Supports Wordpress 2.6+
Clean, classy, and crimson… that’s the best way to describe this theme. It supports widgets and discriminating tastes, and as you can see it’s fairly light with a fine classy polish. The navigation tabs add some transparent wow, and the look and feel is easy to sink into. This latest version of the theme took me quite a bit of time to tweak just the way I liked it, so I hope you enjoy. 
[DOWNLOAD] v1.5 – 17 JUL 08 – 138kB
One of MANY, MANY reviews I’ve received:
I’ve looked at hundreds of WordPress themes, and I have to say, Crimson Sunrise is the most technically advanced I’ve seen yet.
- If you add pages, it adds tabs to the top.
- It comes with built in functions for doing things you’d normally have to hunt the Codex for
- It Looks GREATEither way, I think I’ve found my new favourite theme for WordPress.
I'm a Christ-follower, compelled by my faith toward reason, which points directly toward conservatism. This world's daily onslaught of lunacy offends my intellect and senses, so this is my venue to blow off steam.
I like it! thanks…..:))
Hello,
I’ve solved the problem with the calendar. However, I noticed that your theme doesn’t seem to support iframes. I tried putting some ads that use iframes and they don’t show up.
Toni :: Iframes appearing in your browser are usually independent of the theme you use. Often there are issues with widths or bad source paths. Email me your specific problem and I’ll see what I can do.
iframes
What theme is Negative99 based on? (I see dark_electric.css, but don’t find a theme by that name.)
I’m currently using Automatic Midnight, I’d like to go to three columns, full width, and still be able to scale from 800×600 all the way up. Are tables a disadvatage?
Rick :: Automatic Midnight of one of my favorite themes. Jay Contonio did I great job with it.
Dark Electric is a custom theme that I created and that I haven’t released (so you wouldn’t be able to find it)…
I have thought about eleasing a similar theme, though.
Yes, tables are a disadvantage. Except when actually displaying a table (like a calendar) you should avoid them for site layout purposes. Embrace the world of div’s and span’s.
If you don’t know what those are or are unsure how to effectively design without tables then do a search for “tableless web design” and you’ll get a bunch of resources.
Hi, the best way i can explain this to you all is showing you… here is what i want the pages template to be like…
http://www.rivercitylife.org.au/blog/
the other pages, when i apply this template to it, eveything seems fine, but the sidebar is out of alignment.
http://www.rivercitylife.org.au/blog/?page_id=22
What could this be wrong? On your demo page, your ‘archives’ page seems to act fine…
Josh,
You are a brave person asking me to check out a website using my theme with my credit deleted off of it and no link or anything. In case you are new that is considered bad form.
Never the less I know what the problem is. Send me an email and I’ll explain how to fix it. It’s an easy fix.
I love this theme. I’d love it even more if it was a three column theme, with a sidebar on either side *grin* but it’s extremely classy and nice to look at. Thanks!
Cool WP theme. I’m using it and making my own modifications. Like Angie above, I’m looking to make it a three-column, but with both sidebars on the right.
Cool. Let me know when you’ve made your mods and I’ll check’em out.
hey, i’m currently browsing wordpress themes for a new one for my site, man, yours looks verrrry nice! thanks for the good job
Guigo :: Thanks for the kind words!
very nice theme … just what I need … my blog is in dire need of a makeover … now if I can just figure out how to “access my host server” to install it…..
hi steve..thanks for the nice themes..i have used it for my blog and modify little bit…credit to you!!
Thanks for the kind words, nummerzwei. Your blog looks nice!
The crimson sunrise theme is pretty deceent. I would like to know if anyone made progress on the 3 column mod and if not how difficult is it to modify to a three column?
Dear WarAxe,
I have just downloaded your above mentioned theme. It is fantastic, but I have some problems with the text of the side bar and the fonts. Probably you are the only one, who can help me.
My keyboard has Hungarian layout. So I’d like to use some special characters like French guys. If I do so, some rubbish things are appeared in the screen. I create some samples on my homepage: http://rady.adminheaven.hu . (E.g. “Latest Posts” = “Friss Hírek” (Hungarian word)) Could you offer me any kind of solutions?
Thank you in advance.
Best regards,
Gabor Radvanszki
If you have time, I would appreciate some help in knowing how to turn on functions in the sidebar (the categories list, and archives display). These seem to be listed under bx_funcitons, but I don’t know how to enable them. Thank you.
Nevermind! Finally got up the nerve to tinker with the code and see what I could do, since I could always re-install the code if I totally blew it up…. and whaddya know… problem solved. Thanks for a great template/theme. I hope you will consider making this a widget-ready theme soon?
I love the theme, IMO the best ive found for wordpress 2.0, just 1 question, is it possible for me to make my links show up in seperate categories? I have tons of links i want to add, but dont want them all bunched up into 1 section. great job!
Gabor, for what it’s worth, if I View Source on your site and save it, I see the special character fine. Does that make any sense to anyone else?
Forest, try installing the widgets plugin – you’ll need to tweak sidebar.php a bit to get it working, just follow the tutorials – and use the LinkBlock widget from http://moho.optera.net/projects/wordpress/linkblock/
WarAxe – I’ve had a go at widgetizing this theme. Let me know if you want the source.
Simon :: Hey, that sounds great. Sure, send me the source. I get requests to widgetize it but never seem to get the time to knock it out… so many, many other things going on.
hi steve
was wondering if you might be willing to offer abit of support on your c.s.theme? really, really nice clean simple detail (have ‘borrowed’ for use on http://southendweb.net). am unsuccessfully trying to use calendar events plugin here: http://www.christopherherz.de/wordpress/?p=42#more-42
from reading posts regarding plug-in issues, the problem that i’m having is reported by others as well (events should trigger tool-tip like pop-up info box) is generally considered to be an errant bit of code on the page.
any chance you could take a look and see if you can see what might be leaping out at you (and running under the radar for me?
thanks much… joyce
Joyce :: I sent you an email from your site on this matter… just so you know.
ack… i must have missed it (caught behind the veil of spam…
could i possibly ask you to resend? coming from the negative99.com mail server?
thanks so much for (trying to) respond to my inquiry…
– joyce
Hi Steve,
Very cool theme, thanks. I have a (most probably a very stupid) question:
I am unable to add some textboxes in the side bar such as email notification or feedburner etc. The code I get from the widget is in sidebar.php but nothing shows up…
I am not very experienced with programming so I might be missing something very simple.
Help appreciated!
Thanks
Emin :: I need to make my templates compatible with widgets. I am extremely derelict in doing so… but considering the return on investment it’s hard to justify setting aside any of my current pursuits to do so.
However, if someone could point me to a 2-minute read (literally 120 seconds) on the subject of widget compatibility then I’d be game to fixing them.
Okay… so the widget thing didn’t take me as long as I thought. I threw some CSS changes in there, too, based on requests from people… like making the sidebar appear always.
Very cool theme, I am constantly looking for that perfect wordpress theme as I don’t have the skill to do it myself.
Is there a way to make it wider, to give me more room without taking off the sidebar?
Yes, but you’ll have to modify the CSS file and use a wider banner image.
In 2000, I was considered a pretty savvy website designer. For three years, I designed over 200 gaming-themed websites and a handful of small business websites, as well as my own personal sites. Then CSS became the next “big-thing” in web design and I was left out in the cold. A new marriage and a new baby left me with no money for formal training nor time for self-training and CSS didn’t come as naturally to me as graphic design and html coding.
I had a love affair with CSS, nevertheless. But instead of me being the one to create the sites from scratch, I would take open source CSS templates and tweak them until they were truly mine.
This is the first time I have ever found a template that I didn’t want to tweak.
It’s so beautiful and so well thought out. The header image is even inspiring. I went through all 670+ templates Wordpress offers through their viewer, and this is the only one that really struck me as quite nearly perfect.
Thanks for making such an amazing template. I’ll be checking for back for any updates to this template, though, to be honest, I don’t see that anything needs to be done to it! Great work!!
Wow, Sky. Thank you very much for your kind comments. I’m glad you are enjoying the theme. And I built what I did from what others have constructed as well… because although the design is my own I use some of Blix’s scripting for menus and for the contact page. What makes this community great is that we can build off one another and have better tools to express ourself than if we had to do it ourselves. Becuase, like you said, life hands us higher priorities than becoming a CSS wizard.
cool theme!
tnx u (:
i m going to try it for my blog
I absolutely love Crimson Sunrise, but I was wondering if you have plans to implement “link categories” like most other templates use. I have six or seven different category headings for my links, but when I use your template they disappear. Would it be hard to add this feature? Thanks!!
Sounds like a good idea, Bill. It’l probably come in the form of a template php file you could use for a links page. We’ll see what I come up with.
Good job, I have adopted and adapted your theme for my site.
Dislike other, I tend to prefer two columns themes after some experiences with three colums themes. I like center text for lecturers. But for one of my site, I have choose a three columns themes (but alway with text centered).
Thanks you.
What a great-looking theme. I have been using this in various forms because of the great potential to customise.
But…
I have recently found out that the contact form function is not working. Is this a common problem? does it need a specific install of software to make it work?
Any help greatly appreciated….
Dougal :: The contact form itself is fine… so check what yuor server settings are or what blockers it may have on it. I know that most PHP based mail forms need to have the default UNIX-based mail functionality active, and most do but you never know.
This is a really nice theme, thankyou.
I just need to do something with the header image to make it more relevant to content and it would be perfect
Great theme. I wanted to modify the tabs, so that any pages with sub pages have the sub page link show on the page. And to keep sub pages from showing as a tab.
After those modifications, I am extremely happy. Great job!!
I will send my changes if you want to review.
Dear Dougal,
I had the same problem. Turned off and on Aksimet and it works again.
Thanks for the tip, Emin.
Hello,
I was wondering if the horizontal tabs can be converted to drop down menus for subpages. I have too many tabs on top now, and one has overlapped my website’s name. Thanks in advance.
Hi there,
Thanks for the nice, fully functional theme.
I’m using it on my blog.
Steve,
Thanks for a great theme – you’ll see I’ve used it as the base for my own travel blog, although I’ve customised it a bit on the cosmetic level. I have another blog that’s been going for while now (at http://www.johnconncll.co.uk/blog/) – this uses a nice theme designed by Mike Lococo. It has a feature that I would like to incorporate into your theme – I’ve tried various things but obviously my knowledge of PHP is still not up to the task. I wonder if you can help?
When I’m logged in and using my own blog, each post has an ‘EDIT’ button that allows me to edit the post ‘live’ in a sense without having to go back through the Dashboard. Would it be possible to add a similar feature yo your theme?
Cheers,
John Connell
John, the feature is already there. If you are a logged in admin with edit rights then at the end of the infobar that appears just under the post title there will be a small grey picture of a pencil and paper. This is an edit link.
Hey everybody, I fixed the bug you encountered with the tabbed menu at the top of the pages if you upgraded to WordPress 2.1. Very special thanks to Lori at lbnuke.com for not only making me aware of the bug but for also sending me the fix… in the very same email!!!
Thanks for posting the fix! I had upgraded to WP 2.1 and had to fudge a work around to get my tabs back. This fix worked perfectly!
Question:
What is the cleanest way to add a new tab without adding a page?
I want a tab to link to my embeded gallery. I have editied the header.php file but I can’t get it to work right. I managed to get the link, but it doesn’t highlight properly.
I’m trying this theme on my podcast site. I have changed the top image though
http://www.podvarp.com/wordpress/
Hellow, Thanks for a great work. I was using together version 1.2 with wordpress 2.06 and everything was functioning correctly. However, I made update for theme 1.3 and wordpress 2.1 and now all the pages that I add to the site, appear as posts. They also appear in the archives too. Do you know as can fix this? Sorry for my bad english.
Breno :: I’ll take a look when I get a chance. I hadn’t heard of this problem, yet. Does anyone know what might be causing this?
Breno, I have the same problem. Also the “Blogroll” apperars as CATEGORY. I can’t remove it. Does anybody know how to fix this problem? Thanks in advance!
Exactly!! With me is occurring the same problem. I perceived that the wordpress records the name of the pages in the table of posts of the database, but that the wordpress already did in the previous version also.
Ooops, Breno, the problem is in file sidebar.php, line 76.
To remove the PAGES from the “Most recent posts” follow these steps:
Replace this:
with this:
” title=”">
sorry:
To remove the PAGES from the “Most recent posts” follow these steps:
Replace this:
with this:
" title="">
To remove the PAGES from the “Most recent posts” follow these steps:
Replace this:
With this:
li>
a href=“” title=”">/a>/li>
sorry, i really can’t publish code here …
Dali :: wrap your code is code tags like this.
Oops… that didn’t work… What about pre tags.
Darn it!
Okay… Dali, just email me the fix and I’ll post it.
Blasted 2.1!
Okay… I think I fixed everything. Please, someone test the version 1.3 zip and tell me if I caught all the bugs.
Cool! I go to look the code tonight! Thanks to Dali/Steve!
Apologies for the late reply, Steve – and for the help! Old age is a terrible thing….;-)
John :: Not a problem.
Breno / Dali :: Let me know how the version 1.3 changes work for you.
Still has a problem! When I click in “archives” the pages appear!
I resolved the problem altering the query of the function “BX_archive()”, adding “AND post_type’page’ “. Correct?
Breno :: Ok. Now THIS time it should be all set.
Let me know.
I really like the theme but my sidebar is showing up at the bottom of the page on my home page only? Could I possibly have code in a post causing this, please help?
brad :: Yes, this happens when something inside one of the columns is too wide for that column.
Steve,
Thanks for the great theme and especially for the rework which makes it run under WP 2.1. I liked your header graphic, but decided to go with one shot by my daughter that I like a little better. You can check it out at http://www.rmichaelfreed.com . Thanks again – Mike
Mike :: No problem… I’m glad you like the theme and I like the photo your daughter took.
If you have any questions about the PHP that drives the tabs at the top just email me.
First, thanks again for the great theme
I am trying to use alex king’s share-this plugin with this theme and can not get the popup to appear in the right place. Instead, it appears approximately 2000px below the footer.
The problem seems to be related to the offset that is set in the share-this.php file around line 222 (
form.style.top = (offset[1] + link.offsetHeight + 3) + 'px';) and does not affect other themes.I have tried altering the css and have not had any luck. I can move the popup by messing with the offset, but still can not get it in the right place.
If I do not use the auto placement options and instead add the calls manually from the theme files, I can get it closer, but still not right.
It may be some kind of javascript conflict, so I am also wondering if this is affecting everyone who uses this theme with the plugin or if it is specific to my site.
You can see it here: LBnuke. Click any of the ‘Share This’ links, and then scroll way down to see the form. The form should popup right below the link.
Any ideas? Thanks!
Lori :: I took a look at your site and javascript. The value of offset[1] is somehow getting set to a large number. I don’t know of anywhere in the theme that uses javascript, so how that’s getting messed up is befuddling me. Try subtracting a big number after the “+ 3″ and see if you can tweak into popping up where you want it to.
Thanks so much for looking at it. If it is javascript getting in the way, it is not from the theme. I have several little javascripts inside the body tags for integration with other sites like google analytics. I should probably try removing those one by one and testing.
I tried using a large negative number in place of the +3 and did get the form to move way up on the page. Not sure what happened then. Got sidetracked, I guess! Perhaps I will try that again before messing w/the js.
I’d been using your theme for over a year (adapted to a three column template). Yesterday, I upgraded my Wordpress to version 2.1.2, deleted my old theme and downloaded your new version of Crimson Sunrise. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work at all
I can see the posts, on a white screen, with no formatting, no colors, no sidebar… since I have a new version of WP and no plugins running, should I assume 2.1.2 doesn’t like this theme?
Angie :: I have not heard any problems yet for WP 2.1.2 with Crimson Sunrise. Not to say that there aren’t any, but usually I get inundated earlier than this.
The problem sounds like WP can’t find the style.css file at all. Does this happen in all browsers? When you “View Source” can you see the reference to you stylesheet or see the included style at the top of the page?
I can install crimson-sunrise-111 but not the latest version(?).
I can upload the theme but when I go to select it from the Admin area it does not show up. Any ideas?
Beautiful theme – really hope to use the latest version.
Hi.
Or you could put that as an option to change in your theme for future version! 
Love you theme! I’ve been using 1.1 for a while and will be upgrading to 1.3! My major question/issue is in how I can change the blog width. I tried guessing at some variable(s) but it seems to mess up other things… Could you either e-mail me the list or comment it on my site? Thanks.
Peter
First of all: thanks for this beautyful theme, Steve!
One function I’m (I was) missing … (I’ll try to explain and hope you understand – I’m a german speaking Swiss
)
Starting with WP 2.0 you have the option to declare a static page as ‘private’. I’m using this feature to use static pages but hide them in an automatically generated navigation. When using your Crims Sunrise theme, these pages unfortunatelly appear in the top navigation.
My solution: In my_functions.php I modified the function my_get_pages as follows: (hope I can post SQL-Code here):
I added an additional WHERE statement in the SELECT statement:
AND post_status='publish'So now the function looks like this:
{
global $wpdb;
$query = "SELECT ID, post_title, post_name, post_content
FROM " . $wpdb->posts . "
WHERE (post_status='static'
OR post_type='page')
AND post_status='publish'
ORDER BY menu_order ASC";
return $wpdb->get_results($query);
}
I’m not a professional programmer – more an trial-and-error coder
and therefore I’m not sure if this is the correct way to solve the problem. But in my testblog it works fine.
Maybe you want to include this addition – or the correct one
– in your my_functions.php?
Marcel
Thanks for the heads up Marcel. I thought I had changed all the code I needed to for the newer version of WP but maybe I didn’t. I’ll check it out and make the change if needed.
Thank for the nice theme, and especially for fixing problems with IE. I change the banner of the template to be more near the season of my country, I hope you wouldnt’ mind. I keep of course your url in the template. Thank you again
How do I add a tab that will act like a link and not a page? Thanks
Great theme after a few modifications, thanks
Hi, Great design! thanks
When the birth of my son was near, I decided to build him a site, easy on the eye, full of options and widget ready. Crimson is just the one, I edited some things to make it fit the purpose just the way I like it. Thanks for building such a great template.
I do have an issue however with the links in the header image, adding pages does not create a link there… I don’t know why. Any advice on that issue is greatly appreciated.
And again, thanks, I know for a fact people around me enjoy this.
Dear Steve,
I’ve been happily using Crimson Sunrise for a long long time and I had to upgrade to wordpress 2.3.1 because of some problems I was having and now the theme does not work anymore.
Do you plan to upgrade it anytime soon?
Thanks!!!
I’ve been using the theme for about two weeks. I love it, very easy to work with and I’ve been told it’s nice and easy on peoples eyes.
The theme is *perfect* ! Thank you for this great work. But I have only one question: I could not find the wp_list_pages for the header. How can I exlude the submenus?
hey i am not very good at programming, but I love your theme. For some reason when I add pages, they are not showing up on top as links. Am I doing something wrong, or do I need to take additional steps. I’m a little nervous about messing with theme code since the last 2 times I tried I locked myself out of wordpres and had to start over. I would appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks
–J.I.
Hi Waraxe! First, I want to thank you so much for making life so much easier!! I just can’t switch to another WP theme! Now, my problem… I somehow managed to mess up the sidebar location… it’s still messed up if you look at my blog site. What variable is it that controls the position? I have tried a numerous ones!
Thanks for the help… and keep up the great work!
@Peter
It looks like your #main element is only 600px wide. At some point you may have gotten it confused with the #content element… because you have #container wrapping #content and #subcontent… but you are apply the class “pkg” to #container and #subcontent, which would be a little redundant, unless you thought that #main was NOT a wrapper around both columns, and just the primary column.
Change the width on #main to 900px.
@Waraxe! You rock!!
See, I told you that it was an easy fix!!! Thanks again!!
thanx man
How to ability sidebar with Widgets? Themes Crimson Sunrise 1.1.1
Thank you!!!
@alejandro
If you upgrade to the latest version you will have widgets.
Also, check the documentation on WordPress.org if you need to modify any existing theme with widgets that doesn’t already have them.
Hi!
Iwas using an ancient version of your theme in an ancient version of wordpress. Now I’ve upgraded wordpress to v 2.5.1 and your theme to version 1.4. All works fine, but I’ve to replace the old function ‘get_links_list()’with the new one ‘wp_list_bookmarks’. Links are showed ok, but I’ve no idea about showing the links image “external.gif” instead of the simple point.
Thanks in advanced and thanks for your theme!
Simple clean and classic, a very nice theme, keep up the great work.
I absolutely love this crimson theme!!! I visit a blog often (earnersblog dot com I think is the url) and you can see it is a red based theme. I’ve always thought it was a standout. You really don’t see too many crimson or red themes do you? I think the color itself almost has a branding quality to it just because so few people use it. It’s easy to remember a site that looks like that. Love it!
Thats really simple theme and clean, i will use it to one of my blog. Thanks
Thanks for this great theme! I’m trying it out on my church’s blog as I’ve been looking for an updated theme that doesn’t resemble my personal blog. I’m partial to 3 column layouts, however I think this one may just fit the bill for the church blog (http://whcc-lawtonok.org/blog).
Thanks again.
Grace and peace be with you.
very nice theme for wordpress .. this theme is adsense ready ?
This is a beautiful theme and I thank you for it. But as the reader above asked is it adsense ready?
The phrase “Adsense ready” is a gimmicky phrase often found among theme authors (especially premium authors who want to make money from their themes)… but it is similar to the phrase “Internet ready” found on many computer products in the later nineties, like printers, power supplies, and mice… which of course had nothing to do with internet connectivity.
Likewise… all themes are capable of carrying adsense.
Steve, Great theme! I’ve used it several times and really enjoy how well thought-out it is. Question: I’m trying to use plugins like Exclude Pages or Page Lists Plus (I want to hide pages from the nav), but they don’t work with Crimson Sunrise. I think the reason is that you are using a custom function to list pages. I see that you have a my_exclude_pages function in my_functions.php. Could I use that to exclude certain pages from the nav? If so, how? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks for sharing your good work!
Hi! I am a new WordPress user and I chose your Crimson Sunrise for it’s clean lines (and I love the page tabs). I’ve made a couple small mods to the theme (h1 and deleted calendar widget).
I’m having an issue with text not wrapping around an image that should be aligned left (it shows correct wrap in visual editor and in other themes). See my “About” page for example.
Any ideas on what I need to change? I tried adding some lines to style.css but that shifted the whole center section to the left.
Thanks.
@Joy Decker
I appreciate your kind remarks Joy, but I’m afraid I don’t support my WP themes anymore. I haven’t gotten around to taking them down, yet… but it’s just nothing I have time for. Sorry to leave you hanging.
Is there a way to publish a page and NOT have it appear in the tabs at the top? I would like to create nested pages, that do not show up there and that a person would navigate to by clicking a link on the main page.
Yes… but I usually do that in the PHP code. I have long since abandoned supporting my themes so might I humbly suggest that you look into one of the many, many great free themes that do support the nested pages.
Search on SmashingMagazine.com if you want a good starting place.
I discovered your site the other day and after reading a handful of posts, thought I might say thank you for all the excellent content. Keep it coming! I will try to stop by here much more often.
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