Yesterday I posted an announcement on the Weblog Tools Collection about a competition for creating theme templates for the Sandbox theme.
This was just a few days after the release of Sandbox v0.9, but I think you’ll be surprised to see how much thought and work has gone into making this the best possible competition. Which leads me to introduce to you . . .
Sandbox Designs Competition
The SDC is located at sndbx.org. It’s going to be a great competition. The WordPress community has produced some amazing work. I have every confidence that we’ll be seeing more of that.
Anyhow, all the competition details (and more) are available on sndbx.org and I encourage everyone to get started: sketch, mockup, wireframe, whatever you do. Two months is enough time to produce at least one great design.
You can do it for the glory, you can do it for the cash, or you can do it just to see if you win or not. But remember: this is a design competition. We have a leveled playing field. We have so many CSS tools and techniques available.
Even though the Sandbox comes with some style sheets (Kubrick, Spartan) as examples, I thought I’d provide one with at least some core classes so that novices might have an idea of where to begin; however, I emphatically point out that, unlike most themes, the Sandbox produces a great number of classes within the markup dynamically.
Which means that the index page is going to have some different classes than a single post page. A “page” is going have a few different classes than a category archive, search results different from a 404. And so on.
Note. To reference the dynamic classes available, please see the Sandbox readme.html.
Now let’s go!
9 Comments
your digg and del.icio.us links aren’t quite working. here’s the digg link for the wltc announcement.
Thanks, Adam. Fixed the links.
By the way, what do you make of that example CSS file? I hope it’s not confusing. But if it is, I’m sure I’ll hear about it.
i have difficulty writing CSS files that are less than a thousand lines. i’m the wrong person to ask about things being too confusing
As I had to hack header.php to get my menu to show the elements I wanted, in the order I wanted them (not all are top-level, and I didn’t want sub-menus), I guess I’ll have to count myself out – unless someone can show me how to do it.
Nonetheless, I’m pretty pleased with what Sandbox has been able to do for me at http://www.acidlabs.org/.
The ability to mess with dynamic selectors has been the killer function.
Awesome.
Ah, Stephen. Don’t count yourself out. Consider
#menu ul ul { display:none; }Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean you have to design it.
@Scott – sneaky! Still, I’m not certain how I’d do the menu content as displayed given it’s a combination of top and submenu items displayed as a single menu.
Therein lies the challenge. (Be sneaky.)
You might consider adapting your approach for the purposes of the comp. You could even create some efficient dynamic menu behavior by coupling menu selectors with
bodyclasses, i.e.,div#menu ul ul { display: none; } body.page div#menu ul ul { display: block; }And more!
Scot, I am Igor from Charlie’s in Bangkok we got all you PCV guys out of Nepal a few years back.
I found you because you del our company domain, so came to say high being you are a developer like me..
Check out my project PHSDL and see if you can do thumbs up for it…I will be going live with it in a day or so…moving it all from the incubator to authoritative domain…
Anyway, if you want to get in touch with me do a PM in my forum or email me.
Igor The Troll
Scot, thanks for the email. PHSDL is now live
http://www.phsdl.net
I am of to China in a Week or so, will be traveling for 2 or 3 months.
If you in Thailand, let me know and we can chat a bit over a Shingha.
Igor
6 Trackbacks
[...] The dudes at PlainTXT are having a competition for Sandbox designs. I first found out about it at Weblog Tools. I thought this was an awesome idea. I’d like to see what other designers come up with. I’ve been trying to work with this theme and make it something neat to look at for this site, but it has been long in the making. Ever since my first domain, girlseyeview.nu. But now, with the upgrade they did, I think it’s going to be easier to work with. They’ve cleaned it up and stuff. But anyway, back to the competition. [...]
[...] An announcment at plaintxt.org about a design competition using the sandbox template. [...]
[...] Also, another extra thanks to Scott, himself – his theme, BLOG.TXT, is featured in the WordPress for Dummies book and he gave generously of his time and talents while I wrote that part of the book and allowed me to bug him for an interview that he provided some very in depth information and insight for. Thanks a million, Scott! [...]
[...] I’ve taken the sample blog and example CSS template provided by Scott Wallick and made a very easy to use downloadable archive. It contains nothing but the HTML files, image files and CSS from the sample blog. It can get you redesigning Sandbox in less than a minute. [...]
[...] Scott has put together sample blog content for designing CSS for Sandbox and he also has a template file with all of the Sandbox CSS selectors. [...]
[...] Let the games begin – plaintxt.org Sandbox design competition. Wordpress. good one. (tags: Sandbox WordPress) [...]