A digital magazine server displays content to a user based on a page template specifying sizing and positioning of content items. The page template is selected from a set of candidate page templates, which is determined based on characteristics of page templates and characteristics of other page templates used to present content to the user. Different characteristics of a page template are weighted based on the page template's position in a series of additional page templates used to present content and characteristics of the additional page templates. Weights associated with different characteristics of a page template are combined to determine a template score for the page template, and the template score is used to determine if the page template is a candidate page template.