Note: A new version of Checkmate has been released. Get the new version now!
I told you earlier I was going to release it, and here it is! The Checkmate WordPress theme. It is a classic blog style template with a minimalist design packed with features and customizing options. This is one to definitely download and try out and includes a quick start guide to show you how to use some of the features.
Checkmate Demo - The demo is a bit messy looking because I tried to show off as much of the theme as I could.
Theme Options
Checkmate has a lot of options so you can get the most out of your theme without knowing any code.
- Optional Header Image
- Optional Featured Categories
- Feedburner Integration
- Menu Customization
- Optional Footer Widget Areas
Features
- Checkmate comes with 7 color themes. Grey, Red, Blue, Green, Purple, Brown, and Grey/Red.
- Custom widgets built for Checkmate.
- Tabbed Content Box - widget enabled
- Two, Three, or Split Column Design
- Feedburner Integration
- Optional Widget enabled footer
- Custom Icons
- Gravatar support for authors and comments(Wordpress 2.5)
- Custom author, archive, tag, category, and search pages.
- Widget Enabled Sidebars
- Includes the TimThumb script for resizing post thumbnails located under the post meta information.
- Tested in Firefox 2, Safari(Mac), IE7, IE6. (IE6 has a problem with post thumbnails, if this concerns you bug me to fix it).
Ad Management
Checkmate has two forms of built in ad management. One form built right into theme options panel and another more advanced customizable form. Both forms of management are controlled by widgets for easy placement and you retain the ability to turn them on or off via theme options panel.
License
Checkmate is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. All I ask is that you link back to my website somewhere in your site.
Updates
- Version 1.01
- Added wp_footer hook for plugins
- Version 1.02
- Fixed Header Image Bug
- Added browser detectable RSS Feeds (RSS2, RSS1.0/RDF, RSS0.92, RSS2 Comments, ATOM)
- Version 1.03
- Added page template with comments enabled
- Version 1.04
- Fixed sidebar error when requiring users to be registered and logged in to comment
- Misc. code cleanup
- Version 1.05
- Removed query_posts from index.php for pagination support
- Version 1.06
- Changed “1 Comments” to “1 Comment”
- Fixed the multiple categories as “featured” categories error
Download It Now!
- Get the new version here!
- Download the old version Checkmate (3396)
Really Like It?
If you really like this theme and would like updates, more features, and new styles, why not grease the wheel and make a donation?
191 Comments
Great theme! Thanks for sharing.
Glad you like it! If you use it let me know
Hi, it’s a nice theme. What is the minimum requirement for the theme ? Wordpess 2.0 2.1 2.2 … ?
The theme was developed and tested in WordPress 2.5. Most of the features should still work in 2.3, but it hasn’t been tested in anything below 2.5 so I cannot say for sure.
Love the theme, and I’m using it on my blog. But how do I get archive, tag and category pages to display lists of posts instead of a single post. Sorry, I have searched everywhere and I can’t seem to get it to work.
Thanks
Sharon,
In the Wordpress admin section click on “Settings”, then on “Reading”. Check the number next to “Blog pages show at most”, this is the number of posts that will show up on the archive,tag, category, and home page.
If that doesn’t work or you already tried that let me know.
Hi, Curtis!
Me again. I’ve changed to your fabulous theme the other day and was surprised by it’s full funtions. However there is a problem confusing me. The “post_thumb” function seemed broken in my site.
I’ve checked with firebug, and the code showed up same as your demo, but the thumb just doesn’t appear on the page. Would you please check it onmy homepage? Thanks!
Oh, I forgot to tell you that I only set “post thumb” for this post:
http://lucifr.com/2008/05/18/firefox3-rc1/
Lucifr,
It looks like there is a problem with the timthumb script that automatically resizes the post thumb to the correct size.
It looks like the image is hosted on another domain and I don’t believe the timthumb script will work unless the image is uploaded onto your domain.
One solution would to be to try uploading that image through wordpress and seeing if it works, if it doesn’t then that isn’t the problem.
Another easier solution is, if you don’t care about the post thumb being resized automatically, there is code in index.php commented out that doesn’t use the timthumb script. If you want to go this route let me know and I can tell exactly how to do it.
Thank you,Curtis. I’ve figured out what to do. The latter method works better for me since all my pictures are hosted elsewhere.
Hi Curtis,
i installed your really good theme. I have an problem with the Show Header Image. If i chose Yes and put an Header URL in the field the Header image didn’t appear. Buf if i rename my header Image to your big_header_bg.png and i let the Header URL Field empty my Header Image appears ?
Whoops, looks like the header file got replaced with a old version somewhere along the line. I’ll fix that, watch this page for the update.
Hi, Curtis.
I think there should be a link for the browsers to catch the feed.
like these:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92" href="" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="" />
newbie,
Header image has been fixed, let me know if there are anymore problems with that.
Lucifr,
I don’t know how I forgot those. All feeds that WordPress puts out are now detectable by the browser. Feedburner feed will also be findable instead of the WordPress feed if you use that option.
Ok, thanks. I will update to your newer version. Can i delete the Checkmate Folder in the themes Folder and copy your new version to the folder. Is that the update procedure ?
I can’t see the comments on Pages ? Only on Post.
newbie,
You can overwrite the existing Checkmate theme with the new file. You may want to backup the scripts folder if you are using the post_thumb feature.
I’ve updated the theme again, this time with a new page template to include comments. This file is called page3.php, no other files have been changed in version 1.03.
You’ll have to apply the page template to whatever pages you want to have comments enabled.
Hey, thanks :)
Hiya, thanks, this theme looks great!
But, something is not right,
1. if you select “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” in settings, when viewing any post, the sidebar will run to the bottom of that post, i.e. it no longer stays in the right-hand side.
2. if the post is too short, sidebar left, sidebar right and sidebar bottom will again run to the bottom of the post.
John,
It is partially fixed now. The error using “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” is now fixed.
I wasn’t able to re create the short post error. Did this happen when using “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”? What browser are you using?
I would suggest to anyone who hasn’t updated yet to update now.
Hi Curtis,
Thanks for your help, I’m using Explorer 7.0, let me try to use your updated version and see if it goes away, I kind of like that left and right sidebar, if it works again, that will be great! later!
Hiya, it’s me again, for the short post error, a bit more info: it only happens on the front page. If I click the post title, the page that shows the post content and comment and stuff is ok, i.e. the sidebar left and right and bottom are ok, they are in their correct position.
But for the front page, if I use sidebar left and right and bottom AND the post is short, sidebar left, right, bottom will go under the post..
Yes, that “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” part is ok now, thanks!
Hello,
wonderful Theme, i love it.
But I have any Problems.
One is it:
I can’t navigate on pages; next_page or previous_page and the plugin wp_pagenavi don’t work
It shows only/always the newest posts!
please, look at my website (www.tboggi.de/blog).
Thanks
tboggi
tboggi,
Glad you like the theme and I love how you have modified it, site looks great, I especially like the post numbering!
On to your problems.
The pagination is broken due to bad implementation of query_posts on my part. From your site it looks like you can edit some code so I’ll tell you how to fix this. I’ll be updating the theme later if you would rather wait.
In the index.php file look for the following code, It is on line 39.
<?php query_posts('order=DESC'); if(have_posts()): while(have_posts()) : the_post(); if( $post->ID == $feature_post ) continue; update_post_caches($posts); ?>and delete the line that has query_posts, so it looks like this:
This should fix the wp_pagenavi plugin, if you still have any problems let me know. I’ll also be updating the theme later on if you would rather wait.
Finally… i’ve been waiting for this theme months ago. hooo really nice theme indeed.. i’m lovin’ it :D
Hallo Curtis,
first: it runs! great!.
My second problem is “my problem”:
You see in top of the page the “imagemenu” from phatfusion.net.
There ist a problem with javascripts from the imagemenu and the scipts in the footer.
When i delete the footer-js script = it works,
but with the footer js, works not.
Have you a Idea for “my problem”?
Greetings from Germany
tboggi
Cool theme!
However when I unzip I don’t get a parent folder to contain all of the files - what do I do?
paskal,
Glad you like it!
tboggi,
That script uses the mootools js library and Checkmate uses the jQuery library. Both libraries use the $ selector as a shortcut so it creates a conflict. I would suggest using kwicks for jQuery, it is the same thing but built for the jQuery library.
Andrea,
When you unzip the file you should get a folder named Checkmate that contains everything. If you don’t you can create a folder named Checkmate and unzip the files into that folder.
Very nice looking theme and I’m seriously considering using it on my main blog. In testing, however, I’ve come across a few problems:
I can’t seem to get the recent comments/recent posts box on the right to show up the way you have it in the demo. What is the widget I need to use to do that? I have “tabcontent 1″ in sidebar left, but I see nothing.
Also, none of the widgets show up on an individual post page.
Is there a description of the various sidebars and where they would appear on a page that would serve as a good reference?
Oh one more thing, which is strange: If I enable the feature story in theme options, the site goes into some strange reload loop, so it never does load fully and then looks like it’s trying to re-load and never does.
Gideon,
I looked at your site and it looks like you got the tab box working.
The only widget that disappears should be the Welcome Box widget, which is by design.
There is a file called Checkmate.pdf in the theme folder which will show you the locations of the sidebars and also how to use them. It also contains some info about the other features.
As for the feature story reload loop I have no idea what could be causing that. Which version of WordPress are you running? It could be a conflict with a plugin also. Try disabling plugins one at a time and see if the problem goes away.
Let me know if there is anything else.
Curtis, thanks for responding! I did get the tabcontent box working.
As you can see, I’m trying to get my own header image to appear above the menu. So far I think I’ve got it to work on the main page (albeit I need to widen it), but it won’t show up on individual pages and individual post pages. Do you know what code I need to add to make that happen? (I altered a bit of code in header.php to remove the default blogname with link back to homepage). An offshoot of that - is there a way to add another link to the menu: Home and where do I add that?
Sorry for all the questions - I really like the theme and want it to get to where I can use it on my main blog, but I’m not that conversant with php and CSS.
Thanks, again!
gideon,
It looks like you used the php code at the bottom of the header.php for your new header. You need to remove the if is_home from the code like this:
<?php $header = get_option('cm_header'); // Gets the option from theme options page if($header == 'No') { } if($header == 'Yes') { $image_url = get_option('cm_header_url'); ?> <div class="container"> <img src="<?php echo $image_url; ?>" /> </div> <?php } ?>That will fix the problem with the header disappearing. Also you should probably take big_header out of the class name, this might cause some rendering problems.
Adding a link to the menu would require editing the html like this:
<div class="menu span-17"> <ul> <li><a href="#">Link</a></li> <?php $menupages = get_option('cm_menu_pages'); wp_list_pages('title_li=&sort_column=menu_order&include=' . $menupages); ?> </ul> </div>Curtis, thanks once again. I’ll make the changes and hopefully it works!
Just checking back in. After a hiccup or two, it seems to be working wonderfully. Thank you very much! Once I get the colors and other such things sorted out, I’m probably going to migrate it over to my main blog. Thanks a ton for your help!
gideon,
No problem! Glad its working for you now. Let me know when you use it for your main site!
Nice theme… Looks like I will use this theme in my other blog…
Hey Curtis hows it going ? , i see that u use very well the wordpress stuff, i recently have a problem, when i change the image of my header, dont work any more, i dont know why, if i only chante the pic of the header in the ftp, i mean, i use the same name but a diferent pic, that dont work, i dont know what to do, can u help me please ?
Andrei,
Are you having this problem with my Checkmate theme? If so you may need to go into the Checkmate Options under the Design tab and set ‘Show Header Image’ to ‘yes’
Hi Curtis:
I´m considering to replace my theme for yours, but i have a doubt: Wha do i do to put an image in the name of the blog? I´m a newbie in this area and thanks a lot for you help.
Lino,
To do this you would have to edit the theme files. Probably the easiest way would be to add some HTML to the header.php file. The code below is an example.
<div class="header"> <div class="container"> <h1><a href="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>"><img src="http://path_to_your_image.jpg"></a></h1> <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/searchform.php'); ?> </div> </div>You could also do this through CSS. I’ll probably add a feature to do this through theme options in the future as it seems like a lot of people are doing this.
Hi Curtis,
I’m trying to use the theme and , at first use, it worked well. But as I tried personalizing the widgets, I got this error with the Tabbed Content widget:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 40961 bytes) in /home2/feareali/public_html/wp-admin/includes/widgets.php on line 211
Is this a host issue or do I need to replace the widget.php file? This error is causing the whole theme to corrupt, and I’ve tried deleting and reinstalling it. (http://fearealized.com/)
Thanks,
NaysWay
I was just curious how you gave your section titled “Checkmate: A Free Premium Theme” a background similar to the welcome box. I have the feature story set to “yes,” but that’s not doing anything. I’d love to have that section set up just like in the demo as a rolling display of the most recent post. Any help?
Naysway,
widgets.php is a WordPress core file and not part of the theme. The error is actually a PHP memory error and is part of the server configuration. It can be changed locally via the .htaccess file on some servers, but this may be against your terms of service. Either way it “shouldn’t” be happening but it does.
Nick Fox,
You also need to add the category ID’s to the “feature category ID” option. You can just add all the category IDs like so: 1,2,3,4,5 which will “feature” any new post. There are also some instructions and a chart of the IDs on the theme options page.
Thanks, Curtis.
It works!
Thanks, worked like a charm.
You’re a great designer, and it’s nice to see someone of your caliber giving away a design of such high quality. The next time I’m looking to build a site, I think I’ll be coming to you first.
…I just noticed that ever since the featured story bit started working, I’ve been getting excessive vertical white space between the page links at the top and where the posts begin.
Any idea why that might be?
Here’s the URL so you can see what I’m talking about: http://forensicsunderground.com/
Nick,
Set ‘Show Header Image’ to ‘No’ in the theme options.
I’m looking for input on the next version of Checkmate. Let me know what features you would like see in Checkmate 2.0.
Hi Curtis!
Great theme, I’ve been looking for something to replace my good old K2 for many weeks and finally I’m home :) At the moment I’m translating the theme and doing some small tweaks. I came across a tiny problem in appearance. I see that by default all the images have some white space around them. It looks cool. However, it breaks the look of the comments - white space around smileys icons doesn’t look so cool anymore. Of course, I could turn them off, but do you think it’s possible to do some exclusion? I have to say that I’m no CSS expert, but I’m a fast learner :) thank’s for any help.
Joanna,
Turns out that is easy to fix ad this to the styles CSS
.wp-smiley { float: none; margin: 0; }Smilies should now work as they were meant to.
Yes, that fixes the problem, thanks a lot :) This is what I call good support :)
Hey Curtis - as everybody has mentioned, this theme is awesome. I was just trying to create my own with tabbed content, a welcome message, and a news/asides list. your widgetizing of all it makes it super easy!
i have a question about the feature and welcome widget rounded corners. is there a way to change the color of the divs that jquery is making? i noticed that the overall background changes, but not the top (or bottom - if i adjust your js file to round the bottom corners). i’m just ending up with a red feature with a black top. does that make sense? i’m only testing right now, so i don’t have a live site for you to check.
thanks again for the theme!
Aaron,
The generated divs should inherit the CSS color of the parent div. So if you set .widget_welcome { background-color: #fbe5e5; } then the generated corners should all be #fbe5e5
Let me know if it isn’t working for you.
curtis,
thanks! i actually was trying to add my own color scheme (adding 1 more option to the style.php with correct additions to the functions.php file).
when i add the css new selector to “my theme” in style.php, i’m still getting the bar across the top and bottom. i can just adjust the main style sheet, but i was hoping to make a few of my own color schemes. any ideas? i suppose you would need to see it…i’ll work on it some more, but if you have thoughts that would be great!
Aaron,
It should work when creating your own themes. If you look at the pre-made ones they all over write the welcome and feature background colors. Somehow the javascript is seeing the old background property instead of the new one. Not sure how.
Help!
I’m experimenting two problems with Losemymind with sidebar 1.0 theme:
1.date entry is wrong, appear 2007 instead 2008
2.tags under the post are not displayed, there is only a gray bar without any tags…
Can anyone help me?
I don’t know php…
Thanks, Vic
Vic,
You will receive more help in the WordPress support forums. Or switch to a better theme, I would suggest Simpla
Curtis,
Great theme! But please be sure to strongly point out the Checkmake.pdf included with the theme. I didn’t know it was there until after a lot of fruitless rummaging for a READ ME file or something. So if you could list it just after your Features above, I bet that’d helpful future downloaders.
Plus, in future versions, maybe you should call it READ ME Checkmate.pdf, so it’s easier to find.
Great job!
Jon
Hi, Curtis. Me again. How do I put a title in the ads.php, like Sponsors or something like that?
Thanks, again.
Lino
Jon,
I’ll probably rename it to readme.
Lino,
You have to ad the html code like <h3>Sponsers</h3>
H3 will make the header look like the rest in the sidebar
Curtis, this may sound stupid, but how do I change size of the text in the posts? Can’t find in in the stylesheet…
Joanna,
Inside the css folder there is a file called screen.css, this is where the Blueprint Framework css rules are and it handles the bulk of the typography.
However Checkmate uses relative sizing for many elements so changing the text size may break the layout in some places.
Hello Curtis,
i work on my second website with checkmate.
How can I modify the “feature” background. I use the theme-color “red”, but the “feature-post” red is (my opinion) very-red!
Greetings
tboggi
tboggi,
In the style.php you’ll need to change line 26. See here for the code.
You also might want to change anything that says #790000 to your new color.
Curtis,
one more thing: how do I change the default text in the searchbox in the header? I want to translate it to my language…
Joanna,
In the ‘js’ folder change line 3 in cm_javascript.js
Line 10 changes the subscribe by email text also.
I love your theme and am running a test of it so that it can soon replace my current theme. I have two questions though: (1) how do I bring the navigation menus (”About”, etc.) up into the header; and (2) can I set it so there is a background color but the post and sidebar section have their own color (sort of like how you have this page set up)?
Thanks,
Rob J.
I have another question. Is there a way I can make it so that a static image always appears to the top right of my featured story with my text wrapping around it?
Thanks,
Rob J.
Rob J,
Bringing the menu into the header is probably going to require some html and css changing. You can try cutting lines 52 to 106 and pasting them after line 46 of header.php < -- see link for the code
Its possible to change the background by changing the background-color property of the body tag, and adding a background-color property to the content class in style.css, but it probably won't look very good as I didn't design it with padding around the content area.
In the next version I will be adding the functionality to change the background, but right now that is some time away.
In index.php change line 27 from <?php echo $featureimage; ?> to the url of your image. Also delete or comment out lines 23-25 and 28. That should get you a static feature image.
thanks for your great work.
Great! Thanks for responding. This has been very helpful. I commend you for making this design generally available.
Rob J.
Curtis, I have a question about the featured story. If I put multiple categories as featured, how does the theme choose the story? Doesn’t it go by date and show the most recent story from all the cats? Because on my blog it doesn’t display the latest one and I don’t know what’s the key it uses.
Joanna,
The theme should choose the latest story from the categories. What is it doing now? Displaying the oldest first? Only displaying from one category?
It displays lastest story from one category. I hint could be this - this cat id is 2, id1 is not included to be featured. I had a newer story from a different cat and it’s not displayed.
Is the other newer post displayed on the front page below the feature stories? Like a regular post. One thing to check is that in the options screen the feature categories are comma separated eg. 2,4,5,6
Yes, below the feature story everything is as it should be. The IDs are comma separated, though they are randomly entered (not ordered).
Joanna,
Try putting the category IDs in order, that worked for me.
No, it still doesn’t work. I’ve put them in order and still the feature post is the latest one from the first avaliable category (of lowest ID number).
Hello Curtis,
one more question:
Where can I switch off the hover-fade effect?
tboggi
Joanna,
I think I found the problem, I’ll test it and let you know.
tboggi,
In cm_javascript delete or comment out lines 34 - 42
Joanna,
I’ve found the problem, it appears my code is wrong and it does not support multiple feature categories at this time. I’m pretty stunned it took this long for anyone to notice including me.
I am confident I can get this feature working but it is going to take some time to rewrite the code.
Joanna,
There is a new version that has fixed the feature problem. The files changed are index.php and functions.php
There has also been a fix for the comments: “1 Comments” now reads “1 Comment” this change is in a few of the files.
If anyone is using multiple categories for feature stories NEEDS this update.
Curtis, thanks a lot! I’ll do the update.
I have another question (thanks for your patience :) ) - how to enlarge the padding of the sidebar? Space between widgets and text seems to small on the main page. Also, is it possible to painlessly make the sidebar a bit more narrow - without breaking all the layout?
Joanna,
In styles.css you can try adding padding or margin to line 98 but it might look funny. Try the next suggestion first
Open up sidebar.php. Change span-10 to span-9 and span-5 to span-4. Now add prepend-1 to all four div classes. This will give you a column of space between your sidebar and content.
Thanks, your second option works great, now everything looks cleaner. Now I’m beginning to understand how you’ve created the whole thing - impressive :)
There was an error in the latest update, “comments” was still showing up in random places. The download has been updated with the latest code.
hey curtis…
i’ve been trying to use your theme and make some customizations - but i’m getting stuck.
i’ve noticed that for 2.0 your hoping to add pagination and keep the “news” category from showing up in the “loop.” any progress on these two? they are exactly what i’ve been trying to accomplish - but my php/wordpress skills aren’t up to par.
thanks!
Aaron van ruler,
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to spend very much time on ver. 2.0 yet (hopefully I will very soon).
For pagination you could use the WP-PageNavi plug-in until 2.0 comes out.
Excluding the news category isn’t as easy while keeping pagination intact. You could use the query_posts function above the loop in index.php but this will screw with the plug-in above.
thanks for the tip. those were the 2 exact things i was trying to do - and the exact result: “screw with the plug-in.”
thanks!
Hello curtis,
thanks for your tip from 21 Jun.
But, it doesn’t work with kwicks, too.
thanks
tboggi
tboggi,
Probably a conflict with some of the javascript. jQuery has a no conflict function but it doesn’t look like you’re using kwicks anymore.
Tip of the day: Add ‘margin: 0 auto 20px’ to #header_image to center your header image. Its left aligned in firefox right now. :)
Hello Curtis,
you’re fast !
look now!
tboggi,
For some reason it is not seeing the kwicks script at all, I think there might be a conflict with the older jquery.
In the footer there is a bunch of javascript try putting the kwicks stuff down there. Also take out the jquery-1.2.3 and replace it with the newer one from the kwicks folder(ver 1.2.6).
i use theme. i like it. Thanks Curtis Henson!
The greatest theme I ever seen.
So simple n clean. I love it.
Thanks for the team
Hello Curtis,
How to edit Widget Tab?
I want to change calendar and user online status on Widget tab.
Thanks
Me again.
How to enlarge the text size, I try to editing CSS it doesn’t work.
Thanks
wisata,
Not sure what you mean by edit the Widget Tab. If you mean edit the CSS there is none written for calendar or online status. If you mean add the calender and online status widgets to the tab box then there is a widget area called ‘Tabbed Content’ which controls the tab box.
Changing the font size in Checkmate is not recommended as you will probably get unwanted results. To do it you need to add a font-size attribute to the body element in style.css like so:
body {font-size:75%;}
This theme is awesome, however i’ve been testing it on my new site, and the sidebars all go down below my posts.
Can you help me with it? thanks!
Rob,
I took a look at your site and it looks like it is working. Did you already fix it?
Trying to use this theme on my site but it doesn’t look like any of the css is working properly.
Dustin,
Looks like the CSS files aren’t there, check to see if they are there and have the right permissions.
It was the permissions, I got it fixed, thanks.
Hi,
I like this theme a lot although I will not be using it because of the tweaking done and I have just recently started my blog (newbie). However, I would like to know how or where you got the “subscribe options” thing. It’s somethings I would like to use on mine.
Thanks
Sunganani,
The subscribe options is just simple javascript show and hide. The email subscriptions are handled by feedburner. Hope that answers your question.
Thanks Curtis Henson,it is very good theme.
Hi Curtis! thanks for the very nice theme and it’s very easy to install! Thanks!
Btw. How do I wrap images with text?
Mike,
To get get text to wrap around images when you insert them into a post there is an option to align left or align right. Select one of those and the text should wrap around the image.
oh yeah, i finally figured it out. Thanks!
btw. is the RSS image really cut above? Is there any way I can change that? Tell me how :D
Hi,
I have 1-2 problems, hoping you would sort em out for me :
1. The image always aligns with the text, i cant seem to get the lines at a different level than the image.
2. Why is there a tab before every paragraph, how do i remove this feature ? , i couldnt find the relevant thing in the style.css.
Ankit,
1. In style.css add a line with
p img { float: none; }2. In style.css find line 62
.feature p {text-indent: 20px;}and delete it or set it to 0px same for line 81
.single p{ text-indent: 2em;}Those should make the changes you want.
Hi Curtis ! :-)
I really love Checkmate ! But a big problem occurred one week ago : as you can see on my website, what should be in the sidebar appears in the footer, and what should be in the footer appears in the sidebar !!
I didn’t change anything then. I can’t understand what happened. In the widget manager, all the widgets appears at the right places.
The problem occurs on the main page : on the article pages, all the widgets recover their places.
Do you have an idea to fix it ?
By the way, I can relate 2 other problems I faced :
- I tried to use the custom.css available here : http://www.pearsonified.com/2007/02/how_to_protect_css_mods_for_any_wordpress_theme.php
It worked well at the beginning, but some time later, without any reason (to my eyes), all my changes weren’t taken into account. Finally, I left this custom.css to make my style changes directly into Checkmate. (I erased the codes I’d added into Checkmate (as explained on Pearsonified)).
- At the beginning, I tried using the dark background for the new post, but it didn’t display the new one ! (the second one instead). That’s why I left the dark background also.
Checkmate is a really great theme, it allows beginners like me to get a more personal and sophisticated blog. That’s why I want to keep using it. I hope you can help me on the first and biggest problem.
Thanks for all !
PS: I know enough html and css to understand the structures and to make some changes in css, but I don’t know php yet…
Boreale,
— Your first problem is being caused by a missing
— The custom.css might have stopped working if you put it above the line that says
<?php wp_head(); ?>. Other than that it should work. If you use it again and it doesn’t work let me know.— When using the feature posts, “Display Feature Post” must be set to “Yes” and a “Feature Category ID” must be set to whatever category you want to be featured.
Hopefully that will solve your problems, if it doesn’t let me know and I’ll take another look.
Hi Curtis ! Thanks a lot for all these answers ! It seems all the problems are fixed ! :-)
- For the first one : looking for the code “%RELATEDPOSTS” I could have written under some posts, I found one post with some strange into the html. I cut the content, pasted into OpenOffice (i.e. another text manager) and copied again into Wordpress : the code was different, and it solved the problem ! :-)
- I made some style changes to test the custom.css a second time, putting the code at the right place. It works well at the moment. I don’t remember whether I pasted the code at the right place or not, at the first time.
- For the feature post, it works well. I guess I didn’t understand how to use “Feature Category ID” properly. I thought the featured post was always the last one.
May I ask you 2 menial questions ?
- Is there a way to change the background color of the featured post ? I tried changing the color into style.php (green part), and into style.css (”featured” part), but it didn’t work.
- Adding some widgets to the “tabbed content” (categories…) doesn’t have any effect. Do I have to make any other changes before using “tabbed content” in the widget manager ?
Thanks for your help ! :-)