infinite scroll and the ability to display related posts below individual blog posts. The header area can be set up to show your social media profiles, allowing you to effortlessly grow your following.
Romero includes several widget areas which can be populated with any type of content or information you want. Several custom page templates are also available allowing you to add a contributor page or a full-width page. Every aspect of Romero can be customized through the theme options panel and you can take customization a step further and build your own custom layout for any of the pages on your website. Add your own header or background, completely change the color scheme, re-arrange your homepage, and much more. Finally, take advantage of the built-in SEO tweaks and social sharing options to make sure your content gets the attention it deserves.
MH Joystick
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MH Joystick is a fully responsive, attractive theme that’s perfect for any gaming news website or a blog. The homepage features several, dedicated ad areas so you can easily insert AdSense ads or promote your favorite games with affiliate links. The theme offers a default traditional 2-column layout with the option to easily change the position of the sidebar or disable it completely. Every post has the option to display a featured image. Custom widgets are also included for extra functionality, allowing you to add a slider, a display your blog posts in a grid, embed a Youtube video, and more.
Customization options can be accessed through the theme options panel where you can easily change colors, upload your own logo, change the typography with Google Fonts, control the layout, and more. Built-in features such as author box, related content, and social sharing options make it easy to add extra features to your website and encourage visitor engagement. MH Joystick also offers several page templates and integration with FontAwesome icons which allow you to convert this theme into a truly unique website.
Salient
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The Salient theme is a great choice for an online gaming magazine. It’s an extremely powerful theme with plenty of features to get your website noticed. It comes with several different demos and includes a beautiful slider which is perfect for promoting recent gaming news or game reviews. You can choose a blog demo if you’d like to attract your readers with a grid-based layout with featured images or you can use the powerful Visual Composer builder to create any type of layout you want. It includes a drag-and-drop interface so all you have to do is drag elements to where you want them to appear on the page.
On top of that, Salient lets you create full-screen rows for any section on the page which is perfect when you want to put all the focus on one particular post. Video posts are also available so you can easily provide a video of a gameplay instead of a regular review. Share buttons are also included so you don’t have to worry about installing a third-party plugin and you can also insert social media icons to grow followers on Facebook, Twitter, and more. The theme also has plenty of customization options that allow you to tweak every aspect of the theme, along with several page templates to add some variety to your blog. You can even feature all the writers for your gaming magazine and showcase places where your blog has been featured. Along with SEO optimization, narrated video tutorials, and the ability to create an online store, the Salient theme is one to look into.
Games Zone
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GamesZone is cutting-edge theme with all the right features for a powerful gaming-related website. The theme includes a full-screen slider to promote the most popular game reviews along with a text overlay and a button that encourages users to read the entire review. A mega menu is just what you need when you have a lot of pages on your website and want to organize them neatly in your navigation menu. Each of the blog posts has a featured image along with a brief description of the post and you can even include video reviews which are sure to grab the attention of your readers.
Several ad posts are available so you can monetize your website with ease and you can even feature a calendar of upcoming game releases to keep your readers updated. Plenty of shortcodes are included to help you add buttons, lists, toggles, and more and the entire theme can be customized on the backend to create the exact look and feel that you want for your magazine. Change the colors, upload your own logo, customize the fonts, and create an unlimited number of sidebars. Finally, the theme is completely responsive so users who prefer their phones and tablets will still be able to keep up with all the latest gaming related news from your website.
Made
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Made has a strong focus on reviews with over 50 different options dedicated to reviews alone so you can truly customize them to your own liking. You can also choose between a star, letter, number or percent rating as well allow your visitors to submit their own reviews. On top of that, the theme integrates fully with bbPress and BuddyPress so you can easily create your own gaming community. Featured videos are also available if you’d like to provide a short gameplay video or a video reviews.
The theme has multiple widget spaces which are great for adding various content modules such as your latest posts, posts from a certain category, latest reviews, and much more. Over 80 shortcodes are available to easily add buttons, columns, and more and the theme options panel lets you change the colors, fonts, and more. Additionally, you can also integrate various ads to monetize your website. Along with responsive design, complete social integration, and extensive documentation, Made is definitely worth checking out.
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