The guys at Six Apart have released Sandbox for Movable Type.  They've included the winning themes from the Sandbox Designs Competition.  The first step is to install Sandbox as a plugin.  After that, you'll be able to install Promised Land as a one click install1 .  You can also manually install any Sandbox Child Theme, which means that the Bus Full of Hippies design should work on Movable Type as well.  Hopefully, this will make designing for Movable Type easier for people used to WordPress.  My previous attempts at using their templates failed, since there were no examples of using Pages as a navigation menu.  I'm having a little trouble with my own test blog, and I'm completely new to movable type. At this time, I won't be able to provide support for the Movable Type version of the theme, but Movable Type does provide their own support, which is undoubtedly strong.

1. My own attempt failed to copy down the background images, YMMV.

Now that there are a substantial number of drop-in sandbox skins for differing verions of the Sandbox, I'm working on a catalog of all the designs, so that wordpress.com users and other sandboxers can find designs easily.  There have been several requests in the wordpress.com forums for a list like this, and the Sandbox Wiki seems as good a place for it as any.

This skin is for WordPress.com Users. feel free to use this skin ‘as is’. the images are hosted on wordpress.com, so it’s no different than hosting them yourself. If you host your own blog, please get the zipped version of the skin.

Credits

A List Apart's article on typesetting (followed to the letter because IE sucks)
Joen Asmussen's brilliant idea about adding columns without touching the markup
Dezinerfolio's web2.0 layer styles
KDE's Oxygen icons project
Datestamps inspired by the cover of Eero Saarinen, designed by CoDe Communication and Design

Description

Designed for the Sandbox Designs Competition, this CSS design is an experiment in layout. There are two sidebars stacked vertically. The second sidebar stacks horizonally, visually making 2 sidebars out of 1.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.

Installation

Select the Sandbox-10 theme (currently on page 4).  Then open the download link below, and copy the contents into the Edit CSS box, Making sure to check the "Start from scratch and just use this" box.  If you'd like to customize the graphics, be sure to check out the Photoshop files, which you can abuse to your heart's content.

Download

Walk in the Shadows CSS

Andy has finally gotten the Sandbox updated on WordPress.com.  Both of my designs for the competition were too tightly focused on version 1.01, so I've been eagerly awaiting the upgrade.

This skin is for WordPress.com Users. feel free to use this skin ‘as is’. the images are hosted on wordpress.com, so it’s no different than hosting them yourself. If you host your own blog, please get the zipped version of the skin.

Credits

Some abuse of a stock photo by Ryan Ford.
Based on "for elaine", which became archGFX v02.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.

This design is dual-licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. Where possible, please include a link to this page for attribution.

Installation

Select the Sandbox-10 theme (currently on page 4).  Then open the download link below, and copy the contents into the Edit CSS box, Making sure to check the "Start from scratch and just use this" box.

Download

Promised Land CSS

1. abuse of #access as a wrapper for #menu, etc.

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.

Promised Land

Walk in the Shadows

Both designs are packaged as themes, so just install them like you would any other wordpress theme.

almost.

If you're running wordpress 2.2.1, there's a bug that's fixed, but hasn't been released yet. you'll need to replace /wp-includes/theme.php with the patched theme.php (linked directly to wordpress' bug tracker, right click and save target as).

Packaging Designs as Themes:

In my opening comment in style.css, I have an extra line that says Template: Sandbox, which makes wordpress use my stylesheet (and not sandbox's), with sandbox's template files. There's a longer explanation in the codex. Being a standalone theme makes it easier for users to install my designs (provided they've already installed sandbox).

It also lets me do some really cool stuff. I can't add more templates, but i can include a functions.php, which allows me to add widgets, theme options, custom header API, update notifications, or anything else, including hooking a credit into the footer, if I wanted.  Check it out in Walk in the Shadows, which uses a custom header.