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
Comments styling
Sidebar styling (upper part)
Sidebar styling (bottom part)
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
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Gerwin
October 30th, 2008 3:24 pmNice theme!
Soon I let my free wordpress template dissolve you.
Gerwin
Stedio.nl
yeah
October 30th, 2008 3:32 pmThanks for the theme.
I do have a question though. I’m trying to teach myself css and i really want to pick this bad boy apart. Is there a way to view these php files in dreamweaver from my computer. I don’t really want to put them on my server I just want to see any changes I make to it.
Great post. Didn’t mean to highjack it :S
Boeta
May 23rd, 2011 1:17 pmHi, i use Notepad + to edit and view php files! Works like a charm!
acidcloud
October 30th, 2008 3:45 pmSweet theme. I think I might use this one in the future.
Thanks!
Adam
October 30th, 2008 3:47 pmHello, a really really beautiful theme there.
Anyway I can obtain the PSD source for this?
Chris
October 30th, 2008 3:55 pm@yeah: Your best option would be to install WAMP (or MAMP on OS X) and then install WordPress on localhost, then install your theme on that. Then you could just go to http://localhost/ on your machine to test it out without uploading it.
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz
October 30th, 2008 3:57 pm@Adam: we just sent an e-mail to the designers. We hope they’ll share the PSD with us.
Daniel
October 30th, 2008 4:05 pmVery cute.
Adam
October 30th, 2008 4:53 pmHi, nice theme, thank you.
How do I get the “read more” function to work? If I have a long post at the top it overflows into the lower sections and messes up the layout.
Thanks
Nathaniel
October 30th, 2008 5:25 pmhot, i was going to do the torn paper thing on my upcoming blog though.. now I don’t want to look like a copy cat
liam
October 30th, 2008 5:38 pm@Adam – You control that through your normal WordPress admin. There is a “read more” button you can click to insert a read more tag in your Post controls when you’re writing a post.
Amy
October 30th, 2008 5:47 pmI concur with Adam the first! Lovely theme, and a PSD would make me squee. I’d be so grateful for the chance to peek under the hood of a nice theme.
Well, staring at the php is technically “under the hood” but not quite as immediately visual as seeing some nice layers. :)
Paul
October 30th, 2008 5:56 pmawesome thanks so much guys, this is a little ripper
an.gg.un
October 30th, 2008 6:07 pmits awesome.
Danillo Nunes
October 30th, 2008 6:19 pmNice theme.
But why a “Share-alike” license, if I am “forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both the designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission” and to release a modification, I need ask your permission first?
dev
October 30th, 2008 7:12 pmthis theme is really beautiful especially the background but fell weird that we can only change * Home * About * Contact * Extras color .
http://Www.iHaCK.ASIA
Martin
October 30th, 2008 7:26 pm@yeah – maybe you can install Apache like XAMPP and test ride it before loading up your server – Cheers http://www.haobam.com
DVQ
October 30th, 2008 7:57 pmAs usual, another great free wordpress.
The .PSD would be great.
Great work guys.
Milinda
October 30th, 2008 8:39 pmThis theme has a great look but when I installed it on my blog, it breaks the how blog look. The featured post breaks how my latest post look and it breaks the whole view and consistency of my blog(Image 1). I have a sideblog widget in my blog, this theme also breaks it(image 2). Also RSS button is at the bottom of the side bar. I think that’s not a good practice when you want more subscribers to your blog. There are some other formatting problems. I think it’s better someone can put the fixes to those problem. It’ll help new users to tweak there blog to work with this nice looking theme.
Joe
October 30th, 2008 8:43 pmWOW! Amazing Theme!!!!!
Jay
October 30th, 2008 8:43 pm@yeah
You can use this article: http://max.limpag.com/2006/06/07/how-to-edit-wordpress-design-using-dreamweaver/
ouih
October 30th, 2008 8:44 pmsuperb! what will be in the future? smashing magazine & designers are rocking!!!
Alex
October 30th, 2008 9:05 pmExcellent theme. Can’t wait to use it.
highblood
October 30th, 2008 10:31 pmI’m definitely going to use it!! thanks for sharing!!
srinivas
October 30th, 2008 10:36 pmnice theme…. thanks
okai
October 30th, 2008 11:20 pmI tried this on 1900×1200 res and it looks great! THANKS!
Erik
October 30th, 2008 11:29 pmnice theme
winmac
October 30th, 2008 11:47 pmAwesome! I like the date tabs at the end of every posts.
Tom
October 30th, 2008 11:52 pmall those great themes in the past are very stylish and are really outstanding. as a daily visitor of sm i have to say im very thankfull and happy to get such great designwork for free.
what i miss, on nearly every theme that was released in the past is – a great archive page.
all designers were concentrated in the layout and the look of the first page. i think a perfect view in a archiv ( archive-page ) is needed too. what do you think?
my english isn´t the best, please excuse me :)
i would rather use a nice styled archive page then a flickr plugin in the mainpage. i would rather use a lifestream plugin then twitter alone….
but this work is smocking hot and i really really love it. aggregado is still the best. thx you ftl and thx sm
Yuukan
October 31st, 2008 12:00 amNice theme ! Looks very good.
nicole@younic
October 31st, 2008 12:03 amI like it! Nice idea & fresh inspiration – thanks!
Tim
October 31st, 2008 12:35 amThat’s good lookin’!
But boy, is it huge: almost 1.5 MB to load for all the stuff. Maybe you can try to shrink the images a bit more.
dt
October 31st, 2008 1:39 amI thought all WordPress themes are released under GPL license – WordPress authors didn’t make a license exception for themes or plugins. There was a long discussion about this on several blogs and conclusion was that you can create and use a theme without having to release it under GPL (because GPL applies only on distribution) but if you want to sell or release a theme, you need to stick to that license. Of cource, this doesn’t apply to design/artwork.
agungbbs
October 31st, 2008 3:03 ammantab gan!!!
good job! i love this one!
Christian
October 31st, 2008 4:09 amThis is beautiful! Thank you!
SiGa
October 31st, 2008 4:36 amI like it, especially the “featured block” with the color changer. What irritates me a little bit is the large blue block/stripe in the background… Just an opinion, don´t hit me! ;-)
iuliux
October 31st, 2008 5:01 amSuperb. I can see a lot of influences over here… and the combination is, like I said, Superb!
in 2 weeks half of the blogs will be dressed with this theme.
Rob
October 31st, 2008 5:23 am@Danillo Nunes
Why should you be able to sell a theme someone has kindly offered for free?
Katherine Navarro
October 31st, 2008 5:59 amI installed the theme but I’m getting this error -
Call to undefined function the_title_attribute() – referring to line 6 on index.php
Can anyone help? I’d really like to get the theme to work on my blog. Thanks.
jin
October 31st, 2008 6:50 amwow… thank you.
It really helps checking out the code and see at how cleanly pros develop themes.
Evan
October 31st, 2008 6:54 amWhoa – great looking theme! Good job!
Wes D.
October 31st, 2008 8:25 amwell put together and a great theme…thank you very much for this!
Saru No Ben
October 31st, 2008 8:54 ambeautiful,
News about psd file?
liam
October 31st, 2008 9:05 amPSD file is being uploaded as we speak :)
Ehab
October 31st, 2008 11:39 amThats a good thing isn’t it ;) The featured Item isn’t really a featured item – its the latest item. The size for that is a little too small, since most blogers use a few images on the top – makes things look nice.
Please try to increase the height of the feature post div.
Skylor Matthew Werden
October 31st, 2008 12:03 pmI wish I knew how to turn this into a tumblr theme!
gNcWebmaster
October 31st, 2008 12:25 pmI love Smashing Magazine :) Perfect Theme. Thanks
Dan
October 31st, 2008 12:56 pmFantastic Theme! I’m wondering if anyone else has had issues with the following: 1) Search Results – My search results page has a broken layout and major validation errors. 2) Archives Page – I don’t see any post titles or links to read the full posts. Only some of the content is shown. Are these my issues, or can anyone weigh in? The demo link produces the same result for me. I’m using WordPress version 2.63.
Ehab
October 31st, 2008 1:28 pmAgreeing to Dan
Really love this design. But things need major lookups.
Search page is.. a mess
Category Archives posts does not have Post Title
Have no tried to validate either pages, can someone add ?
gNcWebmaster
October 31st, 2008 1:39 pmEhab you have a point. Where is the Search form this theme? But theme is very nice :)
Ehab
October 31st, 2008 1:46 pmOk, I just had to put the theme down (very bad of me)
Too buggy to put in the main blog. I tweak a fix for the “Category Archives posts does not have Post Title”
Add after line 31 ( div class=”post” ):
<h3 id="post-"><a href="" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to ">Dan
October 31st, 2008 2:20 pm@Ehab – Thanks for verifying that the problem is not isolated.
The theme isn’t really usable “as is” with its broken search and archives templates. However, I think the design and layout is superb. The theme’s options are a bit clunky as well; I would use widgets instead, but the CSS styles for widgets need some attention (don’t try to insert a search widget, or use a list item that wraps to the next line). IE6 fares surprisingly well with this theme, though there are issues with transparency.
My wish list would also include a search form and an RSS feed icon at the top right. This is a potentially high-quality theme. I hope it turns into one!
Ehab
October 31st, 2008 2:40 pmpotentially high-quality – You bet !
I love the design – big time. But as you mentioned, a few fixes are needed here and there. And then we come in, adding more glue to it.
By the way, the png images are quite bulky. Is that normal ?
I will stop thinkng of ie6 issues. IE6 users does not deserve to see good looking websites !
RandyR
October 31st, 2008 3:10 pmI love this theme very nicely made!! Thanks
Tiago Sá
October 31st, 2008 5:38 pmIt’s a shame, really, that most wordpress themes are so bland and uninventive. Design-wise, I mean. They are basically all the same, with a few good exceptions but that’s it. It’s practically impossible to find something to work upon outside premium themes.
Still, SM manages to provide us with dozens of extremely good and incredible themes from the hundreds covered here :P This is not the case, IMHO…
Dippa
November 1st, 2008 12:51 amThis is another great looking theme. Probably the best one so far along with the Dilectio theme.
Ehab
November 1st, 2008 1:45 amMmm, are the problems going to be fixed or should I go about trying to do it myself :) ?
FBrushes.com
November 1st, 2008 1:48 amGreat WP theme very superb.
depi
November 1st, 2008 2:04 amI like the way you do it guys there. I believe that you must have a pretty much of nice template submissions :)
helm
November 1st, 2008 5:30 amHello, great looking theme, but the “Tabs” are not properly working, when I choose “Comments” or “Featured” nothing happens. How can I fix this bug?
Danillo Nunes
November 1st, 2008 5:53 am@Rob
I’m not want to sell this theme, but, according to this post, apparently I can’t redistribute it free and I can’t launch a modified version of it without first talking to the author. So they disabled totally the “share-alike” part of the license. This can be confusing for some. Would be easier to choose a “no derivative works” license.
mokin
November 1st, 2008 8:28 amthank a lot
Paul0v2
November 1st, 2008 10:05 amwow, really nice theme, lovely design, I’ll definitely try it out.
Thank you very much for this.
Matt
November 1st, 2008 11:58 am@liam “PSD file is being uploaded as we speak :)”
Where can we get it?
Ehab
November 1st, 2008 1:36 pmI am not going to worry about the licensing part. This is a pure work of art (on the UI part..) and if I designed it I would not want people to make a few “changed” and distribute it.
Kurt
November 1st, 2008 3:03 pmVery very nice!!! This is one cool theme.
My ajax tabs did not work like one of the posters said above but after I upgraded to wordpress 2.6.2+ it worked without issues for me. And they look pretty cool ;)
emfajar
November 1st, 2008 4:00 pmyeahhh! great theme
Andrew
November 1st, 2008 11:42 pmIs the psd file uploaded yet?
I can’t find a link to it.
icewater
November 2nd, 2008 1:24 amcooool design!!! :|o|
Philip P.
November 2nd, 2008 6:51 pmAny chance we can get that PSD? Would love to play around and see if I can’t get the style switcher to change the background in a couple other places as well. :-) In particular the blue stripe across the back – part of main-back.gif
Thanks for the style though!
Cheers!
Robert
November 2nd, 2008 9:27 pmfantastic!
Stone
November 2nd, 2008 10:27 pmCool theme!
Thanks SM so much! :x
erwin15155
November 2nd, 2008 11:00 pmthanks for this theme…..
FreeThemeLayouts.com
November 3rd, 2008 5:02 am* Search page & archive page bugs fixed.
* Inbuilt Search & Archives section added to sidebar
* You can re-download the wp theme to get the most updated version
* PSD files now available for download. (See above)
Adam
November 3rd, 2008 5:16 amThank you very much guys at FreeThemeLayouts and SmashingMagazine!
I can now play and edit with the PSD source.
Aria Rajaas
November 3rd, 2008 6:22 amWow.. this is just.. awesome..
Saurabh
November 3rd, 2008 10:47 amReally .. this is a great design….
I’ll try to convert this into Joomla template.
Thank you so much!!!!!!
NaysWay
November 3rd, 2008 1:10 pmI am currently using the design and LOVE it. Currently, though, I’m using the Archives function as its own page. How do I go about removing Archives from the sidebar?
MattZ
November 3rd, 2008 1:31 pmAn awesome theme! Its really nice to see some great professional freebies out there. Great for learning and seeing what is possible.
@Chris
Was wondering how to test out WordPress locally on my Windows machine. Didn’t expect to see a solution so readily available here, but I’m glad I did. Thanks!
Achaiah
November 4th, 2008 9:20 pmGreat theme but bugs persist. I have search and archives showing up twice in my widget bar (or show up once on the main site when I REMOVE them completely from the widget bar under WP Design settings)!! The first post still overflows when too much content is added. I hope this theme is still actively developed since it can’t be used with all the bugs….
Very creative though.
BoDeK
November 5th, 2008 8:00 amNot working on WordPress 2.7 beta 1
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare get_comments() (previously declared in /home/bodek/public_html/test/wp-includes/comment.php:178) in /home/bodek/public_html/test/wp-content/themes/colorpaper/functions.php on line 37:(sandeep sharma
November 5th, 2008 9:15 pmReally .. Nice theme…
liam
November 6th, 2008 7:08 am@Matt – The PSD is now in the original post, just below the live demo link. Thanks.
Didou
November 6th, 2008 5:35 pmI love this great theme, but it does’nt work correctly on my site… It can’t show the sidebar correctly by archive or search (hope i’m clear because i don’t speak a good english)… Sidebar disapears in the bottom of the blog !! I have tried a lot of solutions : nothing works !!!
Hope you’ll have a solution… Thanks and kisses from France !
Didou
November 6th, 2008 5:48 pmThe problem can be “Evermore” Plugin…???
LiviaCH
November 8th, 2008 2:25 pmThis is a wonderful theme, but I have a few problems with it. :-(
I am running WP 2.6.3 and I also changed the sidebar.php as advised in the readme.
But still the ajax-Box titles only link to # and another thing is that the featured post on top of the page is too long for the div. It does show and so do the tabs in the source code but the links on the title of the tabx only point to # :-(
What do I have to change to have the two problems solved?
Thanks a lot for your help and of course thanks for this really great looking theme :-)
Donald Kelly
November 9th, 2008 2:27 amI’m also having the issue “BoDeK” covered in comment 81, I’m running 2.7-beta2-9571 (which as of the time I write this comment, is the latest nightly build of the 2.7 Beta.)
Any ideas as to what is causing this issue? This is my favourite theme as of now, but not being able to use it is… a downside.
gNcWebmaster
November 9th, 2008 8:20 amTurkish version is here: http://gncwebmaster.com/tr/2008/11/09/color-paper-temasi-turkce/
Lyle
November 10th, 2008 10:45 amI’m currently using this great theme right now at my blog (www.lylesantos.com). Overall, I am very happy with it except for one thing.
I tried adding a Google Analytics code and a Technorati code (to claim my blog)… the code was successfully added but can’t be crawled (detected) by Google and Technorati.
I tried inserting the code in the header, footer, main index, sidebar… still unsuccessful. Anyone here had the same experience?
Denise
November 10th, 2008 11:25 amI really like this theme, it’s creative and different from the usual themes you see. I am just beginning a new blog, so I installed WordPress then installed this theme. It does not work with IE6…the sidebar gets pushed down, the content does not stay at the top. The more posts you have the worse it moves the content down.
Although it does work ok in Firefox, because the entire right sidebar disappears to the bottom of the page after a few posts in IE6, I cannot use it. I may try to tweak it myself, but I wanted something quick and easy to allow me to spend more time on the content.
Very nice looking theme…but could have used more browser testing before release…IMHO.
Denise
November 11th, 2008 9:12 amAlright, I worked through the IE6 issues…just wondering, has anyone been able to get the style switcher to work?
I really love the look of this theme! If I could fix the style switcher it would be perfect for me! :)
Miss Lunatic
November 12th, 2008 3:55 amIt’s awesome! But I have the same problem with the sidebar, it just gets push down. Any solution? Thanks for sharing :D
Aizu Ikmal Ahmad
November 12th, 2008 7:32 amHi! I’ve fix the ‘featured post’ area in this colorpaper theme. You may found the ‘featured post’ area have problem with long post. Check the solution here; http://aizuikmal.com/2008/11/wordpress-theme-colorpaper-fixed-version/
manu
November 12th, 2008 9:27 pmHi thank you,
As LiviaCH
I have the same problem, please help!
Miss Lunatic
November 13th, 2008 3:32 amI’ve tried what Aizu made to fix the featured post, but it doesn’t work for me. So I’ve made a trick. I’ve added this line
php echo strip_tags(get_the_excerpt()instead
of the content ()in the index.php file and it works fine. You can see it at my blog Miss LunaticMiss Lunatic
November 13th, 2008 3:36 amI’ve tried what Aizu made to fix the featured post, but it doesn’t work for me. So I’ve made a trick. I’ve added this line
php echo strip_tags(get_the_excerpt());instead of the content () in the index.php file and it works fine. You can see it at my blog Miss Lunatic (www.misslunatic.es)
I forget to say that there’s still the problem with the sidebar for IE6 users. Any help?
Didou
November 16th, 2008 11:55 amI had by-passed the problems i met !! And i’m now using (See it here ) this great theme with a lot of pleasure !! Want to thank the authors for that good job !!
Macgrafic
November 17th, 2008 12:11 ambuen theme, me gusta mucho, gracias por tdodo
Adam
November 17th, 2008 3:05 amHi there,
I wish to release a Drupal version of Color Paper.
However, I’ve tried e-mailing the authors and Smashing Magazine, but I have not received any reply from them.
Whats the point of stating this when they don’t reply to e-mails?
Adam
November 17th, 2008 3:07 am.
Achaiah
November 17th, 2008 9:08 pmDidou, what did you do to solve the problems?