Color Paper: A Free WordPress Theme
We are offering you the opportunity to showcase your work in our magazine by releasing a high-quality freebie. We try to keep high standards and we have high expectations because we want our readers to really see what you, as a designer, are capable of, what one can learn from you and why you should be hired. Average freebies usually get average publicity: we want you to get the best publicity and the biggest exposure from our magazine. Therefore, we want your work to stand out. Please contact us if you want to feature your work in our magazine.
Many designers take advantage of this opportunity; in fact, we are receiving more and more emails regarding freebie releases. Please note that we can’t answer all emails, but we read each of them. However, to get featured on Smashing Magazine, you really need to show us something that makes you different than the “usual” crowd.
Today, we are glad to release Color Paper: a free professional WordPress theme, created by the DreamTemplate team. This theme aims to combine visual appeal with clean typography and vivid design elements. It was created especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Download the theme for free!
The theme is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License (details of the license). You can use the theme freely for all of your projects, without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both the designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish, but if you are planning to release your modification, please ask our permission first.
- live demo
- download the theme (.zip, 1.8 Mb)
- download the PSD (.zip, 24 Mb)
Showcase of the theme
Here are some detailed screenshots of the theme:

Feature block at the top of the layout, with a style switcher on the left-hand side

List of articles on the front page
Thank you, guys. We appreciate your work and your good intentions.
Last but not least…
We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists. You might not know it yet, but we may feature you in one of our upcoming posts.
If you would like to release a free high-quality font, a WordPress theme, some wallpapers or an icon set, please contact us. We would like to support you (both financially and with the broad coverage of Smashing Magazine).
You may be interested in the following free WordPress themes as well:
- Agregado: A Free WordPress Theme
- Infinity: A Free WordPress Theme
- WordPress.Fun: A Free WordPress Theme
- Fervens: A Free WordPress Theme
- Dilectio: A Free WordPress Theme
- Simply Ornate: A Free WordPress Theme
- Smashing: A Free WordPress Theme
(al)








Rodney
November 18th, 2008 6:47 amIn IE7, the link bar across the top of the page extends right across the main-top.gif image. But in Firefox it does not.
Can someone tell me how to make the link bar only extend to the width of the link??
Example: view http://www.thestub.ca in both IE7 and Firefox and look at the Home/About menu bar.
Adam Leow
November 26th, 2008 4:44 pmThis theme is now available for Drupal.
Visit my blog at http://kahthong.com/color-paper-theme-for-drupal
clarice
November 27th, 2008 10:43 amSuper fly theme!
Marco
December 5th, 2008 10:59 amThis theme doesn’t work with wordpress 2.7 RC1, it appears this:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare get_comments() (previously declared in /home/andandos/public_html/wp-includes/comment.php:180) in /home/andandos/public_html/wp-content/themes/colorpaper/functions.php on line 37
Anyone knows how to make work this theme?
paul
December 9th, 2008 4:34 pmso… is there a fix for IE7? It doesn’t seem to render correctly…
Matthieu
December 11th, 2008 2:55 amMarco, for WP 2.7 :
Open the file colorpaper/functions.php and delete (or comment) lines 23 to 37
function get_comments($limit = 7, $stops = 65) {
global $wpdb;
$getcomments = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->comments WHERE comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date DESC LIMIT 0,".$limit);
foreach($getcomments as $thecomments) {
if ( strlen ( $thecomments->comment_content ) comment_content;
} else {
$comment = substr($thecomments->comment_content, 0, strrpos(substr($thecomments->comment_content, 0, $stops), ' ')) . '...';
}
echo 'comment_post_ID).'">'.$thecomments->comment_author.' said '.$comment.'';
}
}
Nice theme !
adreson
December 11th, 2008 8:11 amThanks Matthieu !!!
Color Paper Is a great theme!
Marco
December 11th, 2008 9:27 amMatthieu:
Thanks, now the color paper theme works fine in wordpress 2.7.
Maurizio
December 11th, 2008 11:26 amHello, despite fix from Marco, i still get an error for WP 2.7
unexpected T_STRING in /home/n0c0d3/public_html/blog/wp-content/themes/colorpaper/colorpaper/functions.php on line 29
Could You please help ? It’s a wonderful theme !!
Thx
Mau
Rein Hillmann
December 12th, 2008 10:54 amMarco, see http://www.noggin.co.za/2008/12/wordpress-is-upgraded/ for a fix on your problem.
Renat
December 12th, 2008 8:23 pmI just created a new wordpress 2.7 “coltrane” using mysql5 database. Uploaded Color Paper theme all in the correct directory. When I go to activate the theme in worpress console I get this error;
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare get_comments() (previously declared in /homepages/20/d151840617/htdocs/baku/wp-includes/comment.php:180) in /homepages/20/d151840617/htdocs/baku/wp-content/themes/colorpaper/functions.php on line 23
Can anyone please help me resolve this issue?
Thanks so much!!!
Nevermind,
Thanks to Matthieu, IT WORKED!!!
Renat
Anna
December 13th, 2008 4:42 amGreat!
Thank’s Matthieu, now everything works fine with Colorpaper.
a.
Matt
December 13th, 2008 1:50 pmCoud someone post the 2.7 fix to pastebin? It seems to have been corrupted in the comments of this blog.
mercutiom
December 14th, 2008 9:30 amTo fix this theme for WordPress 2.7, just wipe out lines 23-37 in the function.php file. See a full description at My Blog. Good Luck.
mercutiom
December 15th, 2008 11:31 amThank you mercutiom
Sconfinare
December 16th, 2008 4:37 amHi all,
despite the problems most of you are experiencing, when i upgraded to 2.7, my site simply show a white page both external side and administration side. Correcting as mercurtion and other before suggested
Derek Vigil
December 18th, 2008 1:55 pmThanks for the 2.7 fix, works great now. :D
Dusan
December 23rd, 2008 3:20 amI have the same problem as Sconfinare. When I click on a theme in the admin panel, it shows the blank (white) preview. And when I activate the theme, only white pages, both admin and front, are shown. Any tips for solving this?
Taigglebing
December 27th, 2008 2:59 pmIf you are having issues with the blank white screen when previewing the theme, or you have activated the theme and are left with a blank site, the problem is likely that you have uploaded a theme with a nested directory. For example, you may have unzipped then uploaded the entire contents of the colorpaper download. But note that the colorpaper directory contains a readme file, a screenshot and ANOTHER nested colorpaper directory which is the folder that actually contains the theme files. You need to make sure that this nested colorpaper directory is the one that is placed at the root level of the themes directory, it cannot be nested.
Jenny
November 16th, 2009 8:54 amI did this already (fixed the nested thing) and I still get the white screen.
Selman Özcan
December 28th, 2008 4:30 pmMy client ozge.issiz.org started using it. Thanks guys.
paul
January 4th, 2009 7:41 pmis there still no fix for ie7? please help
Lucy
January 9th, 2009 10:19 pmI’m a little confused with what you guys say on this page and what I read in the CC license page, so could you please clarify? I see this template has been ported to blogger already, but I wouldn’t wanna use it on my blog if it’s not ok. The links back to Smashing Mag and the author of the template were both kept in the footer, so this is how I found you guys. So, as long as I keep these links on my footer, crediting both Smashing and the original designer, is it ok for me to use this template on my blog, even thought it’s not a WordPress blog? OMG, please say it’s ok! I’ll credit both, GLADLY, in bold type. Thank you!
Psychonaught
January 10th, 2009 5:22 pmgod job :) i like the way it’;s a bit messy :)
Unreal Media
January 12th, 2009 6:00 pmAmazing for a free theme.Thanks for sharing
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz
January 17th, 2009 9:32 am@Lucy (#126): the theme is free and you can certainly use the ported version of Blogger for your site.
@all: the theme was updated, now it’s compatible with WordPress 2.7.
Panos
January 17th, 2009 3:28 pmGreat theme, but there is a big issue with IE6!!!
As said before, in IE6 the sidebar is pushed down… under the end of the content!
Some people said that they founf the solution to that!
Can someone share it, please?
Thanks
Jayce
January 24th, 2009 11:48 pmCan anyone help in getting the Flickr Photostream to show up? Do I need to add a widget or something? I can’t seem to get it to work …. PLEASE!!!
Kev
February 2nd, 2009 5:59 ami have the same problem with flickr. it doesn’t show up!
Cable Trays
February 3rd, 2009 5:26 amgod job :) i like the way it’;s a bit messy :)
Lia Greece
February 7th, 2009 10:52 amExcellent! Eξαιρετικό (in Greek Language)! Can somebody tell me if it’s compatible with WordPress 2.7 ???
Lia Greece
February 7th, 2009 11:02 amOk sorry, i didn’t see the upper post.
John
February 8th, 2009 2:13 pmi think the theme is great overall but I’m having trouble customizing it.
The Archives, the Search Box and the RSS Feed button are all “always on” by default. I can’t switch them off and they don’t show up as active widgets (activating any of them makes them double up). This isn’t a massive problem with Search or RSS but the Archives are going to really stretch the pages out once I’ve imported all my Blogger data. How can I get rid of them without messing things up?
Also, the Color Switcher is a nice touch but how do I change a colour? Alter the default colour? Or, better yet, just disable the Switcher?
Using WP 2.7 by the way.
Miss Lunatic
February 9th, 2009 10:33 pm@Johh: I don’t understand your problem, but I guess you can modified the sidebar. And related to the switcher, it only changes the buttons, don’t worry about that :)
AJ
February 13th, 2009 12:49 amHi guys,
Does anyone have a solution to the IE6 style issue? my right menu seems to go all the way down.
Thanks!
AJ
visuvious
February 13th, 2009 12:34 pmI wondering why the Ajax Tabs doesn’t work..
I’m using the WordPress Coltrane 2.7, the ajax tabs has shown but it doesn’t work.
monkey
February 14th, 2009 11:01 pmWow! Thanks a lot!
daredanger
February 22nd, 2009 3:02 pmThe theme is not working correctly in IE6. The sidebar goes all the way down. Can anyone suggest a solution?
Kelsey
February 24th, 2009 10:15 amWOW thanks so much for this design. I have been searching everywhere for just the perfect one and I LOVE THIS! Check it out on my school blog :) thanks again
Paris
March 2nd, 2009 9:46 amMatthieu you rock! thanks for the solution!
check here for the working solution
DRob
March 3rd, 2009 7:09 amI’m using wordpress 2.7.1 and most everything seems to work fine. However, its seems that I’m also getting the sidebar pushed down the page when viewed in IE6. Any solutions for this?
Also, anyone trying to use a sticky post with the color paper theme? It’s not displaying correctly for me. Any help is appreciated!
Simon
March 10th, 2009 8:28 pmI’m not sure exactly what the author intended, but I put together a quick blog post outlining how to fix the sidebar “ajax” tabs. It’s simply a matter of including a bit of javascript to fix the color press ajax tabs.
Enjoy!
koen
March 16th, 2009 1:13 pmThe problem of the right sidebare being pushed down is created by the button you have to insert. When you insert it, the sidebare gets pushed down, when you don’t insert it the text of the first post is running over the text of the second post. etc..
anyone got a solution for this?
Money Maker
March 25th, 2009 8:30 amThis theme is great。i like it
Yann Fahrni
April 7th, 2009 9:20 amI just translate this theme in French, you can download here => http://www.wpthemes.ch/2009/04/07/color-paper-theme-original-avec-un-magnifique-design/
Thanks a lot for this theme, it’s very nice !
JohnTP
April 17th, 2009 7:23 amI can’t get how to display the AJAX tabs, the theme did not display them by default and there is no option either to display them in the panel too. I am using WP 2.7.1
I know this sounds noobish, but a little help would really be appreciated.
Thanks.
chiron
May 25th, 2009 10:52 pmBeautiful theme, but is there a German translation out there?
Thanks a lot!
Alikatnz
May 27th, 2009 2:29 amI too cannot get the Ajax tabs working, nor the built in flickr feed thing. I am using WordPress 2.7.1. Can someone please post a solution to this? Cheers.
Ryan O. Hicks
June 5th, 2009 10:26 pmCan’t get the flickr stream to show and ajax tabs won’t work either.
WP 2.7.1 …. any help?
Kuld33p
June 19th, 2009 8:21 pmThanks alot man
Renee
June 20th, 2009 6:34 pmI love this template! I uploaded it to my current Blogger blog-www.eatliveshop.com- the other night and it shows up as shown above when I’m signed into Blogger but looks very different on other people’s computers. Most of the time my readers are seeing just a beige/grey background and there are no layers or wood background. Please HELP!!!
Ramesh
July 7th, 2009 10:01 amI have modified this theme and completed it with complete personalization of colors. Header, footer all buttons and pretty much everything changes colors accordingly. Besides that I modified fonts, added tag cloud to the sidebar and things like that.
I’d like to know if I can let users download the modified version of the theme from my blog. I have the below text in the footer with a link to this website (Design based on: colorpaper by smsahing magazine)
Please let me know.
Thanks,
Ramesh
Helen Lee
July 9th, 2009 11:51 pmVery Beautiful!
Mike Tee
August 1st, 2009 3:27 amFirst of all, many thanks for the great-looking theme.
To echo some of the issues highlighted above, when a content “overlaps” another on the main page – just edit index.php, and change the_content(”) into the_excerpt(”)
Alex Costa
August 21st, 2009 4:23 amHi, the live demo is pointing to a different layout
Michael Todd
October 1st, 2009 9:11 pmI have never read something like this :)
I am going to bookmark this article for future use.Thanks for this.I used to go to this Rapidshare Search Engine for downloading games, music, movies, softwares, songs before :D
How did you get this information friend ??I dint read it anywhere else LOL
Thanks.
Phil v. Sassen
October 21st, 2009 11:11 amNice theme. Unfortunately it does not work under WP 2.8 …
chris stewart
December 5th, 2009 10:05 amHi there I installed this theme and customized the graphics. The one thing that doesnt seem to work for me though is displaying posts as summaries. It shows them as full posts and part of the blog post gets cut off in the footer. But when you click on the post link, it displays correct. Is there a place in the code I can fix this?
Here in the site.
http://www.capturelifeworkshop.com
Thanks and this theme is awesome.
chris stewart
December 9th, 2009 10:03 amby the way i was able to get the theme to work perfectly with a little coding and plug ins.
Jared
December 16th, 2009 2:18 amChris – What did you do to fix the home page so it will post the summaries and not the full posts? Running on wp2.8.6…
Anthony Hernandez
December 25th, 2009 7:19 amDid anybody ever find a fix for the featured content?
Jennifer
April 28th, 2010 11:40 amThe download link doesn’t work.
Jen
May 4th, 2010 5:18 amYeah – the download link is broken… PLEASE FIX IT!!! :(
david
May 19th, 2010 7:57 amthis may be a dumb question, but i can’t seem to sign in now that i’ve signed out. what am i missing here? my blog is mediachopsuey.blogspot.com
Jan
July 24th, 2010 5:16 amthe link to ‘download the theme’ doesn’t work :(
Tom
August 16th, 2010 1:51 pmFor anyone having problems with Flickr Photostream widget:
In Color Paper Options, you have to write your flickr ID not nickname. For me, not “koubic10″, but “53050837%40N05″. I know one way how to get it, maybe there’re more ways: Go on http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne and get a Photostream HTML code. You’ll see your real Flickr ID in the part with <script src=”…user=XXX…”>
Jennifer
August 17th, 2010 5:10 pmIs there anyway to download this template? The link goes to “not found”
muneeb
September 3rd, 2010 4:18 amthe download link is not working
Hiren Khambhayta
October 10th, 2010 3:31 amMany are nice ones but some are outdated.
canlı izle
December 11th, 2010 8:14 amthe link to ‘download the theme’ doesn’t work :(
Ionuţ
January 14th, 2011 2:17 pmIt would be really great from your part if you would add a valid download link and a valid live preview for this theme, because it looks pretty nice.
Andrey
January 24th, 2011 7:23 amI wondering why the Ajax Tabs doesn’t work..
I’m using the WordPress Coltrane 2.7, the ajax tabs has shown but it doesn’t work.
Nick G
March 3rd, 2011 5:00 pmLinks don’t seem to work, I want to try it, looks awesome!
LRachid
March 9th, 2011 9:11 amAnybody have psd file????
Felipe L.B.
March 27th, 2011 6:20 amThe links for download seems all dead. Please re-up for us!
Felipe L.B.
March 27th, 2011 7:01 pmI have found a link! http://www.4shared.com/file/gvI8Pelh/colorpaper.htm
chempro
April 24th, 2011 5:46 amThanks for free theme
Chempro
Rali Kalyani
July 2nd, 2011 8:10 amI am unable the source file, please give proper link.