Maxima – Minimal Blog & Magazine WordPress Theme

Translating a blog changes the words; writing in Arabic flips the page

You install a good-looking theme, translate the text into Arabic or Hebrew, and find that translation was the easy part. The words are now in their language, but the menu, the margins and the reading flow are still designed to run left to right. The page makes sense and still feels foreign.

Anyone publishing in a right-to-left language needs a theme that mirrors the layout, and that is worth checking before the design. Maxima, the Aspire Themes theme for minimal blogs, adjusts its layout and styles for those languages, comes with an Arabic translation and includes a .pot file to take its text into any other language. It also works for a blog in Spanish or English: the idea is the same, a clean grid and few features.

Three masonry columns and a sidebar that moves aside

The idea is to do one thing, publish posts, without features you will not use. This is what it brings for that:

• Masonry grid home page with three columns, responsive across phones, tablets and desktop.
• Off-canvas sidebar that closes when you touch the content.
• Your own logo, uploaded from the admin without writing code.
• Customizable footer with four widget areas.
• Search page with its own header and pagination.
• Designed 404 error page with a list of your recent posts.
• Sharing buttons for Twitter and Facebook.

Embedded videos that fit the screen

A video pasted into a post can have a fixed width and overflow the column on mobile. Maxima makes embedded videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, TED, Dailymotion, Facebook and VideoPress responsive, so they fit any screen size.

If your blog discusses videos or publishes recorded interviews, this saves you from preparing each embed by hand. The fit also reaches videos that appear in comments.

A blog theme, with its limits in plain view

Block editor: it is not optimized for Gutenberg. If your posts depend on advanced blocks, test several on a staging install before migrating.

Shop and builder: its features include neither a shop nor a page builder.

Revenue and newsletter: its features include neither ad slots nor subscription forms. The footer areas accept any kind of widget, so a form from another plugin could go there. Test it with the plugin you use.

Large magazine: its features revolve around the post grid. They do not include modular section-based home pages.

How to get it ready with the demo imported

The package consists of PHP, CSS and JS files. Anyone modifying the theme works with Sass, ITCSS, Gulp, NPM and Bower. To get it running:

1. Install and activate Maxima from Appearance, Themes.
2. Import the demo data with one click.
3. Upload your logo and arrange widgets across the four footer areas.
4. Set WordPress to your site language and translate what you need with the .pot file.
5. Publish a real post with images and a video, and check it on your phone. If you write right to left, also look at the menu and footer.

Veen, Weeland or JNews, depending on what you publish

If you plan to live on advertising, Veen comes with built-in ad slots and a modular home page you reorder by dragging.

For a personal lifestyle, food or travel blog, Weeland also uses a masonry grid, with a fixed left sidebar.

If yours is a media outlet with many sections, JNews offers more than 150 home page demos and works with Gutenberg, Elementor and WPBakery.

Maxima for anyone running a blog

Does it work for a blog in Arabic or Hebrew?

Yes. Its layout and styles adjust to right-to-left languages like these, and it comes with an Arabic translation.

Can I translate it into Spanish?

Yes. It includes a .pot file for translating all the theme text into your language.

How many columns does the home page have?

Three, in a masonry-style grid.

Which networks can readers share to?

Twitter and Facebook.

Is it good for showing videos?

Yes. Videos embedded from services such as YouTube, Vimeo or Twitch adapt to the screen.

What does someone see on a page that does not exist?

A designed error page with your recent posts, so they can keep reading.