The three functions that were the heart and soul of the Sandbox are now in the WordPress core. These functions, sandbox_body_class(), sandbox_post_class(), and sandbox_comment_class(), can now be convinently found in your recent WordPress download, artfully renamed as body_class(), post_class(), and comment_class(), respectively. Mission accomplished.

Now you might believe that this does not render the Sandbox useless as there are no equal starting point themes for users and developers. You still need a blank slate. Fair enough. But the Sandbox does live on in ‘frameworks’ inspired by and based on the Sandbox, such as Thematic and Carrington (to name a couple).

I would also suggest that the prospect of a new default theme for WordPress in 2010 further diminishes the usefulness of yet another ‘standard’ starting point theme. Instead, the new theoretical default theme should satisfy the need for a clean, accessible, and well organized ‘base’ theme for aspiring designers and seasoned developers.

Like it or not, Kubric was this base theme for years and years. Users didn’t know where else to turn for starting point in creating their own theme, and since Kubric just came with the software, that’s what it was. And after said years, the need for an updated theme that could be the default ‘blank slate’ theme grew. The Sandbox was successful simply because it filled that need. It would not have been as popular as it was if the default WordPress theme hadn’t been old.

Because the core functions once exclusive to the Sandbox can be found in the WordPress core and further enhanced in theme frameworks (see above), there is no need to update the Sandbox. Considering the possible new default theme, there may still be a need for a new blank slate theme, but it won’t be the Sandbox. Just as the Sandbox was a new answer to an old question, simply repackaging the Sandbox is just an old answer to an old question.

Everything in the Sandbox is GNU GPL. It’s there for you to use. If you want to create a new theme with it, there’s no need to ask. Go for it. Your project will not be the ‘new’ Sandbox, but it will be yours and (hopefully) it will be new. Innovate.

And so you are left with an old Sandbox theme that did what it did very well: clean files that easily resembled a recognizable XHTML structure, semantic markup enriched with Microformats standards, a lot of knowledgeable users within the community to share experiences, and its major organs transplanted to WordPress. The Sandbox is dead; long live the Sandbox.

Enter Kirk. Kirk is exactly the person who I want downloading my themes. After downloading and playing with one of my themes (blog.txt to be specific), Kirk e-mails me requesting some support for some specific but discreet task. I help. I’m happy to.

Kirk files tickets on my theme project pages for things that are broken or could be enhanced. Some I accept, some I don’t. He takes both well. I hear from him now and again. A happy user.

Here’s what separates Kirk from most users. Kirk e-mails me wanting to know how to disable the generator link. For security, he says. Regardless of whether or not I think this improves the security of his blog, I help. I describe the problem and set him off in the right direction.

For this, I make him a simple plugin he can upload based directly on what Peter Westwood documented on his blog. Easy as pie. Took me ten minutes. I slap it into a PHP file and send it along to Kirk knowing he’ll take it from there.

But what Kirk does is, instead of being satisfied after his problem was solved, he shares his experience and provides the solution for others.

Community. Here, here.

Barthelme, blog.txt, plaintxtBlog, Simplr, and veryplaintxt have been upgraded across the board to version 4.5. New features include gravatar support, i.e., get_avatar(), and prettifying theme options menus with the new WordPress 2.5 design scheme.

Most of the revisions are under the hood, so users are unlikely to notice any cosmetic differences. The theme options menus now each use wp_nonce_field() and filter content much aggressively than before. So users should rest easy that they are using secure and stable themes. I mean, these themes are each almost two years old.

The Sandbox has also received an update, which is necessary since its inclusion with the core has been pushed back (again) to WordPress 2.6. So be it. Anyhow, the Sandbox now has some improvements to its semantic classes, including new classes for parent and child pages.

As always, I encourage everyone to have a look, give them a spin, and feel free to come back with any comments, suggestions. Enjoy.

Special thanks to Kjell Knudsen for providing the Norwegian translation and the sandbox.pot file. Nokao has been kind enough to provide the Italian translation.

Subversion users can get the latest version from the Sandbox repository:

svn checkout http://sandbox-theme.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

Kjell was kind enough to provide an outline on how to help translate on the Sandbox project home, Sandbox in Your Language. When you have your .mo and .po files ready to submit, just open a ticket on the Sandbox project home and I’ll email you for the files.

And I’m excited to be opening up the Sandbox to a wider audience—the non-English speaking world. A much wider audience.

Alister Cameron, WordCamp Melbourne (video permalink)

Of greater interest, a number of fixes and updates went in to Sandbox, though nothing affecting design or layout but just internals. This only applies to Sandbox 1.0, which is for WordPress 2.3.x.

And there’s actually a bit more coming soon. Wink, wink.

Please report any issues, bugs, or enhancement requests over at the Sandbox bug tracker.

If you’ve been watching the repository, you’ll also have noticed that in the 1.0 version, the previously packaged ‘skins’ have been changed. Instead they are separate downloads and are their own ‘theme templates.’

Additionally, you may have noticed that the packaging of Sandbox with WordPress has been slated for the 2.4 release and will be sadly missing from 2.3. Sigh. Yet if WordPress development continues at its break-neck rate that only means a delay of three months.

And we’re all quite aware of the pace I manage to work at.

Anyhow, check out The Designs. You can leave comments on the individual design pages, so let us know what you think.

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!