Just getting started with WordPress themes? Are you a long time WordPress Veteran looking to streamline your workflow? You need to start using the Sandbox Theme.
Andy, Scott, and everyone else involved in the project have included everything that a designer needs to get right to the fun stuff. It’s a veritable theme Mecca that, IMHO, is unmatched by many other “modder” themes. These are some of the highlights.
1. Cross Platform
The Sandbox theme is now available on many systems such as WordPress, Drupal, and even Movable Type. If you are anything like me, you are probably getting tired of redoing your site design every single time you change platforms (which is frequently). Sandbox makes it easy to move your design to a new platform.
2. Time Saver
You don’t have to spend time validating your theme—it is already validated. You don’t have to spend time creating custom functions and widgets—they have already been made. Nor do you have to spend hours setting up every theme file—they have been created too. You just upload it, activate it, and style it. That’s all.
3. Microformats
Microformats are crammed into just about every place they could possibly fit. What does this mean for you? It means that your website has loads of extra information (meta) that can be used in some neat ways. Check out the Operator plug-in for Firefox to start seeing Microformats in action all over the web.
4. Flexibility
Sandbox has lots of useful classes and id’s throughout. For example, say you would like to style each section of your site differently. Sandbox adds a whole slew of classes to the body tag that can help you out. What if you want to style posts tagged as “quote” differently than the rest of the posts? Again, Sandbox provides a myriad of classes for each post. You can style virtually anything without any coding!
5. The kitchen sink
As if those weren’t compelling enough reasons to use the Sandbox theme, it also boasts localization (currently with 10 languages and counting), incredible documentation, regular maintenance, a large community of users, standards compliance, a GPL license, and a whole host of ready-made designs. What’s not to love!
