Many of you probably already know this, but on March 5, I sold the Cutline Theme. It was a great ride, and I was truly sorry to see it go. In fact, when I transferred the domain over, I poured one out for my lost theme homey.
And then I got over it.
Thanks to my seemingly unending development work on Celebrity Hack so far this year, I’ve hardly had time to care that I no longer run an active, successful WordPress theme community. At the same time, though, I’ve learned quite a bit about new CSS techniques, better XHTML structure, and better in-site SEO, and it’s hard not to look at such things from the perspective of a theme developer.
Clearly, something had to give here, and thanks to the fact that the Copyblogger promised his old design out to his legions of fans, I had no choice but to develop a newer, better, more excruciatingly-detailed WordPress theme. Nothing like a friend promising out your work now, is there? 
So here it is, the Copyblogger Theme for WordPress—a completely new framework that you can customize!
Maximum Accessibility
I view accessibility as a facet of Web development that good designers address on many different fronts. It’s not just about structuring your markup to accommodate the hearing or visually impaired—that ought to be a given at this point. The “new” accessibility takes care of everyone and everything that will visit your site, including search engines.
Accessibility was my primary concern when developing the Copyblogger Theme, and each of the following elements plays into this in a unique way:
- The typography and spacing are all set in ems, resulting in a completely elastic layout. If you’re using FireFox or Safari, you can resize the text at the demo site to get a live demo of this sweet feature.
- The text area is 468px wide (though it is actually defined in ems) and fits about 70 characters per line, which is only slightly above the 66-character ideal for maximum readability1.
- The typography is aligned to a strict 20px vertical grid, which – assuming it remains intact – provides a more harmonic rhythm as you progress down a page while reading an article. A grid of this nature is extremely effective (and necessary) on 3 column layouts (think newspaper), and while the Copyblogger Theme is only a 2-column layout, I still think the grid has merit.
- The XHTML markup and CSS are extremely lean, resulting in lightning-fast page loads.
- I have “modularized” the theme’s PHP files in such a way as to isolate the ones users are most likely to edit. For instance, the navigation links in the header are all contained in
nav_menu.php, so this ought to simplify the process of changing that part of your site. Also, it’s ok if you make a mistake—you can always just restore the original and start over! - The theme comes equipped with an improved version of the custom stylesheet solution I proposed earlier this year, and the included
custom.cssfile contains both directions and explicit CSS definitions for the elements (and their associated properties) of the theme that you may wish to modify. By separating the color, font, and border color properties from the rest of the theme’s core CSS definitions, I’ve been able to provide you with a unique design environment where you can test color and typography schemes without fear of ever “breaking” the layout.
As far as I’m concerned, ubiquitous themes of this nature have to be accessible to to more than just the people who visit your site. From my experience with Cutline, it’s clear that theme users just like you want as much flexibility as possible—be it in the way of color schemes, editing menus, the use of widgets, fonts, etc. With that in mind, theme developers really have to aspire to a level of accessibility that caters to two distinctly different audiences, and meanwhile, everything needs to remain standards-compliant, lean, and intuitive.
I’ve tried to construct the Copyblogger Theme as a model for this level of accessibility, and while I realize there is still much room for improvement, I guarantee that you’ll benefit in some way from the accessible features that the theme offers.
Optimization and Standards
When it comes to in-site SEO (code structure, essentially), the Copyblogger Theme offers what is, to my knowledge, the best possible structure while still adhering to some WordPress “conventions” that I’m not quite 100% happy with.
Regarding SEO, there really is no holding back—I’m not going to put out a product that is slightly less than optimal out of fear of “giving away the house.” As a result, you end up with a markup structure that is every bit as good and effective as one that I would build for myself for private use.
As far as standardization goes, the evolution of the Web is slowly but surely merging the worlds of SEO and standardized markup, and as someone who is as passionate about ranking as I am about cross-brower rendering, I have no choice but to be a standards fanatic.
The bottom line here is that there are countless benefits to having standardized markup on your Web site, and if you use the Copyblogger Theme, you’re in extremely good hands.
Downloads
The initial release of the theme contains two packages available for download:
The first item needs no explanation, but the Organic custom style package is something that many of you will find both interesting and extremely useful.
Although it is simple in nature, the theme’s custom stylesheet solution is something that is best illustrated by example, and essentially, the Organic custom style package is a fully-functioning example that makes the most of the custom.css file that comes with the theme. In fact, it even comes with a .psd (Photoshop) file that the hardcore among you can use to do complete color overhauls.
You can view the Organic style package in action over at the demo site by clicking on appropriate link underneath the “Style Switcher” heading in the sidebar.
1 I chose 468px because that will allow users to accommodate a standard ad size (468×60), and I think your everyday user ought to have that option without having to tweak the theme. ↩
Follow me on Twitter for more linguistic porn than you can shake your tallywhacker at.
171 Comments ↓
I know how you mentioned Brian’s switch to a three column was due to advertising, and I wonder if you think about switching your own design, here at pearsonified to a three column?
My personal preference is for three columns, to add a little more variety above the fold, although I know that two columns can be equally effective.
Nice simple theme.
Nice work. My blog needs a new theme. I’ll definetely give this theme a try.
It’s up and running now. Nice!
Just one question, theres is a sitemap.php coming with the installation. I guess it creates a sitemap for Google, right? If so, should I unselect my Sitemap plugin as I am already having a Google-sitemap-generator installed? Thanks for your time!
Thanks for sharing. It’s very kind of you.
Thanks Chris. The theme is super easy to customize and I love the custom.css idea.
Oliver — The Copyblogger Theme comes with a
sitemap.phpfile which, when activated, will produce an XHTML sitemap. I am currently running a plugin that creates an XML sitemap, but I run it alongside my standard XHTML sitemap without interference (as you can see in the footer of this site).If you’re currently running a plugin that creates a sitemap Page, then you may want to stick with that. Activating the one that comes with the theme is quite simple, though, so you may want to give it a look as well.
Here’s what you need to do to activate it:
sitemapin the Page Slug field, which is also on the rightAlso, remember to link your new sitemap from the homepage, or else you’ll miss the intended benefit entirely.
Ryan — Excellent work, your site looks fantastic! One thing I noticed, however, is that you’ve removed the attribution link in the footer that points to Copyblogger. This theme is only available to the public because Brian was kind enough to fulfill the requests of his many readers who asked for it once he moved on to his new design.
So while I am responsible for maintaining and improving the theme, none of this would be possible without Brian’s generosity. His attribution link is beyond well-deserved, and on top of that, compliance with the Creative Commons 2.5 ShareAlike License dictates that the attribution in modified versions like yours must remain “at least as prominent as” the original.
I am proud to have you use the theme, but all I ask is that you respectfully restore the attribution link to Copyblogger. Thanks!
Chris - thanks for your prompt help.
It’s a pretty nice look.
Nice theme
I noticed firefox (2.0.0.4) cuts the top-right rounded corner off the comment call outs, and makes the callout overlap the right column, unless the font size is increased using Ctrl +
(By default I’m using 14pt Tahoma in my browser options.)
Could you suggest any work-arounds ?
Nice work. It’s really help for me, thanks very much!
Chris, I’ll be installing Copyblogger this weekend. I’m assuming if I have any problems or questions just to return to personified?
Chris,
I have installed copyblogger on two blogs. Your credits in the footer show up ok in revenuemortgages.com, but not revenueblogging.com. I have uninstalled the theme, re-downloaded it and re-installed it. Nothing works. Can you think of anything I may have done in Wordpress to cause this? I am stumped. I do want to you give you and copyblogger full credit in the footer. The footer file shows the text.
But exactly how copyblogger benefits us by offering a good standing SEO? SEO is just no more than tweaking your titles, making some descriptions and minding your content and things like that.
Just a little bit confused.
good!!!
Chris
Thanks for the theme, I have now switched over from Cutline 1.1 to Copyblogger. Great work dude.
Adsense Daily Digest — Every type of page (index, single post pages, archive pages, etc.) has been optimized on the Copyblogger theme. Let’s look at an individual category page as an example.
In your case, perhaps you have a category that covers Adsense Layout Optimization. On your individual category page, the term “Adsense Layout Optimization” will be served inside an
<h1>tag and also automatically served first in your<title>. Assuming you also link the category page directly from your home page, you will be passing page rank and link juice as effectively as possible.A theme that serves category names inside a
<span>or some other element that doesn’t establish hierarchical meaning will never be quite as effective in this regard. Based on my experience, sites that use the structure you find in Copyblogger end up outranking those that don’t.Whether you’re able to appreciate it or not, the Copyblogger Theme is a framework that literally requires you to “just add link juice” in order to have your content rank as well as it possibly can.
I’ve run sites where just a few well-linked pages ranked in addition to my home page, and I thought those performed pretty well…
Then I ran a site where those same pages ranked, but I also had category pages, archive pages, and even WordPress attachment pages ranking like crazy.
To put this in perspective, let’s say you have a site with 500 pages. In the first scenario, maybe 20 pages are accounting for 90% of that site’s search traffic. In the second scenario, you might have 250 or more pages accounting for 90% of that search traffic. Now tell me, which case looks better to you, especially if you publish Adsense ads on all those pages?
Chris, 2 quick questions…
1. I am having problems displaying the Blogroll side bar. The LINKS widget section is just blank when i try to add it. There ’s not configure tab.
2. Also, how do you get your ads to layout on the right like Copyblogger’s does? Mine just go vertically…
Thanks!
Chris, I just saw your comment from 6/3. I did exchange emails last week with Brian regarding the footer and I apologized to him for removing the copyblogger link. It was my mistake and was added back after that exchange. Thanks again.
Ryan — Thanks, dude. Once again, your site looks fantastic, and I love the color scheme.
Thanks. I’m becoming a Pearson groupie. I thought Cutline was perfect but somehow Copyblogger made it more perfect.
a realy nice one - thats why i need a owne space !!
Common SEO Problems In WordPress Themes
I wanted to add to Court’s post about SEO problems in WordPress. One really well designed theme that I know of and has been built with SEO in mind is a Copyblogger Theme for WordPress by Chris Pearson…
Thanks Chris for the clarification, I think I will switch to copyblogger to give it a try!
Chris,
Regarding the category page description you talked about above: I have had a few visitors recently come to my site after googling for “smartphone menu.” I have a specific article that addresses that subject, and readers used to be referred to it when they do a search. Now, they land on my “syncing” category page, stay thirty seconds because they don’t see the article I mentioned to you, and they are gone. Is the ‘ing of categories doing this to the readers? If so, how do I solve this? I view it as a problem, instead of as a method of getting more readers.
In the interim, am I safe using the Cutline theme (which I think I will use in the interim)?
Chris, I found the theme while searching for the perfect wordpress theme for my newsite. Hopefully I’ll have it up and running in a few days. Any chance that you have a list of samples sites that have already installed the theme?
Hello,
I am trying to add an Adsense block to the left sidebar. Because of the dynamic resizing (I think), the ads show up OK in Firefox and then overlap the text in IE. Any suggestions on dealing with this? Is there a mostly “standard” width I could be selecting for my sidebar Adsense ads? Thank you.
I need to clarify my post above: my references to the use of
h1tags on category pages, because I did not use the code-wrap around theh1references. The question is: is it really good to have anh1title on category pages, versus, say, anh2? Can it give too much weight to the category pages so that they compete with the article titles on my content pages?Thanks. I’m just trying to make sure I am set up right for the long haul. BTW, I did switch back to the 3-col version of Copyblogger … your theme is just plain hard to beat for its readability.
Very nice theme Chris. If I used WordPress, I’d definitely be using this theme!
I was trying to install the theme. For some reason, however, it didn’t show up in the Wordpress theme viewer. Any ideas?
Googling…
Never mind, add to change permissions. getting excited.
Hi there, it’s a nice and simple theme–thanks. Would really appreciate it if you can let me know the easiest way for me to add a centered image in the header? Thanks!
Hi Chris,
I’ve modified the theme from your original 2-column design. Pretty extensively I’d say. So much so it almost mimics Copyblogger. Yes, that’s my inspiration when I did my site design.
As my site uses copyblogger theme as the framework I’ve include a credit to it, but worded differently from the original credit line.
I hope you don’t mind.
Here’s my new site: http://www.pagethinker.com
Sherman
P.S. The Subscribe to Comments plugin doesn’t seem to work properly. Only the check box shows up. The text doesn’t. I’d really appreciate if you could point me in the right direction.
P.P.S. Any comments you may have on the design would be much appreciated.
Sherman — The site looks fantastic, but I’d prefer that you at least reference the theme somewhere in the footer. This way, people who like your design will have some inkling as to the direction they should take if they want to create something similar for themselves.
Also, according to the Tempus Fugit Web site, the Subscribe to Comments Plugin has been updated and tested to work with WordPress 2.2+ (which was previously not the case). Try that new version and see if it works. If you still don’t see the text, you’ll need to manually enter it on the options page for the plugin.
Hey, Chris.
Just a quick note to say. “Thanks” for the great theme
I’m a newbie to blogging and site design (for all intents and purposes), so the custom.css was perfect. If you were aiming at someone like me, you were right on target.
Anyway, feel free to take a look at my site…just changed some colours and fonts, but it feels more my “own”. I’ve never been able to accomplish this so easy before.
Thanks, man
ShaneR — I definitely like what you’ve got going there, and of course, it’s my pleasure. I love seeing people make use of the
custom.csssolution, as that diversity of presentation really breathes some life into the theme. Well done!Thanks for the comments, Chris.
The colours are bright, but…well, as you can tell from the site name it’s not a site that’s going to take itself to serious, so I wanted something that looked a little “fun”.
Still some tweaking to do….but that’s part of the fun
Chris,
I’ve referenced the copyblogger theme in my site footer.
Regarding Subscribe to Comments Plugin, apparently the issue with text not showing up next to the check box is due to a bug in WP 2.2.x. (new installations).
The author will be releasing a new update to the plugin.
Sherman
Great thanks for the theme, Chris. I transformed it into 3-column layout and it works for me!
I am not sure if I didn’t go to far with one modification - I placed ‘description’ as About on the left bar using specially prepared H1 tag. So now the word About is in H2 and description in H1. I wanted to keep logo/header clean and this place looked the best for me to introduce people to the topic of my blog, but I am not sure if using H2 followed by H1 is a good solution. Also, when you go to a single-post page, then you have H1 in the description and H1 as a post title. Can you advise, please?
Paul — I think the easiest (and best, honestly) solution here is simply to serve the description inside paragraph tags.
You’re already serving the description inside the
<title>tag on the home page, which should help you get the maximum benefit from the included keywords. I would actually recommend trimming a few words off the description to further target your desired keywords, but that’s just me.Again, though, I recommend just getting rid of the
<h1>tags surrounding your description and instead serve it inside<p>tags—it’ll kill two birds with one stone, and you won’t lose anything.Chris
Is there any reason that comes to mind as to why images won’t center within the sidebar? Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but I am having difficulty centering an image within the sidebar using the
class="center"method.Thanks.
How would I go about adding a sidebar to the left side of copyblogger?
Chris,
Please ignore my question regarding centering images in the sidebar … I think it is best to not center the ones I was considering.
However, another question: the ie7.css file has the following line:
li.widget li { width: 15.5em; }And this line appears to be responsible for many of my “Featured Articles” taking up two lines each instead of one, as most of them do within Firefox. (I’ve narrowed the title length down about as much as I can without losing the meaning in them.)
Is the 15.5 em the max width that ie7 can handle without breaking some other part of the code, or can I push the envelope farther by expanding it to say 16.3 ?
While I have a large percentage of Firefox users there are still a lot of ie7 users, so I don’t want to screw anything up.
Thanks.
maybe I’m just tired after a long day, but for the life of me I can’t figure out the following:
I’ve created a new page, but can’t get it to show up anywhere. I’d like it on the top tab, but I’d take it anywhere right now.
and 2. I’ve only got one blog post but it doesn’t show up in archives. Shouldn’t it?
I’ve got two other wordpress blogs so you’d thinks I’d understand these things.. Thanks for any help.
re: above comment: Told you I was tired. I got the pages sorted out.
archives on the sidebar works fine too, i’ll probably get rid of the tab. (tomorrows project).
Hi Chris,
I’m from germany and would love to use the CB theme. Understandably are the readers of my blog german speaking, so it’d be great if the texts of the theme would be german too.
Perhaps I’ll find the time to translate the theme, but it’d be much easier, if you had prepared the theme for translations. It is quite easy (see Localizing Wordpress Themes), so I’d appreciate it, if you would bear this in mind for your next theme. This would make translations much easier and spread your themes in the international community much faster. Of course I’ll send you the translated version of CB, if I’d find the time to do it
Btw, this commentary is no offense, but it’s 2 o’clock in the morning, it might be, that I choose the tone a bit to aggressive. Sorry for that.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for sharing this great theme with the world. I am a fan of the 2 column theme, and have taken a while to warm up to 3 columns.
But it’s really not about what i like, it’s about what my readers would like, and the general consensus seems to be in favor of 3 columns.
hi chris,
i have changed the theme of 2 of my sites to your copyblogger and i love it. could you please guide me as to how i can add an image to the header (it’s 1000×150)? also, i would like to take off the red line at the top and add color to the background of the two sidebars…please help!
cheers,
nathalie
Chris,
I can’t figure out how to add my text to the “About” page. I enter the text in Wordpress, but it does not show up when I click the About tab. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks,
Fred
Chris,
Would you consider your next blog post being about how to add a header image to this template? I am sure that you would have a lot of very, very happy fans.
Regards,
Fred
p.s. I figured out how to add the “About” page.
As I already promised, I did a localizable Version of Copyblogger. This means, that I substituted English phrases with the Wordpress localisation functions. I made this version of the theme available for downloading at my blog, where the German translation as a first localisation is downloadable too.
CopyBlogger Theme - The localizable and the German Version
At my testing blog you can take a quick look at the German version live in action.
I would be glad, if you’d include my changes in your version.
Chris, I’m also interested in adding a header to this design. Also, I’m on the boat with Nathalie, if you can assist us in making the sidebar colors different from the content.
One more Q for you. The content seems to be too far down from the header, about 1/2 inch, I would like it to be only 1/4 inch to save real-estate, how could I do that?
Thank you.
I think a lot of people are going to be happy. I going to use it myself. Thanks. A wonderful template If I must say. happy wordpressing.
Chris,
I use its subjects because they are very good. But vc could optimize them better for SEO and to load fast more. See you the example of theme redie 3.0
This subject redie 30 is very fast well and very optimized.
It would be very good if vc could give one brought up to date in the code of cutline.
I hug
What a great theme, Thanks a such hard work.
One questions though.
I tried to incorporate the widget in the side bar (for tag cloud) and it says that this theme does not support widget. Anyway around it?
Thanks again.
Chris, your Copyblogger design is scrumptious! I could just eat it up. I’m a standup comedienne and I’m looking for a new design for my blog. Any pointers?
Hi Chris, fellow Copyblogger theme fans & Wordpress theme designers,
This comment isn’t about copyblogger theme, but about using Wordpress to design functional and beautiful sites.
Unfortunately I was “attacked” for using Wordpress. Here’s what happened…
I was on a forum recently discussing web design. One of the posters asked about using Dreamweaver to design sites. I suggested Wordpress as a alternative platform, using CSS to design websites.
Another posters, who apparently has 13 years of web design experience, said:
“Almost all Blogs today have plug-ins and IMO, are basically boring — web designers worth their salt use a real Editor and most do hand-coding, as we have more control over the content and how the website displays in all browsers.”
(In my opinion, I think he has no idea what Wordpress is.)
In response to my reply which I referred him to CSS Beauty and CSSTux that CSS sites could be beautifully design, he said:
“Having over 13 yrs of actual WEBSITE DESIGN experience, without having WordPress or any other Blog software that’s pre-designed by people who don’t know what they’re doing, your argument with me and many highly experienced WEB DESIGNERS is null and void — you obviously didn’t create your “automatically designed” Blog which was created by those who have the knowledge and experience.”
“The crappy sites you’ve attempted to display in your defense have alot of code errors / warnings — including your own website … when you’ve truly learned how to create Blogs / Websites without any errors, that validate according to W3C Standards and display properly in all browsers, come on back and talk to the Professionals here.”
I’m pretty new to Wordpress theme designing and hope to hear from anyone if I’m indeed wrong (which I personally don’t think so) about Wordpress/CSS as an alternative web design platform.
Here’s the forum url. My nickname is “pagethinker”.
http://forums.site-reference.com/topic/42693/#p42693
Thanks and regards,
Sherman
Hi,
Hello from ‘complete-wanderer-in-the-dark’.
I have made a site - http://www.pinkflood.com/ - and organised it so that it has one static post at the front and all the articles arranged in Pages.
And everything looks nice (except I would like to reduce the size of the text in the header but don’t know how - but that is a side issue - but you could answer that as well, please).
What IS an issue is that I want to remove the ‘archive’ tab at the top or make some use of it, because all I am getting is a 404 message.
And, although it may not apply on this site, and the way I have set it up, I do like the way your posts have a ‘read more’ bit. How do you do that?
Many thanks, and as for nice things to say to end this comment “You ave tranzformed ze wordpress”
David
Thanks so much for making the copyblogger theme easy to use and to customize the colors. Plus it’s widget friendly, happy me. The way I’ve customized it is only as far as I understand I can do with CSS. How do you think I could make the look more “mine” so as to differentiate it from your other lucky theme users? Perhaps header graphics?
Your other themes look really nice too and darn I wanna try them out. Maybe I should set up the other blogs I’ve been planning just so I can try them out. LOL.
Further to my post of a few days ago, I have found the answer to one of my questions, namely “And, although it may not apply on this site, and the way I have set it up, I do like the way your posts have a ‘read more’ bit. How do you do that?” - I googled for ‘more’ and it explains how I have hitherto simply failed to appreciate that there is a device or button specifically for that purpose, there in the page where one writes.
For anyone who has not discovered this - try it out!
David
Thank you for sharing your work. I have a question about uploading your theme. Using BlueHost, themes are uploaded into ‘/public_html/wp-content/themes’ file as zips. Once extracted in that file they show up on the wordpress themes page. However, Copyblogger does not. The extracted file shows up as _MACOSX with other related files outside that file: custom.css, ie6.css, ie7.css and style.css.
Your Cutline theme(s) are great and I’m using one now, but would like to try Copyblogger.
Any ideas? Thanks!
T
Tony
My machine (Macbook pro) unzips files automatically and gives me a folder. It is that folder that I uploaded to content/themes.
Hope my experience helps.
David
Thanks for the reply.
Interesting. Just tried that but can’t upload the whole unzipped folder; the folder opens revealing the individual files. Hrm.
Created a new folder in themes and put it in there. Works now. Feel free to delete my posts, and thank you!
Tony
Glad I could help.
I am still working on my query about either removing the ‘archive’ tab at the top or making some use of it, because all I was getting was a 404 error message when I hit that tab.
I read an answer to my query in wordpress(involving making a page without content and putting an archive slug in it) and it works on a site I have running on Dreamhost. But on another site that is running on Camelot, the same method does not work and I am still working on finding an answer.
David
@David
In nav_menu.php you’ll find all the tabs of the Theme. If you want more Tabs or different ones, just delete, change or add the corresponding lines:
href=”/URL_OF_THE_PAGE/”>IN_THE_TAB_DISPLAYED_TEXT
Dear Marnem
Thank you for the reply. I get the general idea but I am not comfortable with php, but learning is fun.
OK, so I know the url for my archives page (http://www.artphotowall.com/?m=200708) and I can see the content of nav_menu.php page, and the relevant line is (I think)
href=”/archives/”>archives
Now, how do I put the url of the archives page into this line of php?
thanks
David
href=”/?page_id=19/”>Archives
This should do the archives for you, if you eliminate all “-” and if this blog doesen’t try to enterprete my typing….
Change the “archives” to the pagename, the “?page_id=19″ to the URL-Suffix of your Blog and the “Archives” to the text which you want displayed, to add another Tab to your theme
-li!-a -?php if (is_page(’archives’)) echo(’class=”current” ‘); ?!href=”-?php bloginfo(’url’); ?!/?page_id=19/”!Archives-/a!-/li!
next try. Replace “-” with “”
Follow up:
I see that the line of code from nav_menu didn’t come out properly in the message. Must be something this post service does, but it is the second in the list of lines of code in that file.
David
Further follow up:
I’ve taken lines 2 and 3 out of the file and that gets rid of the Archive and About tabs at the top, so that is partial success. It would be nice to know what to do to make them pick up the info though.
David
Further follow up:
I’ve taken lines 2 and 3 out of the file and that gets rid of the Archive and About tabs at the top, so that is partial success. It would be nice to know what to do to make them pick up the info though.
thanks for the info on how to do it.
David
Dear Marnem,
Wonderful - it all worked! - Archive and About.
Many, many thanks,
David
Is anyone else not able to unzip the copyblogger zip file. I get a “file not found error” as it is unzipping. All other zips are working fine on my computer. Any ideas?
@jim
You could try to load the theme from my site. I made the theme ready for localization (translation in different languages), but this makes no difference for english users.
CopyBlogger Theme - The localizable and the German Version
Thanks Marnem, I’ll give it a try.
Problem I’m having is the macosx folder gives the error while unzipping. Do I need that folder if I am on a PC?
I don’t think so. I’m a PC user too and my webserver is Linux and I didn’t upload the MAXOSX directory to the server.
this may seem random, but i found your website by trying to create a wordpress blog with the username “thegrove.” unfortunately, it is in use! apparently by you, but it was made about a year ago and has never been developed or updated. i know this is a HUGE stretch, but i was wondering if you would give me the password (since wordpress doesnt delete accounts) and i would change everything (including the password) to make it my own account. it took me so long to think of the grove, and i am from florida so it is perfect. i’d probably use your theme anyway! please! look foward to hearing from you? crisisandcreativity@hotmail.com.
Marissa, there is no central wordpress database of usernames. Do you mean the domain “thegrove.com”?
i just realized the mistake i made. i went to thegrove.wordpress.com to see who it was who used the grove, scrolled down, saw your name, and rashly clicked on it which brought me to your website. but i am silly and didnt realize your name was there because it was your theme not your unused blog! i am so sorry. but thank you for promptly responding. you can delete my comments if you’d like. my apologies for being a wordpress novice.
take care!
marissa
Hi, Chris! This is Patricia from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I’ve been looking for a new theme for my blog and don’t know exactly how I reached your page. I really appreciate the possibility of costumizing the layout, so that the blog looks a bit more personal. From this, we could say that the Copyblogger theme is the best solution. But… I must confess I preffer the header of the Cutline theme, the one where we can put random images. Is there any possibility of kinda “mixing” both themes? Well, in fact, what I would like the best is to have a space for images on the top, as well as the name of my blog with a small sentence below (just like Cutline) BUT with the rest as Copyblogger and all its features. Is it possible? Could you help me? Thank you a lot!
Hi, Chris! I’m still waiting for your help! Please!!!
Chris, is it possible to have a 3-column version of the Copyblogger theme? Also, could we have a random image on the header just like in Cutline? Please, I really want to use this theme, but I do need a 3-colum layout and I’d also appreciate a lot if I could put an image on the top.
Thanks for the amazing design. I’m also having problems, though, making “archives” work. The “home” and “about” tabs work fine… with “archives” I get the 404 page. The problem appears to be that there isn’t an archives page… and I don’t know how to create one… Any help much appreciated.
Hi Linton
I had a similar problem. Look further up this page and you will see that Marnhem posted the answers.
Thanks, David. You know - and this is going to make me look like the newbie I am - I did, but I didn’t understand the solution. Perhaps you could help me out???
Just to follow up… I think the difference is that you had an archive page… what you needed to do was connect that page to the “archive” tab at the top. My problem is that I don’t think my website has generated an archive page at all… at least I can’t find it!
Hah! Fixed it! I created a page in WordPress, called it “Archives” and chose “Archives” from the page template menu on the right.
Now, if everyone can excuse my all the hooting and hollering… sorry about that. L
Exactomento!
Hoot and holler for joy.
I would be interested in a link or pointer to how to add header images to the Copyblogger theme. A tutorial on this would be very nice along with how to randomize the images as apparently can be done in CutLine.
Hi Chris:
I just wanted to note that I use Copyblogger on several of my sites. I upgraded to 2.3 on 3 of my smaller sites and it works just fine! The only problem is an error message related to categories that is showing up on the dashboard. I believe Brian wrote about a fix . . . I just haven’t had time to play with it fixing it yet.
You can see 2.3 + Copyblogger in action at:
http://www.lodicommunityband.com
http://www.stocktonconcertband.com
http://www.clintritchie.com
I have not yet tried upgrading my main site, Colloquium, due to time constraints. I will play around with it this weekend.
Thanks for your wonderful theme! I love it and receive a lot of compliments on the clean, easily readable and navigable layout. I have had fun customizing it, too. I just dabble . . . don’t know php, but do know html from the old days of building static sites, so I’m slowly but surely figuring a few things out. I appreciate that the files are easily understood by lay folks like me.
I’m getting a WP db error:
“Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/username/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php:160) in /home/username/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 390″
In the pluggable.php file, there’s this note:
if ( php_sapi_name() != ‘cgi-fcgi’ )
status_header($status); // This causes problems on IIS and some FastCGI setups
header(”Location: $location”);
}
If it IS causing problems, does anyone here know how to get around it??
Hey, Chris. The theme is wonderful. I have a modded version up on my site at :
http://www.23collective.com/
It was very easy to work with, and the only work I really needed to do was add a wrapper tag and an extra tag below the footer for the little dude on the right.
Thanks for creating such a wonderful theme, and keep up the good work.
Later.
When using the W3c validator to check single pages, I get the following error:
required attribute "cols" not specified.
…t" id="comment" rows="7" tabindex="4">
Thoughts on how to fix it, or whether it is even worth fixing? (That is, is it a non-problem?)
Home page validates perfectly. The “error” appears to be due to the comment box.
Hi Chris.
I tried to use google coop for the first time and so I pasted the coop code on the searchform.php
The search form has come alright, but the result page is not showing. the searchresult just calls the searchforms.php
What changes do I need to make to make the google coop work… Thanks
Chris
Was wondering if you could take a look at my comments on a single post page.
MY comments aren’t showing up entirely in the yellow chat bubble.
http://www.letthehateout.com/pimpin-hoes-and-craigslist/
Hey everyone, I’ve spent a lot of time modifying (and learning) the CSS for the Copyblogger theme. This is really my first attempt and modifying CSS code, so I’m definitely learning here. My question is, on my site (goblinsatemyblog.com), I’ve added a block rollover to the left sidebar links. It works correctly on the “recent posts” widget, but the others I can’t get the rollovers to stop truncating the links down a few pixels on mouseover. I’ve tried everything I can think of! So, how would I make the “category”, “blogroll” etc. widgets work like the “recent posts” widget on rollover?
Also, how would I make the header and footer images fluid so it moves with the content area when the browser is resized?
By the way, I’ve temporarily commented out the copyright stuff while I try to get the footer working properly, but it WILL be added asap. Right now the copyright text displays over the footer image and I’m trying to get it to show beneath.
Sorry for the long-winded comment. Any advice/assistance would be greatly appreciated!
Huge question–
Is there anyway to move your search and rss elements in the sidebar BELOW the first few widgets I’ve placed in the sidebar? It would be a huge help!
thanks.
Jeff — All you have to do is open the
sidebar.phpfile and locate theendif;PHP statement. Hit the carriage return, and then copy and paste both the search widget and the RSS button in the space you created.Be aware, though, that this will cause those two widgets to appear at the very bottom of your sidebar. If you’d like a more custom order, you’ll have to discontinue the use of automatic WordPress widgets entirely and code up the sidebar yourself.
I see. Or, discontinue the use of the copyblogger search and rss and use wordpress widgets as replacement. *sniff* that sucks but I understand now how it’s coded.
Thanks for the quick reply! I’m loving copyblogger, by the way. You can see my take on it at http://www.blog.biklopsdesign.com
Jeff — Yeah, dude, love what you’ve done on your site. To be perfectly honest, I replied so fast because I really dug your work
The print work from your portfolio is just crucial. I admire how you are able to make things look worn and battle-tested without making them fall into the “grunge” category. I know firsthand how difficult that is to do.
Man, that means a lot coming from Chris Pearson! Thank you so much!
I’ll keep tweaking copyblogger and hopefully someday my web skills can get up to speed with my print work. Ok, my day is complete now; back to watching freaks and geeks on dvd.
Chris, how about some code to throw the RSS feed button into the right side of the header. That would free up some sidebar space. I tried but I couldn’t get it to seat in the correct spot in the header. Thanks.
Chris,
Any thoughts on my previous comment? Still can’t figure out how to fix the comments posted by the author.
;(
wow I love wordpress
I love copyblogger and am just beginning to use it, but I cant get wordpress 2.3 tags to work when I use the theme
Please help me
Jake — The theme’s core files have not been updated to accommodate the new tagging feature of WordPress 2.3.
With that said, the theme will likely never support tags because of the detrimental impact they’re likely to have on sites’ SEO in the future.
If you were to make a diagram of most blogs’ internal links before the introduction of tagging, you would still have a very busy diagram resulting from all of the post links, category links, page links, etc. Now, with the introduction of tags (which people use even more liberally than they do categories), the number of internal links on most blogs is going to continue to rise.
What’s the problem with this?
The more saturated your links become, the harder it is for search engines to determine the equity of a particular link. As a result, your site will never be as trustworthy (at least in the eyes of the robot) as a site whose link equity is easier to determine.
For now, I’ll leave this discussion alone, but expect a post from me on the topic some time in the near future.
Sorry folks but you have to check out the new Pearson theme Neoclassical. IMHO it smokes Copyblogger. I’m switching over all my copyblogger websites to neoclassical.
I thought you might like to know that your theme is being used over at a splog. They gave credit, but I figured I’d notify you, just in case.
www . get1t . com (I added the spaces to prevent traffic from driving there, we don’t need to fuel these darn splogs fires)
I love this theme, especially as it is so easy to read the text, and the pullquotes are fantastic. I’ve customised the header and colours and I’m pretty happy with it so far. One thing more I want to do, however, is have one of those nice deep footers (like at problogger, for example) where you can put stuff like categories and recent posts and all sorts. Perhaps even asides as well, or a tagcloud.
How would one do that? Ideally I’d like to be able to just add widgets to the footer. Anyone got any suggestions?
Chris
When I use an image as the header in this theme it always floats left. Is there a way to center it, so it’s fixed properly above the content, rather than floating about as the browser width changes?
Thanks for this nice and usefull theme! I’m using it since today, with a little adaptations (and now speaks spanish, also).
Chris
Anyway to add a background image to the sidebar of CopyBlogger? I have not even attempted, and am not entirely sure how to begin given that the width is em-based. (em talk throws me big time … pixels I understand.) I’d like to assign an image provides a faint background for the entire vertical length of the sidebar (I think).
Hi,
You’re theme is exactly what I was looking for.
But why aren’t the comments showing. For example:
http://www.goedkopeaanbieding.nl/wordpress/prijsvraag/
I enabled the comments on that page and it also shows on other (not so nice) themes.
What can it be?
aski — I have updated the theme download file to include a new template file called
page_comments.php. You’ll need to upload this file to your/copybloggertheme folder, and once you’ve done that, you will be able to select “Page with Comments” as the Page Template on any page where you would like to incorporate comments.Wooh, it works. I have comments on my page now.
Very cool. Thank you very much!
Does the Copyblogger theme work with Wordpress 2.3.1?
The reason I ask is that the theme is showing up in my Themes, and I can select it, but it doesn’t want to stay. I can edit it and it will work for a while and then I will go back to my site and it will be set back to the default theme.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Andy
P.S. I do have 2.3.1 installed
Andy,
I’ve been using CopyBlogger with 2.3.1 for some time, with no issues (even with the alpha and beta versions of 2.3.1).
Andy — I think that’s a problem with WordPress, because I’ve noticed it ever since 2.1 was released in early 2007. Even today, when I work on my own sites, I often have themes reverting back to the default theme without warning.
I’d like to note, though, that this only occurs when I am actively FTP-ing into my server, and I hit refresh on my browser while my CSS file is uploading.
It’s annoying, but I’ve also noticed that being more patient with the refresh button seems to keep this strange behavior down to a minimum.
[...] blog design done.First off from a personal perspective: I am currently using Chris Pearsons 3 column copy blogger theme. As much as I do like the 3 column copy blogger design and the clean white space it provides to [...]
Chris, terrific theme. I just installed it and I’d like to change 3 features, but your “em” structure is confusing to me. So, I thought I should ask you how to change the following features.
1) How do I make the header “logo title” smaller?
2) How do I make the width of the header and footer the same size as the blog page? (What size is the blog page?)
Thanks!
Hi, Chris - I’m interested in using the Copyblogger theme, but I have a few questions about what I’m able to do before I download it. Is it possible to e-mail you my questions?
Thanks for the theme. Well designed, but will have to make a few minor changes though to get it just perfect.
I’m currently using cutline on my blog. However, until now I have been known that cutline theme from you and also known that cutline have been sold from reading this blog. I love cutline, and I will give a try to copyblogger. Thanks for your great work
Hi,
How can I add a page and let it show on the homepage next to the home, archives and about?
I added a page, but then it doesn’t show on the homepage.
Well i liek the designs also here, im trying to get some inspiration and to boost the SEO and xhtml css development to a deeper level..
Great theme! I have been trying other themes but I keep coming back to this one.
Hey, I love the theme. This may be a stupid question, but how do i make the title tag for each page the post name? Right now they are all the same… as stated in the header. Thanks.
Thanks for your great theme! i use it on my webpage: http://www.guitarpimp.de
I’m new to this, but my About tab isn’t linking to the About page any longer. If anyone has any suggestions as to how I can redirect I’d very much appreciate it. Thanks.
Any reason why copyblogger.com is not responding the last few days ?
great theme champ . keep them coming. need many more of them
Just dropping a note to say I think I’m going to go with a customized version of this fantastic theme at iamhollywood.com/blog
Thanks for the great work.
-fb
the reel good will hunting, too
http:\\ithinkdifferently.com
One Questions, but firstly thanks for the theme, its great.
How can I insert the tagline from options to appear under the blog title?
Thanks
craig
I have this gorgeous theme at G34 Media. Of course i was playing around with it, and now my sidebar is wacky. I’m gonna have my coder look at it, and see what i did.
But i do love the style, colors, and overall look. Beautiful.
Hi Chris,
Re: WordPress version 2.5 & CopyBlogger
I’m almost ready to publish my site (developing it locally on Wamp server first) using my modified version of CopyBlogger. I’m running WP version 2.3.1. CopyBlogger runs well with that. Have you checked out how it functions with Wp 2.5?
I would be reluctant to upgrade with a new version of CopyBlogger as I have made many changes to the php files and extensive mods in Custom CSS. I am hoping that CopyBlogger functions well with WP 2.5, or at most will require a few minor php changes here and there, that you can detail.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
John
Hi John. We meet again.
A couple of thoughts. I am running 2.5 RC1 on a test server without issue. I also have a somewhat modified version of Copyblogger (a good bit of additional php for ads, delicious bookmarking, and so on, and a good bit of style sheet customization).
However, I have not created a post on my test server using images, but have noticed that the image insertion tool within Wordpress now handles alignment (left, right, center, vspace, hspace, …). I do not know if this will “conflict” in any way with the image alignment coding within the Copyblogger style sheet. I doubt it, but it could be something to watch for.
Also, I have been following the development of WP 2.5 fairly closely, and it still has some issues. Of course, no software is released without issues, but, I do plan to wait a while before installing it on my main server, unless they make it a darned mandatory update (whatever that means). Looks like the visual editor is still problematic, especially with some browsers, including the just-released Safari 3.1 I personally do not use the visual editor, as it has been know in the past to mangle embedded YouTube videos and the like, but point this out in case you use it.
Hi Bruce,
Thanks so much for your information. It’s reassuring to know that you have had no issues using WP 2.5. I understand what you say about the tweaking yet to be done on 2.5. Based on what you say, it makes sense to wait for further developments on that version before test upgrading to it on my local server first.
I’m not too worried about the visual editor. Like you, I prefer to use the code editor to avoid formatting problems. You can then see the code for formatting that you add to ensure it makes sense as you go.
I was thinking of sticking with WP 2.3.1 (with the security patch) for quite some time, but when I consider the features in the new version, it makes sense to upgrade to that. I don’t have many plugins, so hopefully it’ll be fairly smooth.
I’ve had a lot of fun modifying this theme (a steep learning curve for me). I have it where I want it now. I’ve altered the core layout elements, and paid a lot of attention to ease of readability, and focus & eye flow, through managing the dominant and supportive elements throughout the design. So now it’s a matter of getting the initial posts in there (the pages are all done) and going live.
Thanks again
John
John,
I very much look forward to seeing your site when you go live. If you still have my email address, please let me know when you launch (if you no longer have it, it’s on the About page of my site).
Take care and best wishes with the upcoming launch!
I love this theme! Is it possible to customize the photos for example on the front page?
great theme — no question about it
I never have time to design my own sites so I decided to use this theme for one of my own sites. Well, your little 404 messages and the home page error message had me cracking up. Thanks for adding humor to an already great theme!
Hi Chris,
Thanks for this theme, its the answer I’ve been looking for in terms of being able to customize. For those of us who’s skills lie somewhere in between expert and novice it certainly makes life easier.
One question though: How do I ad a logo/headerGIF to the top of the site? I managed to get the image into the header in the custom.css file but it cuts off half the image in the browser. I am sure I am supposed to do something else maybe in the header.php?
I just need a shove in the right direction.
Wow,
What a great theme. I was also surprise that you provide it at no cost. I look forward to using it.
Thanks a million1
thanks for sharing. i’m gonna use this great theme.
Love the coppyblogger theme it is great with so many things, SEO is right on. Only takes minutes to be ranked first page with google.
I need help though with adding a left column. I have come close by creating a Sidebar2.php, changing the code in the functions.php to create a second column for wordpress widgets but when I go to place the column in the index.php cannot get it aligne to the left properly.
I am a newb and have to read about each step so it is easy to miss something.
Is there a simple solution or a tutorial specific to coppyblogger. I tried the 3 column coppyblogger but it is very different look than coppyblogger. And I want to stay with the clean lineless whitespace look.
Thank you all in advance for any advice.
Doug
Daily Newscaster - News from a Constitutional point of view.
Doug — Unfortunately, there is not an easy answer here. Fundamentally, a 3-column layout requires some very specific elements to be organized differently within the HTML. As far as I know, no one has created a tutorial on the topic, and frankly, I’ve been so busy with DIYthemes that I haven’t addressed Copyblogger in a long time. I will, say, however, that the 3-column modification from OScandy has been quite popular, and it doesn’t include any additional elements that work in opposition to the theme’s prevailing whitespace.
Give it a look, and see if it’ll work for you.
Hi Chris - Thanks for the super fast reply, I believe I have tried that theme and it does not register a sidebar2 in the wordpress drop down menu for widgets.
Any advice on that? Should I go into the funtions.php and replace the code with this:
or will that just cause more problems?
Doug
http://www.DailyNewscaster.com
News from a Constitutional point of view.
Doug — In order to register a second sidebar, you’ll need to modify three files:
functions.phpsidebar.phpsidebar2.phpIn your functions file, you’ll need to modify the existing code to read:
Next, you’ll need to identify each sidebar by modifying the existing conditional statement in your
sidebar.phpfile. In that file, your new statement should read:Finally, you’ll need to add a similar conditional to your
sidebar2.phpfile, and it ought to look like this:Thanks Chris,
I used your advice above and the php code in 3 - coppyblogger as a framework and played around with the php files in copyblogger and I am not sure if I did it or what happened precisely but I have 3 columns in the original copyblogger theme.
I am new to all this and am using a lot of trial and error. Thank you again for being gracious with your time and knowledge.
Doug.
Hello,
I want to display a picture logo but i don’t know how to hide Title from the header.
Please Help Me
Harris
[...] installed the new blog software and a great, sturdy, customizable new theme. I’m very happy with the bones of this new theme, but you know I’m going to have to [...]
[...] CopyBlogger theme is a Wordpress theme by Chris Pearson (web developer from the US). As I want to use the CopyBlogger [...]
I was wondering how to insert my own header into copyblogger theme, are you able to help me with this? I have search for it in Google, there is one site that show sort of customizing header but am not sure what is that blogger actually talking about. I was hoping that you can help me out with this.
Seriously, I hope you can reply to me ASAP, and I doesn’t want to see my post become dead here.
I want to display a picture logo but i don’t know how to hide Title from the header.
Hi — I’m having trouble with image runaround/wrap arounds with WP 2.6. Put simply, no matter what I set, the image always appears left with no wrap/runaround! This is actually not a bad effect but is there a way to fix it?
Ubuntu kitten — The Copyblogger theme has not been updated to work with the auto-generated image styling classes. Instead, you have to manually apply your own classes as detailed in my post on how to style your images with the Copyblogger theme.
Many thanks Chris.
Hello, I need some tech advice. I was posting on the two column copyblogger theme. Specifically I was adding embed code of media player, and was increasing and decreasing its pixel size. Somehow the right column ended up above the left column pushing the right column down.
At no time was I in the theme editor. Does anyone have any advice on what to do?
Thank You,
Doug
Doug — The Pyrabang graphic in your right sidebar is too wide, and as a result, it’s causing that sidebar to render beneath the content on the right side. Try making that graphic 200px wide or less, and that should solve your problem.
Chris thanks so much, you are really considerate with other and gracious with your time. Rare qualities.
Tip of the hat
Doug
Chris - sorry to bother you on a comment link but I can’t find your email address. This year for a New Years resolution I promised to blog - and now I’m up (and I still have 4 months to lose 20lbs). I’m on wordpress, I choose your CUTLINE ’cause I’m from NYC, and I’m over 60! But how do I change the color of my blog title Kate’s Window from black to brick red ? Thanks, Kate
Any idea how to change the header font size?
Is there a way to update the Copyblogger theme to include new features of WP 2.6? For example the auto-generated image styling classes. What about tags? I don’t mind hand styling the images but I wanted to be able to update the theme to do this as WP evolves.
Do you plan to update and support Copyblogger at all or are you going to concentrate on your premium theme?
One last question, I am not the best programer but I can wade through customizing a theme. Would you recomend the Copyblogger theme as a future expandable platform to work with? Maybe in a couple years I will be able to afford Thesis but now I must work with free themes. I am attracted to the theme because of its clean markup and SEO optimization. The theme was release over a year ago. Is it still the best free foundation or is there something else you would recommend.
Thank you for your hard work.
Hello, I need some tech advice. I was posting on the two column copyblogger theme. Specifically I was adding embed code of media player, and was increasing and decreasing its pixel size. Somehow the right column ended up above the left column pushing the right column down.
At no time was I in the theme editor. Does anyone have any advice on what to do?
The search form has come alright, but the result page is not showing. the searchresult just calls the searchforms.php
What changes do I need to make to make the google coop work… Thanks
hi, is it ok if I release a child theme for copyblogger ? without removing the footer link, of course
please drop me an email
thanks
dinu — Go for it!
thanks
Chris, what a great theme. I have been searching for an accessible WordPress theme for some time. I am having a couple of difficulties though.
1. The Firefox web developers tool aborts when trying to analyze the site for accessibility. I am on a Mac. Any thoughts?
2. I cannot find a “sign in” ink on your theme. If I activate your theme, I won’t be abe to log in. I am sure I missed it somewhere. I am visually impaired. Please be patient with me.
Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks.
Hoot and/or Holler ↓