If you're coming here from that list, here's a feed of just my wordpress related posts. (big-as-your-head icon courtesy of the Oxygen Icons Project, for KDE 4).

here's the Sandbox *.PSD's, for use promoting the Sandbox theme for wordpress. Included are the yellow and gray gradient versions, and the solid color file. there's also the original PDF of the sandbox outline, printed from AutoCAD. probably not the most attractive vector file ever. I have a strange monitor profile, which usually monkeys with the way files display for other people. the wp-sndbx image should look like this, not like scott's. I saved them without the profile this time around, so it should be okay. If it's not, yell at me in the comments.

sandbox3.zip

I've also been meaning to release the *.PSD files from Walk in the Shadows, since it does little good to develop a non-PHP theme as GPL, and only open-source the CSS. Well, it depends on how graphically intensive your theme is. Promised Land uses 2 images, which come from an image I no longer have the PSD for.

wits0.zip

My workflow seems to differ a bit from most designers', as I understand it. I do my initial layout in CSS, in browser, and then size my PSD according to the width that I need. The document is only tall enough to accommodate the elements I'll be exporting. I don't see much point in organizing type in a graphics editor. The design happens in my head, or on paper, so I don't need to look at the whole page to see whether it works.

I started with the 404 Search from Weblog Tools Collection, which simply redirects 404 pages to search results. That's not technically correct behaviour, so I borrowed the first few lines of my 404.php from their example:

<?php
$search_term = substr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],1);
$search_term = urldecode(stripslashes($search_term));
$find = array ("'.html'", "'.+/'", "'[-/_]'") ;
$replace = " " ;
$search_term = trim(preg_replace ( $find , $replace , $search_term ));
$search_term_q = preg_replace('/ /', '%20', $search_term);
get_header() ?>

Then the rest of the 404 template, which you can check out here, follows normally from the sandbox file, until after the search field (which is important for usability). I don't use this in my index or single page templates, because 404's shouldn't land there (if they do, it's a problem with wp_query() ). After the search field, we jump into a custom loop:

<?php /* run the url as a query */
query_posts('s='. $search_term_q );
?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) :
/* check to see if there are posts, before telling people something that isn't true */ ?>
<div class="content-column left"><h3>You might have been looking for these posts</h3>
<ul>
<?php /* start the loop */
while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<li><strong><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php printf(__('Permalink to %s', 'sandbox'), wp_specialchars(get_the_title(), 1)) ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title() ?></a></strong><br />
<abbr title="<?php the_time('Y-m-d\TH:i:sO'); ?>"><?php unset($previousday); printf(__('%1$s', 'sandbox'), the_date('', '', '', false), get_the_time()) ?></abbr><br />
<em>
<?php printf(__('Posted in %s', 'sandbox'), get_the_category_list(', ')) ?>
. &nbsp;
<?php comments_popup_link(__('Comments (0)', 'sandbox'), __('Comments (1)', 'sandbox'), __('Comments (%)', 'sandbox')) ?>
</em>
</li>
<?php /* end the loop */
endwhile; ?>
</ul></div>
<?php /* close the list before closing the ifelse */
else : endif; ?>

You can read the comments, but basically, we take the URL and use query_posts() to run it as a search, and return the results as a list, if there are any. So far, it works for posts that I've referenced elsewhere, but it's not returning the actual post itself. That's probably because I use category slugs in my URL's. and BTW, the fancy code highlighting in this post is courtesy of a fancy new plugin.

UPDATE: Some additional code was used from Arun's nearly perfect 404.

1. if i were savvy enough, i could use RegEx to do it with a find and replace command. sadly, RegEx is not something that makes a lick of sense to me. (back ↩)

• No inappropriate titles. Do we suppose this means that if you're posting about the really hot sex you had last night, you should make sure the title is "fluffy kittens for everyone"?
• No profanity or nudity. This means that my cuss-like-a-sailor-because-it-makes-people-respond-not-just-think-about-it tactic is definitely outlawed. I hate to think what it means for ICHC.
• No extraneous categories. I'm sure my 2.0 category was causing serious consternation. let alone "cult-of-matt". In fact, only the officially sanctioned categories are allowed. Anything else and you'll be relegated to the dustbin, because then you won't drive traffic to our ad-laden tag pages.
• And really, you should only post to one category at a time. nevermind that wordpress.com categories can't be used as categories, since the links lead out of your blog². if you use categories as tags (meta information), you're definately going to be banned

Basically, if you're not an aspiring member of the web 2.0 a-list-aspiring echo chamber, you're not welcome on wordpress.com. fantastic. glad i left. now I'm off to find the 11 most relevant tags for this post.

1. taken to their logical extreme, with commentary (back ↩)
2. do I really need to explain what a horrific user experience it is to click on someone's category in post meta and find no posts at all? (back ↩)