Sandbox

The Sandbox is a powerful tool available for WordPress theme designers and developers. The Sandbox can be easily designed just with CSS, so beginners will feel comfortable not bothering with PHP.

Experienced developers and designers can accomplish almost anything with minimal work, thanks to the rich, semantic markup and profusion of classes dynamically generated by the Sandbox.

  1. Features

    The Sandbox is a collaboration between Andy and Scott. The Sandbox is a theme for WordPress, but it is much more:

    • Beautiful on the inside
    • For WordPress 2.6.x+ (and 2.0.x)
    • Full Widgets compatibility
    • The basis for your own GNU GPL-licensed theme
    • Valid XHTML 1.0 (Transitional)

    But more importantly, the Sandbox can be a lot of things.

    So what can you do with the Sandbox?

    • You can just use it as-is and have a super-cool, truly minimalist theme.
    • You can totally customize it with CSS alone—no need to bother with other files.
    • You can use the functions, theme files, et al, as pleases you—even for your own theme.
    • You can use it as a good place to learn a few things about CSS, XHTML, and perhaps even PHP.

    The core feature of the Sandbox is its markup. The class-generating functions included with the Sandbox create an extensible and semantic XHTML structure. As Andy said, Given straightforward markup with plenty of selectors, there isn’t much that can’t be accomplished with CSS and a decent browser.

    The Sandbox was the first WordPress theme to include full support for the hAtom and hCard microformats. Microformats are human-readable, machine-accessible structures for XHTML. This theme came from Scott’s leftovers from a defunct experiment and became an advanced, richly semantic theme. Andy added innovative class-generating functions. Scott edited it to oblivion.

  2. Preview

    A live preview of the Sandbox is available at demo.plaintxt.org. Please note that the beauty of the Sandbox lies not in its appearance, but instead in its source code. See the notated screenshots below.

    Sandbox live preview

    body element" rel="attachment">Semantic classes in the <codebody element" class="gallery-image attachment-thumbnail" />
    Semantic classes in the body element
    div element" rel="attachment">Semantic classes in each post <codediv element" class="gallery-image attachment-thumbnail" />
    Semantic classes in each post div element
    li element" rel="attachment">Semantic classes in each comment/trackback <codeli element" class="gallery-image attachment-thumbnail" />
    Semantic classes in each comment/trackback li element

  3. Download

    The Sandbox theme, © 2006–2008 Scott Allan Wallick/Andy Skelton, is licensed under the GNU General Public License. Please feel free to alter this theme in any way that pleases you. I only ask that you please allow the design credit to remain.

    Download the latest version of Sandbox.

    Sandbox 1.6.1

    A legacy version is available for WordPress 2.0.x.

    Sandbox 0.9.9

    By downloading content, you agree to the Terms of Use.

  4. Install

    The theme is installed just like any other WordPress theme. More detailed installation instructions are available on the WordPress Codex.

    If you are upgrading from a deprecated version, delete (remove) the Sandbox theme folder and all files before uploading the new version.

    1. Download Sandbox
    2. Extract the /sandbox/ folder from the archive
    3. Upload this folder to ../wp-contents/themes/
    4. Activate the theme in Dashboard > Presentation
    5. Enjoy

  5. Learn

    Please review the accompanying documentation, the included readme.html, for more information and instructions on using the Sandbox and its advanced features.

    Sandbox readme.html

  6. Resources

    The first place to start for Sandbox-related resources is the Sandbox project home on Google Code. You’ll find a wiki with some documentation containing links, theme templates, information, etc.. You can also browse all bug/issue tickets filed, if you’re in to that kind of thing.

    The latest discussions for all things Sandbox can be found at the Sandbox Forums.

    There are many theme templates for the Sandbox available from the Sandbox Designs Competition, which was an event held in 2007 with over 40 design entries. Each design is a theme template using the Sandbox for theme files. You can browse the designs at demo.sndbx.org.

    Most importantly, be sure to read readme.html included with the Sandbox, too, for a full list of selectors and descriptions of semantic classes available in the Sandbox.

  7. Develop and Support

    Access to the Sandbox Subversion repository is available via the Barthelme project home on Google Code, sandbox-theme.googlecode.com. Please visit the project home to report bugs, request enhancements, help create documentation, et cetera. Please ignore if unfamiliar with Subversion. You can check out read-only copies anonymously over HTTP.

    The current release for the current WordPress distribution is in /tags/.

    svn co http://sandbox-theme.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.6.1/

    The deprecated release for legacy WordPress 2.0.x is in /branches/.

    svn co http://sandbox-theme.googlecode.com/svn/branches/0.9/

    For the latest and possibly unstable version, please check out /trunk/.

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