Note: If you want an early release of Checkmate, leave a comment on this post letting me know.

The feature set for Checkmate 2.0 has been set, and the theme has gone into testing! Checkmate was a pretty advanced theme but this new version goes even further. I learned a lot from the first theme, got a ton of feedback, and I’ve incorporated all that into the new version.

The Design

The design for Checkmate is simple and clean, it isn’t the flashiest of themes because that isn’t the point of Checkmate. I want to give WordPress blog owners a high quality theme with plenty of options and ability to customize on the fly so they can have a professional looking blog quick and get started writing.

Keeping that in mind, Checkmate 2 has been cleaned up, the design keeps things organized and easy to read. The design is something that can be easily built on, something I’ll demonstrate with a whole new curtishenson.com design based on Checkmate.

Design Options

Checkmate brings a few new things that users requested. The top request was ability to change Checkmate into a 3 column design. Checkmate can now have not only a 2 column layout with optional slit sidebar, but can also be a true 3 column design.

Customizing is a big part of Checkmate, and now you have the ability to upload custom style sheets, logos, and header backgrounds, have them automatically detected and change those from the theme options page.

Custom Widgets

One thing that set Checkmate apart from many themes were the custom widgets built into the theme. The new version takes this even further, with new widgets and more options.

  • RSS Widget — options for icon, title, and optional text
  • Checkmate welcome box makes a return visit
  • The ad widgets are back
  • Checkmate Categories — ability to pull posts from a certain category
  • Tabbed Content widget

Theme Options

The theme options page has gotten it’s own redesign, and also a few more options.

  • 2 or 3 column layout
  • Automatically detecte and activate style sheets
  • Use a custom logo
  • Use a custom header background image
  • Feature story and feature category select(now with multiple categories)
  • Ability to use classic look for feature story and welcome box from Checkmate 1.0
  • Select pages to show in the menu
  • Widgetize footer
  • Feedburner options
  • Insert HTML code into the header, footer, or after a post
  • Ad options

Checkmate is nearing release, right now I’m starting browsing testing. If you are an early adopter type, and want to help me in testing out Checkmate, leave a comment letting me know.