Being designed by Sadish means that it has things like archives/links templates, and the oft-requested contact form. The original also supports asides and re-ordering the page link, and dropping pages from the nav bar:

of course, options panels are stripped from wp.com themes, for the crime of not sanitizing values (sensible for text fields, less so for ticky boxes and drop down menus), but rather than sanitizing the values, the options panel, with its oft requested features, is dropped entirely. [snark removed, real reason in the first comment]

so we're left with fauna as the only theme that supports asides (because it does so without an options panel, kudos to joen). of course, it's an aged version that doesn't support sidebar asides, which are the only kind that can't be achieved with sandbox and a CSS upgrade. i recognize that i'm in the minority when it comes to wanting asides, but that doesn't stop the contradictory nature 'designing themes for wp.com' process from really annoying me.

it's just so very anti-open-source. users ask for a feature, someone gives it to them, and the benevolent dictator takes it away. mind you, i'm still confused as to how the benevolent dictator model can possibly nurture a meshwork and not turn it into a hierarchy, but i think that comes from reading 'a thousand years of non-linear history', rather than 'the cathedral and the bazaar'. i'd link you to those books, but linking to amazon is forbidden.

now I'm really far afield. misty look is a great theme. kudos to Sadish.

Credits:

Original design by John Oxton
Illustration by Denis Radenkovic
Based on the Textpattern template reworked by Graham Bancroft.

License:

This Sandbox skin is under the same license as the original template:
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5.

Preparation:

In order to comply with this license, you must paste the following code into a text widget:

<p><a href="#header">top</a> | Original design by <a href="http://johnoxton.co.uk" title="visit John’s site">John Oxton</a> | Illustration by <a href="http://www.38one.com/">Denis Radenkovic</a> | This design is released under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/" title="view the licence for this design">Creative Commons licence</a></p>

Note: If you put this text widget in your secondary sidebar, it will display the way it does on this site, as a footer of sorts. All of the widgets in the secondary sidebar will display this way. (Further instructions on widget usage).

Layout: From the Sandbox Skins menu, select "No Stylesheet".

Logo Image: This design uses a custom image as the header. The image is 200x60 pixels, twice. the two halves of the 400x60 pixel image create the standard and hover states of the logo (mouse over the logo at the top of this page to get an idea of what I mean). To help you out, here is the *.PSD file I used to make this logo. It includes guides to make it easier to line up the two states of the image: Sandbox Logo

after you make your own image, and upload it to your blog, you'll have to change the CSS file to point to your new image. look for #header h1 a near the start of the file.

Features:

the maximum width for images in posts is 375 pixels. anything wider will be squeezed, to prevent the skin from breaking.

John is an excellent designer. almost anything you put in a post will be styled. you can see some of the formatting here, in the HTML templates. Since formatting every post with code to use his <ol class="codesample"> might be a bit tedious, i've also added styling for the <pre> element.

Download:

Bus Full of Hippies v0.6.1
or, copy and paste

Bookmark This:

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Seriously, you already got a custom template, and the right to run ads on a service that no one else does, and you want more?

I mean, there are people asking for this stuff every day on the forums. but they didn't get a sweet deal from matt. they got face value, possibly before there was even so much as a TOS.

They don't have the ability to change their template files, but they can buy a CSS upgrade. Components from other web companies? did you mean like meebo? or like flickr? del.icio.us? or perhaps you have an RSS feed you'd like to display?

wordpress.com stops you short in one place, and one place only. javascript. (well, flash too, but i've seen few complaints about that). the only reason you think that javascript is a limitation is because the host of a million splogs lets you add them. And you see where that got them. It's not a new limitation to the million of mypace users. or livejournal users. or xanga users. or msn spaces users.

so, yes, robert, i'd choose wordpress.com for any blog for myself or any of my friends. it's got the horsepower under the hood, without the stigma of being a dramafest for teenage girls. But then, I know more CSS tricks than most folks. and the flexibility of the sandbox is lost on those who don't.

CREDITS

Theme Author: Ben Gray
This theme has been slightly modified from the base theme,
K2 by Michael Heilemann
Header code base gleaned from Foogaming.com
All elements of this theme are protected by the GPL.
Unsleepable uses Fam Fam Fam Silk Icons, modified in places by Ben Gray.

IMPORTANT: This is a proof-of concept release. The classes and ID's of sandbox are not final, so i may need to update this.

PREPARATION

Number of entries: Unsleepable was designed to show only 2 entries on the front page, with the remaining entries showing as links directly below, in the bottom block. (It still works just fine with more entries.)
Date Formating: Again, this is optional. Unsleepable looks best with the following date and time settings:

Theme: This is designed for use with Sandbox. It will not perform well with other themes. After selecting Sandbox from your dashboard, go to the "Sandbox Skins" page and select "No Stylesheet" (bottom right). Now You're ready to paste the CSS into your "Custom CSS" page.

Header Image: Unsleepable uses a clickable header image. you'll need to create one, otherwise your blog will say 'unsleepable' at the top. There are tutorials for GIMP or Photoshop to create a header image. GIMP is free and open-source, Photoshop is $600-ish. your call. After creating the image, you'll need to upload it to wordpress.com, and find the #blog-title a section of the CSS (it's the second section), and change line 15:

background: transparent url('http://sunburntkamel.wordpress.com/files/2006/08/title.gif') no-repeat 20% 82% !important;
}
Replace the address inside the parentheses with the address of the image you just uploaded.

DIFFERENCES

Sandbox is not Unsleepable. I've done my best to make the differences as minimal as possible. here they are:

• Tabs are not all the same width. they depend on the length of the name of the page you create. (casualty of needing to re-write the header)
• The footer doesn't span the entire page. If I find a way to change this, I will. I'm not sure it's possible, though.
• The edit link is at the bottom of the post. This is one of the many structural differences between unsleepable and sandbox. But hey, at least you get the cool Silk pencil icon.
• WordPress.com doesn't use flickrRSS, so you don't get the cool hover action.

FEATURES

Aside from the afformentioned clickable header image, you'll notice that unsleepable uses a widgetized bottom block. The secondary sidebar (the bottom block) only shows up on the front page of your blog. If you add more than three widgets, they will wrap to a second line., and cause a very large bottom block. If that's what you like, go nuts. You may want to make sure that the third widget (farthest right) is taller than the rest so that the wrapping looks nice.

Noteworthy Posts: If you create a category called 'Noteworthy', you'll notice that any posts in that category will have a star next to the title. You can show a list of Noteworthy posts by adding an RSS widget to the sidebar, and adding http://USERNAMEHERE.wordpress.com/tag/noteworthy/feed/ as the feed.

Page Navigation: When you create new pages, they will show up as tabs in the top menu. Unless, of course, you use give them a Page Parent while you're writing. Then they will only show up in the Pages widget. The pages widget, in turn, will only show up when you're viewing a page. if that doesn't suit you, feel free to remove this section:

body.home .widget_pages, body.archive .widget_pages, body.single .widget_pages {
display: none;
}

Then the pages widget will show up on all pages. Either way, I'd recommend putting the pages widget near the top of the primary sidebar.

Archives and Links: This skin includes fully styling for the archives and links pages built into Sandbox. They're based on Ben's original design for the Extended Live Archives Page.

DOWNLOAD

Unsleepable CSS
or, copy and paste

BOOKMARK THIS:

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