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.
24/09/2008: updated to support related links and image captions. Also, child pages should no longer appear in the top menu.
18 Comments
This is VERY cool–thanks!
I really like this one!
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.
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) ordiv.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…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!!
Awesome!
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.
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.
IT WORKED! Thank you so much!
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!
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.
Thank you so much for the quick response! This is excellent and I fixed it -THANKS AGAIN!!
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
i love your designs! btw, do you do blogger designs as well? can this theme converts into blogger?
Two things:
1. THANK YOU for this gorgeous theme. The look is clean, but visually interesting. And having it set up so that the header image and accompanying elements rotate according to the time of day? Brilliant.
2. One question: how would I alter the CSS so that the layout spans 80% of the page (or, even better, is set at an absolute width of, say, 1000px) and then aligns in the center of the page?
The type of content I’m going to deliver necessitates having a consistent width for the main “blog” posts, and rather than align the page to the left margin, I’d like to have it display in the center of the page — no matter what the resolution or screen size of the viewer. I’ve got it sorted how to set the display width to a certain size, but not how to then align all the layout to the center of the page.
Thanks in advance for any help- I know you’re a designer, not a CSS teacher, so I appreciate any tips you can give me. I think once I see how you’d adjust the CSS to do this, the “light bulb” will finally go on in my head, and I’ll be able to understand CSS so much more.
Hi Melissa, glad you like the theme
You can convert it to centred fixed-width by popping this code into the top of your stylesheet:
div#wrapper {width:1000px;margin:auto}
You may however need to remove the sun images from the morning and afternoon headers, as they might overlap the buildings.
I just started using this theme and I LOVE IT! But… For some reason.. the sucker will not align properly. The header is straight, but the content is all skewed to the left and it is very frustrating. Can you tell me the code to maybe align it properly?
Thank you so much!
btw.. my blog is
http://www.gorditainthecity.wordpress.com
I just looked at your blog and it’s using the Sandbox default CSS in addition to mine. That shouldn’t be happening. Can you just double-check for me that the option to ‘Start from scratch and just use this’ is selected on the Edit CSS page?
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