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Given that travel blogging is such a visual affair, there are tons of travel blog WordPress Themes out there for travel bloggers, allowing you to build a blog that looks perfect.
From the colors to the images, the layout of the homepage and the footer at the bottom, each component of your website matters when it comes to sharing your travels with the world.
Worried that you don’t have any technical skills? Or that can’t code or aren’t familiar with WordPress or simply have no idea where to start?
Luckily, themes were invented to give bloggers (and anyone else who wants to build a website) a total break.
Instead of having to build an entire website with custom code, today you can install a theme, customize it to your liking and then get your blog up and running in the blink of an eye.
A theme is one of the most important and valuable resources a travel blogger can have because it’ll give you full control over the look and feel of your blog.
It’ll impact everything from your color palate to the layout, the images and the scrolling… Themes can do it all! And the best part is, they’re easy to install, a breeze to customize and will get your blog live in no time.
Building a Travel Blog on WordPress
Before I start talking about themes, it is important to state that when it comes to building a travel blog, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better platform than WordPress.
In fact, more than 36% of all websites online are built using WordPress! Due to its diverse functionality, wide range of capabilities and cult-like following, WordPress is pretty much the top content management system on the web and where most bloggers turn to build their websites.
While bloggers of all kinds flock to WordPress, it’s important to note that they’re making their way to WordPress.org rather than WordPress.com.
WordPress.com is a platform that actually hosts blogs and allows you to create one for free, while WordPress.org is a platform designed for self-hosted blogs.
While it is easy to get confused… just remember, if you want to earn from your blog, use WordPress.Org!
For a travel blog, the self-hosted route is certainly the best one to take in order to ensure that you have full capabilities and functionality to do what you want with your website.
With self-hosting on WordPress you:
- Own and control your blog – Using free blogging platforms means lots of terms and conditions, frequently stating that your blog can be deleted without warning. There’s also the risk that your content can be used without your consent or the platform shuts down entirely! No thank you.
- Can monetize your blog – Free blogging platforms generally restrict third-party advertising and other ways of monetizing your blog. While this may not be something you’re thinking about now, it’s good to keep your options open for growth down the road. When you use a self-hosted platform, you have full control of what you do with your blog, when.
- Modify the website’s code – It’s typically impossible to modify your blog’s code if you’re working off a free platform, but with self-hosting on WordPress, you can change up anything you’d like… including the code.
- Have full authority over what your blog looks like – Finally, even if you can’t code, with self-hosting on WordPress, you can choose from thousands of themes to deck out and customize your blog however you want. Beyond just making it look good, self-hosting looks way more professional than using a free blogging platform where there are tell-tale signs that your blog is owned by someone else (credit links in the footer, sidebar, extended URL).
Because of all of these reasons, most bloggers (including us!) turn to WordPress.org for a self-hosted blog.
WordPress.org is free to use… you just need to purchase hosting to get your blog up and running.
We personally recommend Bluehost because it’s the most used and trusted hosting network online, and the least expensive (when you use our discount!) allowing you to start a blog for just $2.95 a month.
It’s what we use personally and have been happy with their customer support and value for money. Plus, the fact that you get a free domain when you purchase hosting is a cherry on top!
The fact is it is one of the most affordable hosting options out there which is why we love recommending it to others.
Best WordPress Themes for Travel Blogs
As I mentioned earlier, WordPress makes it extremely easy for bloggers to customize their websites through the thousands and thousands of themes available to download and install on your blog.
You can head to the WordPress.org theme gallery and download heaps for free, or you can purchase a premium theme that will give you way more control over the look and feel of your website.
Premium vs. Free Themes
First off, before I get to my actual theme recommendations, let me first talk about the main difference between a free and premium theme.
Premium themes for WordPress are an investment and can cost anywhere from $5 – $80 BUT they’ll give you so much more functionality than a free theme.
Whether it’s changing the colors, redesigning the layout of pages, or customizing it with your own branding, a premium theme is really worth the spend when it comes to building a travel blog!
In our years of blogging experience, we’ve seen so many people fall into the trap of not wanting to spend any additional money for blog set up so they settle for a free theme.
While there’s nothing wrong with this, customizing your blog on a free theme and making it look exactly the way you want takes SO MUCH more time! Time that you can spend building out your blog content, marketing your website and creating a successful blog.
When you purchase a premium theme, you’re not only paying for your blog to look great, but the convenience of not having to know a drop of code to make things appear just the way you imagined. Using a premium theme will save you days of work and more headaches than any one person needs…
Is that worth $60? In our opinion, it’s a solid yes.
No matter what you choose, using a theme is the easiest way to build out the front end of your blog without needing to know a single bit of code.
15Zine
I thought I’d kick off this list of best travel blog themes with the theme that we use on Adventure in You. 15Zine is one of the top rated magazine themes and it’s super easy to get looking the way you want even if you’re a total beginner.
One of the best parts of 15Zine is how intuitive it is to set up and the range of options available for bloggers to design their dream websites. It operates on a drag and drop builder, has infinite scroll options and fun features like dark / light skins, a trending menu and more, to get your blog looking just right.
It is a little bit heavy and not as intuitive BUT it still is a great theme.
Key Features:
Divi
One of the most popular WordPress themes in the entire world, Divi is not only a theme, but a page builder too which makes it SUPER POWERFUL.
With Divi, you’re able to design your website visually from the front end (so useful to see what things are looking like!) which makes building out your blog easier, faster and more efficient. The effects available are stunning and allow you to customize everything without a drop of code.
There are also more than 800 pre-made website layouts that you can import onto your blog and edit as you wish!
The reason why so many people flock to Divi is because of how easy it is to make your website look exactly the way you want.
The visual editor is much more versatile and smooth than WordPress’ own and allows you to get hands on with the design. Divi also has far more demos available for use than almost any other theme, giving users the ultimate freedom to design the blog of their dreams.
Key Features:
Divi Video Walk Through
Astra
Lightweight, fast and extremely easy to use, Astra is a great choice for beginners looking to create the travel blog of their dreams. This theme was designed to be the fastest on the market and is one of the most lightweight options available.
If you don’t feel like starting from scratch, you can import an entire pre-built website (many focused around travel!) to your blog and change it up to be custom to you.
Best of all, the free version is all you need to get a blog up and running… but if you upgrade to Pro, you get full control over colors, typography, layouts and more.
Key Features:
The Traveler
For a modern, clean looking blog, The Traveler was designed specifically with travel bloggers in mind. It allows for lots of colors, different layouts and plenty of images, based around a grid design – ideal if you’re keen on displaying lots of your photos.
It’s easy to make changes to your blog with their front-end editor, and social sharing has been fully integrated so your posts can be distributed far and wide!
Key Features:
WPVoyager
Travel bloggers love WPVoyager because of the Google Maps integration. Using this feature, WPVoyager drops pins on a map where your articles are located… super handy for showing off your globe trotting!
Besides the map, WPVoyaer has tons of layouts to choose from, is fully responsive on any device, and comes with lots of social media and sharing options.
Key Features:
Insight
A theme for the minimalist travel blogger, Insight is perfect for showing off your travel photos and travel stories.
The homepage is fully customizable with a drag and drop widget feature, and there are three color schemes to choose from (or create your own!) to build a cohesive, aesthetically pleasing blog.
Key Features:
Norway
Keep people hooked on your travel stories with Norway, a theme focused around travel and lifestyle content. The design is simple and elegant while drawing readers towards text on the page.
It comes with loads of layout options, unlimited colors and awesome customer support. Great for beginners and experts, this is one of the best WordPress themes for travel blogs.
Key Features:
The Fox
A sleek magazine theme, The Fox has some really nice options for creating a travel blog. The theme comes with 10 pre-made demos (one centered around travel) that can be imported with one click, giving you a full website ready to be customized.
The Fox is optimized to appear beautifully on mobile devices (in a style similar to Facebook, NYTimes, etc…), and gives you full control when it comes to changing the colors, fonts and layout of your blog.
Key Features:
Himmelen
Minimal, polished and extremely fast, Himmelen is an amazing travel blog WordPress theme that comes with five different layouts, unlimited color options, custom widgets and stunning demos.
Himmelen makes it extremely easy to get your travel blog up and running with predetermined layouts and color schemes, or start from scratch and design everything yourself.
Key Features:
Embark
Designed for tour booking and travel, Embark is a theme that’s great for monetizing your blog, customizing every aspect of it and setting up quickly. One of the most unique features of Embark is it gives bloggers the ability to set up bookings, take payments and manage schedules all in one place. It’s great if you’re a travel blogger offering products or services and are looking to connect with your readers.
Embark comes with 6 presets, 40+ widgets and 25+ page templates, allowing you to create your blog with ease!
Key Features:
Wiz
Wiz is a bold, eye catching theme with importable demos specifically for travel bloggers. The Travel Wiz option comes with 2 slides and 4 inner pages, all of which you can customize with colors, fonts and content.
Wiz comes with tons of premium plugins, and fun features like Smart Skin to choose your color scheme, a visual page builder, and 14 header layouts! The entire theme was also built with best SEO practices and comes with 140 shortcodes integrated into the editor.
Key Features:
Travelog
Another theme designed specifically for travel bloggers, Travelog is ideal if you’re hoping to share your adventures with the world. Travelog has Google Maps integration and allows you to create custom markers with images and text to document where you’ve been and what you’ve done.
It’s one of the most engaging travel blog themes and gives you lots to work with including 3 types of post listings, a featured posts slider, and one click demo import.
Key Features:
Blossom Travel
Coming in hot from Blossom Themes, Blossom Travel is free to download and install on WordPress and has an elegant and attractive look to it. There are tons of features like a video banner, 22 custom widgets and (my personal favorite) a map section allowing you to showcase your travels.
Since it’s a free theme, the editing capabilities are a bit limited, but it’s a good option to get started on if you want to see what works well for your blog (without breaking the bank). If you decide it is a good fit, you can always upgrade to Pro which gives bloggers one click demo imports, control over the homepage layout, a whole host of customization options and more.
Key Features:
Aden
A modern and budget priced theme, Aden is great for building a minimalist travel blog. It’s simple to use, fast to run and easy to customize, with flawless integrations for Instagram and other social feeds.
Aden is fully responsive and able to be edited live, and is much less expensive than most premium themes. Give Aden a go if you’re looking for something easy to use and inexpensive! You can’t go wrong here.
Key Features:
Voyager
Unique and fun, Voyager is a great theme for travel bloggers to share their adventures and images. This theme comes with 8 demo site styles (one of which is built for travel bloggers), 7 header styles, 5 slider styles and 3 Instagram styles that can be fully integrated into your blog.
The theme is clean and easy to use, with 600+ Google fonts, unlimited colors and a killer speed score.
Key Features:
Samui
Samui is a simple theme with huge functionality and is great for travel bloggers. Among the 4 one-click demo layouts, one is specifically designed for travel bloggers and is super visually appealing and easy to work with.
Samui is optimized for speed and SEO, comes with Instagram integration and has a front end page builder so you can see your edits in live time. One of the coolest features of Samui is the video slider which allows you to showcase footage on your homepage! It’s also much less expensive than most premium themes… Win!
Key Features:
Once
Clean and attractive, Once is a modern theme with an importable demo surrounding travel. It has sea hue pops of color, bold typography and an eye catching design, with the option to choose from multiple page layouts and enhance your blog with video backgrounds.
Once is optimized for mobile use with slide-out menu options and auto-load for next posts. If you’re looking to create a trendy travel blog, Once is an awesome theme to start with.
Key Features:
Purea Magazine
Purea Magazine is a stunning free theme that allows you to build the travel blog of your dreams without spending any money. Similar to most free themes, Purea Magazine has the option to upgrade to Pro, but the free version offers a lot more than most free themes out there.
It’s fully customizable, with social icons, a responsive design and one click demo import with multiple pages to choose from (that are included with the free version!!!). It also comes with custom drag and drop widgets, mobile optimization and live customizer settings. Purea Magazine is a stellar place to start if you don’t feel like spending on a premium theme!
Key Features:
Soledad
If you’re looking for a theme with unlimited possibilities, Soledad is the one for you. Amazing for all kinds of travel blogs, Soledad has endless demo options, 1000+ sliders, multiple single post templates, and a live customizer.
What’s more, Soledad is super easy to use and is compatible with Elementor page builder, high performance site speed and optimized for SEO. For the world of infinite options, Soledad is the theme for you.
Key Features:
Adventure
For the big and bold traveler, the Adventure theme is a fun option to get your content out there. Designed with the active adventurer in mind, this theme is super easy to set up (no time wasting here), responsive and modern, and compatible with WooCommerce, among other plugins.
Adventure also has a social media menu, custom menu, page templates and one-click demo import, allowing you to get your blog up and running in less time.
Key Features:
Hopefully this list of best WordPress themes for travel blogs puts you on the right track to getting the website of your dreams.
Starting a blog can be daunting but picking a killer theme can make your life a million times easier. Just choose one that you like, download a demo and start customizing it to fit your brand. You’ll have a live blog before you know it!
Once you’ve finished setting up your actual blog, make sure you create a proper strategy to help you kick things off in the right direction! Check out our free training where we dish out the 3 blogging tips that helped transform our blogging business!
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