Castor

While sorting through my hard drive I found this ancient skin I’d tried to get to work with Classic when custom CSS was first introduced. It didn’t work then but it does now, thanks to the magic of

So, yeah, the base template is WordPress Classic rather than Sandbox. And in their infinite wisdom wordpress.com have decided to break file uploading so you’re going to have to copy/paste your code from here:

/* Theme Name: Castor
Theme URI: https://ntuat.wordpress.com
Template: classic
Description: Ancient Gemini stylesheet converted for use with the custom CSS upgrade on wp.com
Version: 2.0
Author: not (that) ugly
*/


body {
	color:#333;
	font-family:tahoma, sans-serif;
	font-size:0.7em;
	letter-spacing:0.1em;
	text-align:center;
	background:url('https://ntuat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/castortitlebk.gif') #fff no-repeat;
	margin:10px;
	padding:0;
}

#rap {
	width:725px;
	background:url('https://ntuat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/castor.png') top 

right no-repeat;
	text-align:left;
	margin:0 auto;
}

#masthead {
	height:130px;
	margin:0;
}

#header {
	margin-right:200px;
	margin-bottom:10px;
}

#content {
	float:right;
	width:525px;
}

#menu {
	float:left;
	width:200px;
}


a {
	color:#f33;
	text-decoration:none;
}

a img {
	border:none;
}

a:visited {
	color:#f60;
}

a:hover {
	color:#39c;
}

acronym,abbr {
	border-bottom:1px dashed #ccc;
}

acronym,abbr,span.caps {
	cursor:help;
}

blockquote {
	background:#fff url('https://ntuat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/castorquotebk.gif') no-repeat;
	border:1px solid #ccc;
	padding:5px;
}

cite {
	font-style:italic;
	color:#39c;
}

#content ul {
list-style-image:url('https://ntuat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/castordot.gif');
}

h1 {
	font:48px 'times new roman', serif;
	line-height:1em;
	font-weight:normal;
	margin:0;
}

h1 a {
	color:#39c;
	text-decoration:none;
}

h1 a:hover {
	color:#999;
}

h2 {
	color:#999;
	font:2em 'times new roman', serif;
	font-weight:normal;
	font-style:italic;
	margin:0 0 0 8px;
}

h3 {
	font-weight:normal;
	font-size:1.4em;
	letter-spacing:0;
	margin:0;
}

h3 a {
	color:#39c;
	text-decoration:none;
}

h3 a:hover {
	color:#999;
}

/* posts */

ul.post-meta {
	list-style:none;
}

ul.post-meta span.post-meta-key {
	font-weight:bold;
}

.meta li,ul.post-meta li {
	display:inline;
}

.meta ul {
	display:inline;
	list-style:none;
	margin:0;
	padding:0;
}

.meta {
	color:#999;
	font-weight:normal;
	letter-spacing:0;
}

.meta a {
	color:#f33;
}

.meta a:hover {
	color:#39c;
}

.post {
	margin-top:5px;
	margin-right:10px;
	margin-left:10px;
}

.feedback {
	color:#999;
	text-align:right;
	clear:both;
}


/* comments */
#commentform #name,#commentform #email,#commentform 

#url,#commentform textarea,input,textarea,select {
	background:#fff;
	color:#666;
	border:1px solid #ccc;
	font:1em tahoma, sans-serif;
}

#commentform #comment {
	width:450px;
	border:1px solid #ccc;
	

background:url('https://ntuat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/castorquotebk.gif') 

#fff no-repeat;
	margin:0;
}

#commentlist li {
	background:#fff 

url('https://ntuat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/castorquotebk.gif') no-repeat;
	border:1px solid #ccc;
	margin-bottom:10px;
	padding:5px;
}

#commentlist li ul {
list-style-image:url('https://ntuat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/castordot.gif');
}

#commentlist img.avatar {
	float:left;
	margin-right:5px;
}

#commentlist cite {
	clear:left;
}

/* sidebar */
.textwidget {color:#999;
font-size:0.75em;
padding:5px}

#menu form {
	margin:5px;
}

#menu input,textarea {
	width:80%;
	font-size:0.7em;
}

#menu ul {
	list-style-type:none;
	margin:0;
	padding:0;
}

#menu ul li,#menu h2  {
	text-transform:lowercase;
	letter-spacing:0;
	font-size:1.4em;
	color:#39c;
	border:1px #ccc solid;
	padding-left:5px;
	padding-top:5px;
	margin:0 0 10px;
}

#menu h2 {
	border:0;
	font:1em normal normal tahoma, sans-serif;
}

#menu ul li ul {
	margin-top:10px;
	margin-bottom:10px;
}

#menu ul li ul li {
	border:0;
	font:0.75em tahoma, sans-serif;
	font-weight:normal;
	margin:3px 5px;
	padding:0;
}

#menu ul li ul li ul li {
	font-size:1em;
	margin-top:-5px;
}

#menu table {
	font:0.75em tahoma, sans-serif;
}

#wp-calendar {
	font-size:0.8em;
	width:90%;
	text-align:center;
	margin:auto;
}

#wp-calendar #next a {
	padding-right:10px;
	text-align:right;
}

#wp-calendar #prev a {
	padding-left:10px;
	text-align:left;
}

#wp-calendar caption {
	text-align:left;
	font-size:14px;
	padding-left:10px;
}

#wp-calendar a {
	display:block;
	font-weight:bold;
	text-decoration:none;
}

#wp-calendar a:hover {
	color:#f33;
}

#wp-calendar td {
	border:1px solid #fff;
	padding:2px 0;
}

#wp-calendar td.pad {
	border:0;
}

#wp-calendar td:hover,#wp-calendar #today {
	border:1px solid #ccc;
}

#wp-calendar th {
	color:#999;
}

#menu,#content {
	overflow:hidden;
}


/* footer */
p.credit {clear:both;
text-align:center;
padding-top:20px;
padding-bottom:15px;
background:url('https://ntuat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/castortitlebk.gif') top right no-repeat}

/* wp.com stuff */
#wpstats {
	height:1px;
	width:1px;
}

.possibly-related strong {color:#999;
font-weight:normal;
letter-spacing:0;
padding-left:20px;
padding-bottom:5px;
background:url(http://www.sphere.com/images/sphereicon.gif) top left no-repeat}

/* Captions & alignment */
.aligncenter,
div.aligncenter {
	display: block;
	margin-left: auto;
	margin-right: auto;
}

.alignleft {
	float: left;
}

.alignright {
	float: right;
}

.wp-caption {
	border: 1px #ccc solid;
	text-align: center;
	background-color: #f3f3f3;
	padding-top: 4px;
	margin: 10px;
	-moz-border-radius: 3px;
	-khtml-border-radius: 3px;
	-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
	border-radius: 3px;
}

.wp-caption img {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0 none;
}

.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text {
	font-size: 11px;
	line-height: 17px;
	padding: 0 4px 5px;
	margin: 0;
}
/* End captions & alignment */

Let me know if you like this better or worse than the previous system.

You can see a full-size preview at the test blog; it’s not an exact replica of a wp.com blog but it’s close enough.

PhotoWP for Sandbox

Everybody knows that wordpress.com lacks a photoblogging theme. To be fair, there’s not a vast selection available for wordpress.org either. I think most photographers realise there are other tools out there which do the job better. Nonetheless, we now have 3GB available for image storage and some people may wish to use it. Enter PhotoWP for Sandbox, an uber-minimal theme which ensures all eyes are on your images:

download PhotoWP for Sandbox

Basically it emulates the appearance of Steven Campbell’s PhotoWP theme (link seems to be down at the moment), though obviously I can’t replicate the functionality.

To get the best out of this theme, try not to post anything wider than 600px (decent browsers will resize anything, of course, but I can’t speak for IE6) and display only one post per page (Options > Reading > Blog Posts).

You know the drill. Select ‘Sandbox-10’ under ‘Presentation’, head for ‘Custom CSS’, copy/paste the contents of photowp.txt in the textarea and make sure the ‘Start from scratch and just use this’ option is selected. Save, view, tweak as much as you like, feel free to pimp in the forums 🙂

24/09/08: updated to support the new gallery features like captions and positioning classes. Yeah, I know they’re not that new anymore, but all the photobloggers are using Monotone these days anyway…