Diurnal

Never before have I wished so intensely for multiple file upload:

Yeah, I know the screenshot has a different layout to the actual skin. Blame IE6. There are a couple of minor differences between this and the contest version (hover image for global tag links and nicer dropdown menus) but the dynamic goodness of this 5-in-one theme remains intact.

As far as I know, this is the only wp.com theme currently available with a dynamic header image which changes according to the time of day. Being unique is as simple as selecting Sandbox-10, choosing the ’start from scratch’ option on the Edit CSS page, and copy/pasting the contents of diurnal.txt. I’d use this myself, if it wasn’t for branding considerations.

08/12/2007 update: skin now supports comment avatars. Author avatars aren’t displayed as I don’t think they look good with the stars, however if you do want to show them it’s a one-line deletion. As always, it’s a good idea to edit your style in a text editor before installing it, since wp.com strips comments and you will lose my handy hints :(

This entry was written by that girl again and posted on October 25, 2007 at 1:09 pm and filed under CustomCSS, WordPress.com, customisation, design, sandbox, skins, styles with tags . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

13 Comments

  1. Bug Girl
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 2:00 pm | Permalink

    This is VERY cool–thanks!

  2. ilovemyredhead
    Posted October 25, 2007 at 8:44 pm | Permalink

    I really like this one!

  3. Cat
    Posted October 31, 2007 at 11:20 pm | Permalink

    I simply love this theme and am now really considering getting the CSS upgrade and using this theme.

    I had a preview on it on my blog and was just wondering a couple things:

    - I have several pages assigned to parent pages, so they are invisible unless I link to them. With this theme, they appear in the top navigation. Is there a way to change that bearing in mind that I have close to none CSS experience?

    - I love the hover external links, but the links in a post hardly stand out. Again is there an easy way to change that?

    Thank you.

  4. that girl again
    Posted November 1, 2007 at 3:52 pm | Permalink

    This should hide subpages:

    div#menu ul ul {display:none}

    Since the links change colour according to the time of day, the easiest way to make them stand out more is probably to make them bold or underline them. I’d try something like div.entry-content a {font-weight:bold} (makes all post links bold) or div.entry-content a:hover {text-decoration:underline} (underlines post links on hover). Or you could capitalise them, or change the background colour, or use the global tag image…

  5. Ascari
    Posted November 7, 2007 at 12:43 pm | Permalink

    Hello, I just found out about your work when looking in the wp.com-forums for sandbox themes. I’m rather impressed by this theme and its daily changes in layout, since the standard themes are very often used by the blogger community.

    Thanks for participating in the contest and for adapting your theme to wp.com-standards!!

  6. Stiletto
    Posted January 3, 2008 at 12:01 am | Permalink

    Awesome!

  7. Diva (in Demand)
    Posted February 13, 2008 at 7:08 am | Permalink

    I love this theme…..but I have absolutely no idea how to get it. I uploaded all the pictures and still nothing. This CSS stuff is not for the faint of heart.

  8. that girl again
    Posted February 13, 2008 at 2:27 pm | Permalink

    You don’t need to upload the images, they’re hosted here. You need to select ‘Sandbox 1.0′ from the themes panel, go to ‘Edit CSS’, choose the ‘Start from scratch and just use this’ option, and copy/paste the contents of diurnal.txt into the textbox. Even if you haven’t bought the CSS upgrade yet, it should show up in preview mode.

    If you’re still having trouble, drop me an email at info [at] not-that-ugly.co.uk.

  9. Diva (in Demand)
    Posted February 13, 2008 at 5:14 pm | Permalink

    IT WORKED! Thank you so much!

  10. Army of M.E.
    Posted February 14, 2008 at 5:59 pm | Permalink

    love love this. it’s not at all what i had in mind for my site but i love it too much -the fonts are perfect! is there any way to enlarge the title of the site? i am CSS inept and didn’t want to mess around too much so i thought i’d ask. i wish the top bar pages were categories and not static but that’s a WP issue i believe. thanks for sharing your talents with us!

  11. that girl again
    Posted February 14, 2008 at 11:02 pm | Permalink

    Making the title bigger is easy. Scroll way down until you find this line:

    #header h1 {font:3em 'century gothic', futura, serif;

    and change the 3 to a bigger number.

  12. Army of M.E.
    Posted February 15, 2008 at 7:03 am | Permalink

    Thank you so much for the quick response! This is excellent and I fixed it -THANKS AGAIN!!

  13. jmbara
    Posted March 20, 2008 at 1:27 am | Permalink

    Thanks for sharing Diurnal. I have used it as a basis for my blog. The theme-by-hour idea is great; though I did not use it as I was trying to somewhat match my older site, which is static. However, since a dynamic theme is the ultimate stress test for the css code, Diurnal ought to be a good theme to start with. I have some more comments on my blog’s building experience here http://www.codemuse.net/blog/?page_id=7

5 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. By New Theme: Diurnal « life by way of media on 30 Oct 2007 at 5:41 am

    [...] I was really excited when the Sandbox competition was on and I came across a great theme in Diurnal!   It is an amazing theme that changes the header with the time of day!    I came across this [...]

  2. By New look « Cat’s blog on 02 Nov 2007 at 11:23 am

    [...] New look So I finally wanted to be different and distinguish myself from most other wordpress.com users by getting the CSS upgrade and using a different theme. The theme I’m using is called Diurnal and was one of the entries in the recent Sandbox competition and now it’s found it’s way on here. [...]

  3. By this was going to be a photomatt comment. it growed. « wordpress™ wank on 02 Nov 2007 at 9:17 pm

    [...] copy/paste stylesheets to get them started) and build your market around that? Except, oh yeah, the people who are already producing CSS-based themes for wordpress.com (and not charging, since a) they just [...]

  4. By Theme-Games « Ascaris kleine, feine Welt on 08 Nov 2007 at 8:48 am

    [...] zum Thema: Was ist das Sandbox-Theme? Dynamische Klassen im Sandbox-Theme WordPress-Theme “diurnal” This entry was written by Ascari, posted on 8. November 2007 at 8:20, filed under WordPress and [...]

  5. By Uncovering the New Blog Look « Time and Again on 29 Dec 2007 at 4:55 pm

    [...] also really like the Diurnal skin by the same designer. I plan to use it next (whenever I make the theme change, that is). My [...]

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *
*
*