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 (4613)
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?
204 Comments
Leave a CommentCurtis, 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!
21st Jun 2008
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>21st Jun 2008
Curtis, thanks once again. I’ll make the changes and hopefully it works!
21st Jun 2008
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!
21st Jun 2008
gideon,
No problem! Glad its working for you now. Let me know when you use it for your main site!
21st Jun 2008
Nice theme… Looks like I will use this theme in my other blog…
21st Jun 2008
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 ?
24th Jun 2008
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’
24th Jun 2008
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.
24th Jun 2008
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.
24th Jun 2008
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
25th Jun 2008
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?
25th Jun 2008
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.
25th Jun 2008
Thanks, Curtis.
It works!
25th Jun 2008
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.
25th Jun 2008
…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/
25th Jun 2008
Nick,
Set ‘Show Header Image’ to ‘No’ in the theme options.
25th Jun 2008
I’m looking for input on the next version of Checkmate. Let me know what features you would like see in Checkmate 2.0.
25th Jun 2008
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.
26th Jun 2008
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.
26th Jun 2008
Yes, that fixes the problem, thanks a lot :) This is what I call good support :)
26th Jun 2008
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!
27th Jun 2008
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.
27th Jun 2008
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!
27th Jun 2008
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.
27th Jun 2008
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
27th Jun 2008
Vic,
You will receive more help in the WordPress support forums. Or switch to a better theme, I would suggest Simpla
28th Jun 2008
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
28th Jun 2008
Hi, Curtis. Me again. How do I put a title in the ads.php, like Sponsors or something like that?
Thanks, again.
Lino
29th Jun 2008
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
29th Jun 2008