sandbox – Climb to the Stars

WordPress Sandbox Theme Problems [en]

[fr] Deux problèmes avec Sandbox: les menus déroulants qui se déroulent décalés sur la droite dans IE, et l'absence de feuille de style pour l'impression. Toute aide bienvenue.

As you might have seen, [Sandbox](http://www.plaintxt.org/themes/sandbox/) is now [my theme of choice for WordPress](http://climbtothestars.org/tags/sandbox/). [Diurnal](http://www.sndbx.org/results/designs/diurnal/), here on CTTS, is built upon Sandbox, and I’m using it with a client to build a new design from scratch. It’s a nice base to work from, in a [CSS Zen Garden](http://www.csszengarden.com/) way.

However, there are problems. Here are two I’m stuck with on my client site. I posted them to the [Sandbox forums](http://www.sndbx.org/forums/), but I thought I’d mention them here in case one of you smart readers had an answer.

1. [No print stylesheet?](http://www.sndbx.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=221): does anybody have a print stylesheet handy for use with Sandbox? If I can avoid writing one from scratch…
2. [Broken drop-down menus in IE](http://www.sndbx.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=220): I’m far from a drop-down menu specialist, so I’m not sure where to start to fix the IE wonkiness I’ve noticed. The menus in IE do not drop right below the parent menu as [shown here](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/1998710028/), but overlap on the neighbouring menu item on the right.

Thanks for any help or pointers you can bring me.

Upgrade, Shmupgrade [en]

[fr] Comme lors de chaque mise à jour wordpress, c'est la prise de tête. Plugins, thèmes... il faut vraiment que je mette de l'ordre dans mon site!

Like each time I upgrade WordPress, I find myself facing the sprawling mess that my site has become, and the umpteen hacks made to template and plugins to get things working roughly how I want them.

So I think: time to clean up! Get rid of K2! re-write plugins, so they insert fun things in my themes without me having to put them in by hand all the time!

And then it all goes down the drain, because I try one theme, and another, and another, and none really fits, and I don’t want to **yet again** go through the half-dozen addition of template tags to make my blog bilingual and shiny. But I do want it bilingual and shiny, don’t get me wrong.

I want to use sandbox. I’d like to adapt my Basic Bilingual plugin so that it injects lang="fr" and lang="en" where necessary. I want a clean layout, and I still like my [blue header image of Ouchy](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/83450335/) (pronounce “ooshee”, please).

I have tons of things in the sidebar, and they need to be laid out so they don’t look too cluttered (a challenge, yes, I know).

I want my tag pages to link to technorati, maybe show my flickr photos with the same tag, or my del.icio.us links.

I want [ajax-ification](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/1306106896/) so that I can correct spelling mistakes and add/remove tags without going to the admin interface ([Inline Tag Thing](http://www.neato.co.nz/wordpress-things/inline-tag-thing/) looks promising, but I’m not sure I like the interface).

Sigh.

Maybe I should just start a CTTS design contest. Give out prizes. Something like that.

Or stop wanting to push my blogging tool where it isn’t yet? I don’t want to give up.

**Update:** for the curious, the temporary design is [Diurnal](http://www.sndbx.org/results/designs/diurnal/), a sandbox skin. The colours change with the time of day — pretty neat in my opinion.

K2 Styles and Mods [en]

[fr] J'ai besoin d'un joli design pour la nouvelle version de mon site professionnel. (J'en avais marre qu'il soit tellement "pas à jour" que j'ai pris le taureau par les cornes.) Idéalement, je voudrais un style K2 ou Sandbox. Motivé?

I got fed up with [my professional site](http://stephanie-booth.com) being so out-of-date, so I [archived the 2006 version](http://2006.stephanie-booth.com) and threw together a few new pages with WordPress.

I need a design. I’d like to use [Sandbox](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/09/09/the-hatomisation-of-ctts/) or [K2](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/09/09/k2/) as a base, so that everything is nice and [microformatty](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/09/09/using-hatom/). I’ve had a look at K2 styles, but haven’t yet found a nice browsable directory of them.

In addition to that, my pro site isn’t a blog — I’m just using wordpress because it’s a nice way to manage the static pages and the design. I’d like to add a [big footer, Hemingway-style](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/10/13/large-footer-lust/) — has anybody done a mod of K2 with a sidebar **and** a large footer?

I’m also totally open to suggestions regarding the design of the new site. I don’t have any strong desires apart for pink, of course. If you’re motivated to create a style or mod for me, I’d be willing to part with some cash or buy stuff of a wishlist.

K2 [en]

[fr] Essai d'habillage. K2 semble aussi être un bon point de départ, peut-être nécessitant moins de travail que Sandbox.

[Chris](http://factoryjoe.com/blog/) suggested that [I check out K2](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/09/09/using-hatom/#comment-125799), which has been [hAtomised](http://getk2.com/2006/08/k2-plays-in-sandbox/). I have to say I like it! There might be less work starting from K2 than [from Sandbox](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/09/09/the-hatomisation-of-ctts/). The only grudge I might have against K2 for the moment is that [they prefer UTW](http://getk2.com/about/) to my [Bunny Tags](http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/BunnysTechnoratiTags). (Means I don’t have a lot else to complain about.)

Modifying the template for Bunny Tags and Basic Bilingual was quickly done. I quite like this Star Wars design, even though it’s not pink! Here’s a screenshot, because I guess it won’t last long…

The hAtomisation of CTTS [en]

[fr] Un pas vers l'implémentation du microformat hAtom sur Climb to the Stars. J'ai commencé à adapter le thème WordPress Sandbox, qui est déjà tout plein de hAtom, pour que le résultat ressemble à ce que vous avez l'habitude de voir ici.

Par la même occasion, j'ai commencé à transformer ma sidebar en widgets -- c'est comme des petits blocs de construction qu'on peut ensuite assembler à sa guise, sans mettre les doigts dans le code.

Well, I’ve made good progress. Starting with the [Sandbox theme](http://www.plaintxt.org/themes/sandbox/), I imported and converted most of the CSS from my pink theme into a Sandbox skin. It’s not quite there yet.

I edited the function (provided with the theme) which generates navigation links so that it would show the few links I wanted instead of my huge list of pages. Then, there are a few things which are not in the right order in the Sandbox template for me to make them appear where I want. For example, I had to swap entry-title and entry-date so that the date of the post would float at the top right as it does here. Then, I had to add my own personal stuff: the lang attribute on the hentry div. The “other-excerpt” block, the technorati cosmos link, the tags, the trackback url at the bottom of the post. Phew.

I also installed the [widgets plugin](http://automattic.com/code/widgets/) and started converting my sidebar to [widgets](http://widgets.wordpress.com/). Great fun! But still not quite there yet either. The first difficulty was understanding that widgets are plugins and need to be activated before they appear in the widgets pool.

If you embark on a similar adventure, get the [Exec PHP widget](http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2006/04/09/fun-with-widgets/) first. You can literally paste your current sidebar into it. You’re allowed nine instances of it, once you find that you can select that number lower down on the widgets page. [Drop-down archive widget](http://tech.windsofstorm.net/wordpress/drop-archive-widget/) is nice. Sadly, [Show coComments](http://irgeek.net/projects/show-cocomments/) doesn’t seem to like apostrophes as a title, and there’s obviously something else wrong too — it worked briefly for me, but then stopped working. Didn’t manage to figure out why despite over half an hour of troubleshooting. Oh, and while I was at it, I uncovered a [small glitch in the coComment Enhancer plugin](http://www.andare.ch/blog/2006/05/cocomment-enhancer-wordpress-plugin-v12b/#comment-5817) — if your blog URL and wordpress install URLs are different, you might want to patch up your version (it’s really easy).

Using hAtom [en]

[fr] Prochain projet, utiliser le microformat hAtom dans le balisage de Climb to the Stars. Pour cela, je vais probablement partir de Sandbox, un thème wordpress destiné à servir de base pour le développement d'autres thèmes. C'est le premier thème à implémenter hAtom.

I want to use the [hAtom microformat](http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom) to mark up my blog posts and comments. I’ll be fiddling around with my template, but before I start, I’m wondering if somebody has already written a plugin to do that.

Google told me that [the sandbox theme uses hAtom](http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2006/08/06/wordpress-makes-a-move-towards-hatom-gets-upgrades/). Wow. That’s it. We don’t need a plugin, we need themes.

So, maybe I’ll just take [Sandbox](http://www.plaintxt.org/themes/sandbox/) and stretch it so that it looks something like my current layout. How about that?

I <3 microformats. But you knew that already.

Tag: sandbox

K2 [en]

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The hAtomisation of CTTS [en]

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