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Introducing the “Charred” WordPress Theme
Since I recently made a few changes to WPelements.com, I wanted to release my previous theme (version 1.0) to the public. I was originally going to release it unedited and named WPelements, but I decided to make a few changes to give it its own unique identity. Anyway… the end result is a new theme called “Charred”. Charred is a 2 column, widget enabled WordPress theme with the popular post thumbnail feature found on WPelements.com. Continue reading for usage instructions and to download the “Charred” theme (Free of charge).
View a live demo for the Charred WordPress theme HERE.
Writing a Post With Thumbnail
The Charred theme features post thumbnails which means that you will have to use the “Custom Fields” option when writing a post. All you have to is create a thumbnail image that you want to use for your post. I suggest that you scale your image to 140 pixels square. You can actually use any size image that you want for the post thumbnail, but keep in mind that the theme will scale your thumbnail image to 140 pixes square which might result in a distorted image. One you have created your post thumbnail, upload it, and create a new custom field called “thumbnail”. In the field value, paste the link to where you have uploaded your thumbnail (i.e. “http://www.somesite.com/thumbnail.jpg”). See below…
Setting Up The Featured Articles SideBlog
Setting up the featured articles sideblog is as simple as creating a category in WordPress called “Featured”. One you have done that, all you have to do is categorize any post that you want to show up in the sideblog as “Featured”. Nothing else to do there.
Change Your Logo
If you want to change the default logo, simply edit “logo.png” found within the theme “images” folder. The font I used for the default logo is called “Everyday Ghost” which can be downloaded FREE at dafont.com.
Download the “Charred” WordPress Theme
You can download the Charred WordPress theme by using the link below. No payment is necessary, but please feel free to send me a donation if you like by clicking the “Add To Cart” button below. Also, PLEASE leave credit where credit is due when using this theme. In other words, please DO NOT remove the wpelements.com link within the footer.
Download “Charred” Version 1.0
There was layout issue found within the featured sideblog on the index page which has been fixed. Please download the latest version of charred if you haven’t already done so.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Excellent! thank you very much, you are a star!
April 16th, 2008 at 9:37 am
oh man i just #!**#$ everywhere in my pants.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Thanks Joe… Sorry, but I had to edit your comment, just in case there are some sensitive ears at WPelements.com.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Haha that’s cool, but yeah awesome theme!!!
April 16th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Love it! Been looking for a good “Wood” inspired theme.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Is beautiful, Thank you!
April 16th, 2008 at 11:53 am
This is super cool. I can’t stand it, I clicked the pay button. Thank you Jason!
April 16th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Charred, hermoso tema Wordpress…
WPElements, blog del diseñador Jason, lanza hoy un hermoso tema para Wordpress, se trata de Charred un diseño basado en el de su propio blog de estilo rustico pero muy elegante y limpio. Charred tiene características que llaman la atención:
Dos c……
April 16th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Thanks everyone… Glad you like the theme.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Jason, cool man. Thanks for the theme. I am going to use it for another project I am working.
DemoPit
April 16th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Jeezo! I’ve been working my ass of for nearly a month trying to get my site just right… and you go and release this beautiful theme…..!
Ah well, no more headaches hardcoding wpremix. Pity cause i was just starting to like how i’d got it.
I’m also using your features Gallery plugin - is there an easy way to intergrate it into Charred? Not a problem if not, it’s just a cool plugin, shame not to use it!
Thanks for the great theme, gonna start work on it tomorrow….
April 16th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Hi, this is a great template, Congrats…!!
Im just starting my new blog, and I thinks its beautiful to use it.. Thanks..
But Im having some trouble with the thumbnail option, I uploaded my pic and used custom field, but nothing happend, dont know whats wrong…
Maybe if you can check it for a sec, Thank you
http://www.entregraficos.com
April 16th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Nice job! I miss the transparency in the bg but I guess that’s easy enough to add back in (along with the IE hacks. damn IE.).
Great job, Jason, but do you ever sleep? Honestly?
April 16th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
thanks jason
April 16th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
i added transparency back without any ie hacks JayR
April 16th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Nice.
Question… could you tell me why my featured articles look like this in the sidebar? I’m confused. Thanks.
http://newsmuze.com/
April 17th, 2008 at 1:04 am
I got this on one of my sites now.
I added the transparency back into the sidebars and i was going to add avitars into the comments but couldnt get them to show. Anyone else having this problem?
April 17th, 2008 at 1:05 am
o here is the link to my site
http://www.jericosystems.com/
sorry for dubble posting jason
April 17th, 2008 at 1:25 am
jason im having the same problem as cstina with the featured articles. any ideas?
April 17th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Cstina, Eric… I fixed the sidebar issue by adding a height value to the sideblog css. download the latest version, or simply add “height:65px;” to “#sideBlog” found in style.css.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:09 am
@Eric — Nice site! I don’t see the transparency though.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:34 am
the sidebar tables should be transparent. i didnt know if that was where you was talking about having transparency or not though.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:36 am
there semi-transparent anyway.
jason i would kill to have a edit comment feature on here
lol
April 18th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Thanks for this beatıful themes
it’s a very nice pageback topic, ı cahnged to use it in turkey. ı hope you understand that.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Gotcha Ilyas… Seems like I have plenty of foreign readers wanting to translate my themes. In fact, 10% of all my readers are from France, followed by 7% in the UK, then 5% in Spain, etc… Pretty cool to have a world wide following.
April 18th, 2008 at 8:05 am
lol dont forget all us small time people when your famous.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Hi Jason,
I’m done with the french translation but I got one question about a piece of code in the comments.php file. Around the line 26, the email check … what is it for ?
April 18th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Another excellent work Jason, as usual. I will download it and test it in some ideas i have.
Good Luck!
April 18th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Beautiful design ^_^
April 18th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Excellent Theme I’ve never been before..Thx…:-)
April 19th, 2008 at 2:42 am
Great GREAT theme!
I must say that it is certainly one of the best ones i have seen. Not just from you but from anyone
Question for you. I notice you make a lot of dark templates - do you plan on doing smiler styles in white and light gray?
April 20th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Great Theme! How do we add in Avatar support for comments with WP2.5 and set the comment background to transparent? I have seen these questions asked, but not the answers. Thanks.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Wow Jason! I realy love this theme, i’m going to use it as a base for my new portfolio!
Thanks!
April 20th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Elliott… Actually this is the first dark theme I have made here at WPelements.com. Massive News, Massive Mobile, VideoFlick and VideoElements are all standard white themes.
Kevin… I will be adding gravitar support soon, thanks.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Very true Jason - I must have been wVery true Jason - I must have been way too tired to legally post :S
Sorry about that. I do have another question though. I am rather noobish when it comes to modding themes but have successfully managed to make the sidebar transparent by doing the following in the style file.
#sidebar {
color:#BDAFA8;
filter:alpha(opacity=50);
-moz-opacity:0.5;
-khtml-opacity: 0.5;
opacity: 0.5;
float:left;
width:300px;
line-height:1.3em;
margin:10px 0 0 33px;
}
However the content also becomes transparent
after a good hour on Google I have found nothing that makes much sense (to me at least). I was wondering if anyone could help me out?
Hope it is ok that I posted this here Jason, if not I do apologise!
Elliott
April 20th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Elliott… I typically just use transparent .png’s for my BG’s, but then you have to worry about IE6 fixes.
April 20th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Great theme!
Does this mean more dark themes on the way?
April 20th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
If you’ll notice on my site on the comments:
http://www.jericosystems.com/2008/04/17/top-gear-season-11/
i have added gravitar support and transparency.
I uses .png’s for transparency like Jason does because it doesn’t make everything in the table transparent also. Also remember that using .png’s or filters to make things transparent isnt supported by every browser.
As for the gravitar you will have to edit the comments.php file by adding the php tag that you will get with the gravitar plugin. To add the gravitar at the location mine is just add the tag on line 34 of comments.php
hope this help you guys out some.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Thanks for this theme, this is super-cool
I’ll feature it in my WordPress themes weekly list.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:13 am
Thanks for the help guys!
April 21st, 2008 at 9:28 am
Dean… Definitely more dark themes on the way.
April 21st, 2008 at 3:56 pm
How are you all adding back in transparency? can you share the css changes?
April 21st, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Kevin…
You can add transparency by using .png files as your background instead of a solid color. There are other ways to do it, but using transparent .png’s is very simple. Problem is that IE6 and below does not support transparent .png’s which is why I changed the theme to a solid BG.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Just make a transparent background about 5px-5px and the just add it to the background of the tables you want to be transparent.
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Im having a problem with editing the log. I created a new one, logo.png transparent backround and aded it to the template. On my mac it looks fine, however on my pc the logo has a white background. Does anyone have any advise?
here is my link http://www.dmkdesigngroup.com
does it look fine to everyone else, it could be my pc.
thanks
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:32 pm
WOW OMG!!
Thank you so much!
This is a great job man! Thanks!
You can answer me how i can put it at my wordpress?
Thanks.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:41 am
@ Pete:
Looks fine to me on my xp, and vista machine
April 25th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Jason,
There seems to be an error reported by IE7 and I think it is something in the gallery usage. Any ideas?
Reports:
Line:521
Char:4
Error:Type Mismatch
Code:0
Thanks!
April 26th, 2008 at 11:31 am
beautiful!
April 26th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Kevin… The error you get (IE only) when using the gallery plugin is due to the gallery scripts developed by johndesign.net. I am waiting for a new version so that I can update my plugin.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:01 am
Nice! cool job!
April 28th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Jason. I added in some comments for a fix for the gallery plugin… I love this theme and was wondering if you thought of adding in the ability to set a default image for the post thumbnails? That way if you don’t assign one for every post a default will show up?
Thanks!
April 28th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Great! thank you. I’ll come back to see new themes!
April 28th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
i made a page to have a photo gallery which is here..
http://www.jericosystems.com/gallery/
and im trying to use this script
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/frogjs/index.htm
I cannot get the javascript to work at all. with this or with any java script code i try to install. is there something you got to do to make it work on wordpress?
April 29th, 2008 at 4:45 am
AWESOME theme… clean and beautiful! i look forward to using it… by the way what is the “advertising bar” you have along the bottom of the site? Is it part of the theme or a plugin?
April 29th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Thank you very much!
April 29th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Jason can you accept my comment, I think its hiding in your moderating box thingy
April 29th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
How much of a donation will it take to let me remove the references to Charred and your site?
May 1st, 2008 at 11:06 am
If you try to use Charred with a static front page (Home/Blog as page names for example), the sidebar becomes an issue (using WP v2.5.1). If I have a meta widget, for example, in my front page (Home), then I can’t use it in my Blog sidebar.
May 5th, 2008 at 5:35 am
John… Please leave the site references in tact. For my premium themes, I charge $75 to be able to remove footer links.
May 7th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Hey Jason, I have a question about this theme. How would i go about modifying it to use the same sidebar for the posts and pages that it’s using for the index? I have 6 Widgets running on my index sidebar and would like to have them on the other bars as well but cant add then in the widgets page.
thanks
paul
http://www.circuitse7en.com
ps LOVE the theme
May 7th, 2008 at 7:35 am
ooo… nvm i Hacked a little code and got it to work just the way i wanted it to
May 7th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Cool theme I really love it!
but I have problem with “flickr-manager” plug in on Firefox
May 9th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Jason, I have an error that pops up quite often in IE7 saying that “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://*******.com/gallery/. Operation aborted. It seems to happen more often when I use the permalink structure Month and Name. Maybe an issue with syntax in header (link) usage?
May 10th, 2008 at 4:56 am
Great theme! Keep it up!
How can I get the Featured Articles to work???
Cheers!
May 11th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Thanks for this great theme man!
Im using it for my site now..
Love it!
May 12th, 2008 at 4:17 am
@ snakemans
create a new category called “featured” and add the posts you want to be featured to that category… (easy as cake)
May 12th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Fantastic theme!
I have one question. Is it possible to have the first post on the main page NOT have a thumbnail? In other words I would like the first post to fully show and the rest to be a thumbnail that you have to click on.
Thanks again for a great wordpress theme
May 14th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
exelent theme!!! very good
May 15th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Love the theme, but what if you want to do away with the thumbnails period?
May 16th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Hey Jason,
Great theme. I’m planning to try it, but I just have a quick question:
What happens to images in the post (not the thumbnail). Since you are already using the excerpt for the thumbnail, will an image embedded in a post show up on the index page listings? Do embedded images need to be kept below the “more” tag?
May 17th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Great Job, Jason!
I love this theme… I use this theme on one of my blog… with little modified…
May 19th, 2008 at 6:51 am
@Nikki… You could do away with the thumbnails very easily, but it would take a little customization in the them files.
@Craig… You can embed images like normal. No need to post below the more tag.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Hey, very cool theme. Used it for my blog but made some tweaks to it (still a work in progress of course). Thank you very much for the theme though, always love your work as it’s always very crisp and stylized.
Keep it up! (But not too much, might have to start more blogs if you do).
May 20th, 2008 at 7:06 am
@Brandon… Thanks… glad you like the theme.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:53 am
One of the best themes i found so far.
Very good job. Glad to have good people creating outstanding themes like you.
Gonna do some mod for my blog. Of course, i’ll let the footer credit in tact.
Thanks! I hope you can release such this awesome theme in the future.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:49 pm
How can I make my background not to repeat and that it can stay gray all the way to the bottom?
http://sincortina.com/?p=1#comment-2
take a look there…….
I am not too good with CSS, tried a few moves but it all gets out of whack!
Thanks much for your help.
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:25 am
Hi l0calh0st,
I did what you mean on my mod of Charred.
To make the background static, just edit your stylesheet on theme editor,
and make the body property like this:
html,body {
background:#333333 url(images/bg.jpg) fixed repeat;
color:#CCCCCC;
text-align:center;
}
“fixed repeat” make the background static.
Btw, i change the backgeound color. I think it’s not too affected to the theme.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:37 am
Thanks, but it did not work..
http://screencast.com/t/Wp5DFRQYJp
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:59 am
I found the fix,
background:#333333 url(images/bg.jpg) top repeat-x;
background-position:fixed;
color:#CCCCCC;
text-align:center;
It works now.
May 24th, 2008 at 6:59 am
@l0calh0st… Glad you figured it out. Your site looks great.
May 25th, 2008 at 5:08 am
Hi,
I’d like to have just one sidebar of widgets, which are visible on all pages. At the moment it looks like sidebar1/left is only on the index and sidebar2/right is on content pages.
Other than that, it’s a fantastic theme, I’m really pleased I found it!
Caspar
May 26th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
thanks Jason, been playing with the colors, I went to http://www.colourlovers.com/ and got me a great web 20 pallette and decided to change my layout.
I am working on a better logo, but nothing still gets my attention.
I forgot to mention, this is a great skin.
May 28th, 2008 at 8:24 am
How do I make posts show the full post instead of just the thumbnail and excerpt or partial post?
May 28th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
@ Caspar
You can hack the theme to use the same sidebar on every page. that’s what i did on my site: http://www.circuitse7en.com you just need to modify the code for the non index page to point to the “index sidebar” rather than one of the other sidebars. The only problem i encountered is the “featured articles” section wouldn’t import the body of the stories correctly so i ended up modifying that too to now it just lists the title and thumbnail…
May 28th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Hi Jason,
I downloaded latest theme but Featured Article layout problem still there, they are all overlap together.
I changed height to bigger number then it’s better, but cannot change it manually each time, it should be handled by itself.
#sideBlog {
margin:0px 0px 8px 0px;
height:65px;
}
checked few Charred demo site looks ok, don’t know what’s wrong for me?
forget to say it’s most cool theme I used, thanks very much !
BR/
Robert
May 28th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
@Caspar… If you want the same sidebar for all pages, simple edit index.php, single.php and page.php to pull the same sidebar.
@Nikki… You will have to edit index.php and remove the thumbnail portion (introIMG) and change the_content_rss to just the standard content template tag.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
How can I get the Featured Articles to work???
Cheers!
May 30th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Awesome theme. My only problem with it thus far (besides issues with upgrading to the latest WP) is that I can’t seem to get unordered lists to display as bulleted.
What do I need to conffigure to get a bulleted list to display
May 31st, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Looks great, but I’d really like to have my index pages show the full post, not just a snipit.
Could you tell me how to do this?
May 31st, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Many thanks for this great theme!
!
I’m using it for my blog, adding just a bit of code to show category images instead of thumbnails in the main page.
Great job
June 1st, 2008 at 7:38 am
Jason help me the featured article dosen’t work for me.I love this Theme
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:15 am
@thedor… As explained above… Setting up the featured articles sideblog is as simple as creating a category in WordPress called “Featured”. One you have done that, all you have to do is categorize any post that you want to show up in the sideblog as “Featured”. Nothing else to do there.
@Darren… Just edit the CSS and add a property to display unordered lists as whatever you want.
@Aaron… All you have to do is edit index.php, remove the entire “introIMG” div and then change the “php the_content_rss” to the standard content template tag.
@Scarafce… As explained above… Setting up the featured articles sideblog is as simple as creating a category in WordPress called “Featured”. One you have done that, all you have to do is categorize any post that you want to show up in the sideblog as “Featured”. Nothing else to do there.
June 4th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
hello jason…… please, i dont understand with the thumbnail, how can i put picture in every post, imean besides my post like yours?…..plz
June 4th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
whre must i upload the picture?…..help plz…..
June 5th, 2008 at 5:31 am
@ sean you can upload the thumbnail picture anywhere you want. When you create a new blog post you just need to add a custom field called “thumbnail” and for the field put a link to the thumbe nail you uploaded (eg http://www.yoursite.com/img/coolthumbnail.jpg)
June 5th, 2008 at 5:34 am
@ Fruskio Nice background
June 5th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
tq - paul
but……. can i put some music widget or shout bow in the search colum….. how?…. plz reply as soon as possible….
June 6th, 2008 at 6:12 am
did a little hacking last night and added full justification for the article excerpts that apear on the main page… looks much cleaner imo.
@sean you can add widgets to do either of those things. If you want them exactly where the search box is then you need to modify one of the php files that is creating the searchbox, blogcloud, and the featured articles sections. Since these are automatically inserted before the widgets.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Nice theme! But you should absolutely fix the Internett Explorer (IE) problem. The logo is fucked up.
Thanks
June 7th, 2008 at 3:09 am
I think i got mine just as i wanted it.
1. added transparency to sidebar and comment divs.
2. pages comments.
3. avatar in comments.
4. added custom field thumbnail to post pages as well.
5. added the famous footer ad bar from WP Elements… Hope you don’t mind Jason.
6. Changed dotted img to a line for separating post.
7. added admin comments so they look different.
8. added an archives page that gives all the information in the world.
9. added javascrpt gallery page that i just love the way it looks.
10. added post views.
@ Jokka:
- why are you having trouble, are you using IE6.. if you are for Christ sake upgrade dude lol.
June 7th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
can i wider my colum…….. coz it have hve 2 colum and not wide enough…….how? plz help
June 10th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
why when i turn comments off does the comment form still show
June 18th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Stunning theme! Is it possible to change the background? I’d love to use the them but with a completely white or grey background all over.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:47 am
thank you for this template. This is one of the cooler templates that I’ve come across that didn’t require a lot of hairpulling to set up. Come to think of it, there were no hairpulling involved.
More power to you!
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 am
@ross totally! you just need to switch out the background image and then if you are switching to a light color edit the css to have dark colors for the text.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Hi Jason
Coul you please email me. I have some questions about customization and need contact you.
I alreade sent you an email but it was rejected
Thanks
Dago
June 26th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
awesome theme but, you hate when this happens dont ya, it has a little glitch about son prototype.js script or version here is what appears to be the problem:
…/Wp-includes/js/prototype.js?ver=1.6:341
Anyone knows what that all about? maybe changing the version on the script would fix that, I think…anyways the theme is awesome, perfect.
June 30th, 2008 at 5:40 am
@Sean… If you want to remove the post thumbnail feature, feel free to edit the theme.
@Jokka… Are you seriously still using IE6??? The logo you see on the demo is just for the demo. 99% of the people that visit this site use something slightly newer than IE 6.0 which has to be about the worst browser on the planet.
@Eric… Good to see you add your own personal touch to the theme.
@Ross… Simply edit style.css and remove the body background.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:40 am
[...] Tema Sayfası/indir - Demo [...]
July 1st, 2008 at 2:56 am
am gonna use this theme for my next project…but i think i will customize some parts of this theme, however…i still gonna put the wpelements.com within the footer..thank you very much, oh by the way, are you using yahoo messenger? i’d like to share and learn from you about wordpress…best regards from indonesia
July 1st, 2008 at 3:27 am
[...] Adı: Charred Tr Tema Sahibi: Jason Schuller Türkçeleştirme: Mavinefes.com Orjinal tema adresi:WPelements.com Ön izleme: Türkçe çevrilmiş halini Buradan ön izleme yapabilirsiniz Thumbnail hakkında [...]
July 1st, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Thanks a ton for sharing!!!
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I have read all comments here, and I can fix it by my self…
I think this is the best themes I ever seen…
Now my new blog use this themes.
Thanks a lot Jason…