Previews are representative layouts. Every page, component and state shown is included in the download.
Field Notes — Magazine & Blog Website Template
An editorial system with real typography, built for publications people actually finish reading.
- Category
- Blog & Magazine
- Pages included
- 12 pages
- File format
- ZIP · HTML, CSS, JS
- Delivery
- Instant download
- Licence
- One end product
- Support
- 6 months included
- Updates
- Free, for life
- Last updated
- February 2026
- Secure payment via Stripe or PayPal
- Download link valid for 72 hours, re-issued free
- No account required, no subscription
Overview
Field Notes is a publishing template rather than a blog theme. It ships with a considered typographic scale, five article layouts, a topic taxonomy, an author system and a newsletter funnel that does not interrupt the reading experience.
The reading column is measured for comfort at every breakpoint, footnotes and pull quotes are first-class components, and the dark reading mode is designed rather than inverted.
What's included
- 12 pages covering index, article, topic, author and archive views
- Five article layouts including essay, interview, photo essay and list
- Footnote, pull-quote, callout and captioned-figure components
- Reading progress bar and estimated reading time
- Newsletter capture with inline and end-of-article placements
- RSS template and sitemap example
Pages and sections included
12 ready-made pages:
- Home / Latest
- Featured issue
- Article — essay
- Article — interview
- Article — photo essay
- Topic archive
- Author profile
- Authors index
- Archive by year
- Newsletter
- About the publication
- Search results
Built from these sections and components:
- Editor's pick hero
- Latest stories grid
- Topic navigation
- Long-form reading column
- Pull quotes and footnotes
- Author bio card
- Related reading
- Newsletter band
- Archive by month and year
Key features
Typography that holds up
A tuned scale, real small caps, hanging punctuation and a 68-character measure across breakpoints.
Five article layouts
Essay, interview, photo essay, list and news formats — each with its own rhythm.
Footnotes done properly
Numbered references that expand inline on mobile and sit in the margin on wide screens.
Designed dark mode
A warm dark palette with reduced contrast for long reading sessions, not a CSS filter.
Reading progress
A slim progress indicator and an honest reading-time estimate based on word count.
Newsletter funnel
Inline, end-of-article and standalone capture forms that share one validated component.
Responsive and mobile design
Field Notes is built mobile-first and tested at 320, 375, 414, 768, 1024, 1440 and 1920 pixels before release. Small screens are not an afterthought — navigation, tables, galleries and the 12-page structure are each redesigned for the space available rather than shrunk to fit.
- Fluid type and spacing scales, so headlines stay in proportion between a phone and a 27-inch display.
- Tap targets of at least 44×44 pixels on every control, with visible focus rings for keyboard users.
- Images served at sensible dimensions with lazy loading below the fold and reserved space to prevent layout shift.
- Tested in current Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge, on iOS and Android, and with reduced-motion preferences respected.
Customisation and editing
Everything you will want to change is in an obvious place. Colours, fonts, radii and spacing are CSS custom properties declared in one block at the top of the stylesheet — change those six or so lines and all 12 pages follow. Text and links are edited directly in the HTML, with comments marking each section.
- No build step, no Node, no package manager — open the folder in any editor and double-click a page to preview it.
- Swap images by dropping your own files into /assets/img using the same filenames, or point the markup anywhere you like.
- Every component is commented and reusable, so adding a page means copying a block rather than writing CSS from scratch.
- Clean, semantic markup that ports cleanly into WordPress, Webflow, Astro, Eleventy or a React project when you outgrow static files.
Ideal for
- Independent magazines and niche publications
- Newsletter writers building a permanent archive
- Research and think-tank teams publishing long reads
- Photojournalists combining images and essays
Frequently asked questions
The markup is clean, semantic HTML with no framework lock-in, so it maps neatly onto Eleventy, Astro, Ghost or WordPress. Several customers run it as an Eleventy site with Markdown files.
It includes a styled search results page and a client-side index for small archives. For large publications, point the form at Algolia or Pagefind — both are documented in the guide.
Basic comfort with HTML and CSS is enough. Text, images and links are edited directly in the HTML, and colours and fonts live in a short list of variables at the top of the stylesheet. If you can edit a text file, you can launch one of these.
One licence covers one end product — your own website, or one client project. You can modify the template as much as you like. You cannot resell, redistribute, sublicense or share the template files themselves.
Anywhere that serves static files: Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, or classic shared hosting via FTP. Most are free for a site this size, and the guide covers each.
Because templates are delivered instantly and cannot be returned, all sales are final once the download link is issued. If a file is corrupt or a page does not match its preview, contact us within 14 days and we will fix it or refund you in full.
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