How to Easily Add or Change Sandbox Design

Posted by Snap! on August 20th, 2007

sandbox icon There are many new designs that came out of the Sandbox design competition and each design comes with instructions on how to install them. Not following my gut, I decided to instead follow the included instructions and I find out that it never worked for me. So I decided to write my own instructions for those who are planning on using the Sandbox based designs without having to deal with the hassles I faced. BTW, if you have not noticed it already, we started featuring Sandbox competition designs and hope to have more for you soon.

What the instructions say?

It is critical to read this to understand the base structure and why it probably never worked for me.

If you plan on using a Sandbox design, youâ€™ll need the Sandbox theme in the following folder with a file structure like:

/wp-content/themes/sandbox/style.css

This makes sense, Sandbox is a complete theme and when activated works as is.

The instruction also recommends the design file structure is set as below:

/wp-content/themes/some-design-name/style.css

(where some-design-name is the name of the design)

This is the part that does not work for me, mostly all designs are just that: a CSS file and some images, they do not have any template files like index.php and in almost every case result in a “Template is Missing” error when you go to Admin >> Presentation >> Theme.
Irrespective of the WP version you use, or even using the /wp-includes/themes.php patch for Sandbox results in this error, in short, using the instructions included with the design just does not work (again itâ€™s a personal experience, I might be screwing up some place).

So what did I do?

Instead of including the design folder under the main ‘themes’ folder, I placed it within the Sandbox theme folder like below:

/wp-content/themes/sandbox/some-design-name/style.css

I then opened the Sandbox themes stylesheet (/wp-content/themes/sandbox/style.css) and deleted all the styles below the comment /* Just some example content */

I then replaced the style import URL from

@import url(’sandbox-layouts/2c-l.css’);

@import url(’ some-design-name/style.css’);

That does it, simple aye.

Tagged: Best WordPress Themes, Blogging Tips, Copyrights and Licenses, Design Tools, Keyboard Shortcuts, PimpDaBlog, RSS Feeds, Resources, Sandbox Theme, Selection, Thumbnail viewer plugin, Tips, Web Tools, WordPress, wpsnap

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Posted by Snap! on August 10th, 2007

We might as well list all the important plugins that make sites with high traffic stay afloat, but we decided to focus on just three very essential plugins that will be invaluable for your high traffic site.

I say “high trafficâ€? only because WordPress powered sites “as is” can work really well for most sites, but when your traffic increases, the equation changes with increased load on the server and need for better management.

The plugins are listed in no particular order:

Akismet No Spam

Akismet/ Bad Behavior/ Spam Karma 2: As your traffic increases, so does your spam, the affinity of spammers to your site is not due to the popularity of your site alone, but imagine this scenario, if every 3rd comment is a spam, the more comments you have, the spam you will too. The simplest solution to stop comment spams in conjunction with the aforementioned spam blockers (that can be downloaded from wp-plugins.net or Codex) is to use a plugin like reCAPTCHA.

Database Backup

WordPress Database Backup: The newer version of WP has built-in backup via XML downloads, however that is not as good as the original plugin based sql download. The newer version of WP does not include it as a default plugin, but here’s a link to the original plugin managed by a new and reliable developer. Use this tool to back your database as often as you like, you’ll never realize how valuable it is, but let’s hope you’ll never need to go through the excruciating pain of restoring your DB ever!

WP Cache

WP Cache: This plugin does what the name suggests, caches WP files, and it does it in two phases. The first phase checks if the requested URL is already cached, if so it serves from the static file and finishes, the second phase stores the generated page in a static file for further request. Collectively it can reduce the load on your database server significantly and improve site load speed.

So there you go, 3 essential plugins for your WordPress site that all sites should consider installing.

Tagged: Akismet, Bad Behavior, Big City, Blogging Tips, CMS, Copyrights and Licenses, Keyboard Shortcuts, PimpDaBlog, Plugins, RSS Feeds, Resources, Spam Karma, Thumbnail viewer plugin, Tips, Top Plugins, WP Cache, WordPress, WordPress Database Backup, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials, reCAPTCHA, wpsnap

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Posted by Snap! on August 1st, 2007

How many posts a day? Quality or quantity?

This is a rather trite topic, but the numbers still amuse me.

If you do not crave for online popularity, then you sure donâ€™t have to worry about quantity at all. Rest assured, your quality posts will be read by those who love quality (within your niche), and more than once in their quality time shall I say!

Posting frequency depends more on what you want to do with your site, and what kind of a response you expect. Primarily, it is very important for a webmaster to clearly identify the purpose of his/her blog, and then work in that direction carefully, right from the start.

If you are better than the rest, you will form an instant brand with just one or two outstanding products!

If you are not, you need marketing to fill up that branding vacuum. Social/business networking, some basic skills and a can-do-it attitude is all you need for online blogging success, though in my opinion premature networking could hurt more than help. Unless you have something worth a read or a peek, even your own friends and family wonâ€™t care to give your blog a second look. Once you have something original, new, inspiring, informative, funny, witty, bright, exciting or captivating.. or anything that could act as a teaser to tantalize your readers, it’s time to start networking, and Iâ€™m sure your readers will come back. Repeat visitors and reader participation is by far the biggest motivator. Sadly, most bloggers give up over a period of time when their posts go unnoticed.

Donâ€™t wait for your blog to become a money making blog; if you are passionate about your blog, it will become a money making blog!

Content writing ~~creative writing~~ is not very difficult to learn, and each of us have the potential to make it to the top.

Popular blogs may not always be very high quality blogs, and very high quality blogs need not always be popular, that’s just my opinion. If you want to become popular, keep users at all levels in mind and give them what they want. Do not overwhelm your readers with too much information, at the same time give your readers fresh posts everytime they return. Focus on quality and I can bet you won’t be able to churn out ten posts a day anyways… you will more than likely strike the right balance. If you are an exception, excess of quality posts could never hurt; if readers like something, they will come back at a later time to see what you got.

Tagged: Blog Posts, Blogging, Blogging Tips, Blogosphere, Networking, PimpDaBlog, Plugins, Popular Blogs, Posting Frequency, Thumbnail viewer plugin, quality or quantity, wpsnap

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Posted by Snap! on July 31st, 2007

WordPress Plugins

SEO and Advertisements Plugins
WP-Backlinks will trade backlinks via a form on your side bar. It will spider other sites to check for reciprocal links, add them to your WP-Backlinks admin section and you can approve links.

Text Link Ads for WordPressMU allows WPMU users to use the TLA basic service and earn money. Also, has a TLA affiliate program.

Downloads and Stats Plugins
Simple Download Counter counts the number of times a file is being downloaded from your wordpress blog along with a display option for downloads.

WordPress Download Counter , same as Simple Download Counter, with additional features such as recording and storing the last time the file was downloaded. You can use tags to add the download URL.

WP-Slimstat tracks your blog stats.

Ultimate Progress Bar creates customizable progress meters to show the progress of your projects.

BLogscout saves the access codes for the blogscout-counter and loads the stats in an IFRAME, tracked by the German statistics tracker http://www.blogscout.de. ave

Bookmark, Feeds and Online Status Plugins
Add to Google enables users to add the â€œAdd to Googleâ€? widget button on a WordPress blog, without editing the source code manually.

Add to Facebook adds a link to the bottom of each post and page on your blog with the text â€œShare on Facebookâ€?.

TwitterPress, inspired by AlexKingâ€™s Twitter Tools lets you display your Twitter friends on your blog, shows latest updates, and automatically sends a Tweet when you post a new entry. Preview version.

WordTwit automatically generates a twitter status update for every post published.

Jabber Status shows your status on the web from your Jabber account.

d4rss is an RSS Aggregator plugin that allows to display RSS entries from external RSS sources of your choice. RSS entries are updated once a day using Wordpress Cron API. aggr allows you to place the contents of an RSS feed into your pages or posts; an extensively modified version of the Aggregate plugin by Rob Miller.

Comments and Messages Plugins
Crossroads is a Web 2.0 Plugin that adds Flickr thumbnails and Flickr photo comments to your blog entries.

SemGeshiCodeFix presents clear, highlighted code on your blog entries as well as in comments.

WP-Bulb sends you notifications about new comments through the Jabber/XMPP protocol.

Comment Highlighter can be used to add different style classes to comments. There are already plugins/hacks/alterations that add a style to all comments written by the blog owner, add a different style to every other comment, etc. This plugin takes it a bit further.

Animated Chinese Emoticons for Comments adds a new set of emoticons for your readers to use in comments.

Restrict Authors Access to Edit Comments limits comment editing to site administrators.

Berry Personalized gives up to four personalized messages depending on the origin of the visitors of your blog.

Quickmail is a simple e-mail sender which allows Wordpress administrators to quickly send e-mails from any address to any address via the Admin Panel.

Anti-Spam Plugins
Peterâ€™s Anti-spam Image generates random anti-spam images instead of custom anti-spam images. For best continuing anti-spam performance, change the anti-spam words and fonts once in a while.

Codes Plugins
CodeViewer pulls source code from an external file and displays it, optionally adding a link to download the code directly.

Upgrade Plugins
WordPress Automatic Upgrade automatically upgrades your WordPress installation with the latest files from wordpress.org.

User Convenience and Cool Features Plugins
MultiUploader makes it convenient to attach many files at once.

divShare allows you to integrate the file upload and storage site with your WordPress and WPMu installation.

MyDashboard is designed to replace the standard, but limited, WordPress dashboard with something a bit more useful, extendable and skinnable.

Drop-down Post List allows you to easily display drop-down boxes containing the posts for specified categories. You can use this plugin by entering the trigger text in a post or page, or by adding the function call directly to your theme files.

Whatâ€™s New, Whatâ€™s Fresh, Whatâ€™s Happening displays a customizable set of links to posts and comments in your sidebar or on any page.

MiniMeta Widget adds a contact form to your sidebar and allows you to enable or disable links.

Easy Textbox Link inserts a text box at the end of every post containing the title of the post and a permanent link to the entry. When a user mouses over the text box or clicks the text box the contents are highlighted in their entirety; this makes copying and pasting to a web page, blog or instant message incredibly easy.

Pluginstaller is a plugin-management plugin that eliminates the need to download a plugin archive, upload it to your FTP server and unpack it manually.

Leprakhauns Word Count gives you an estimated number of words based on the tiny_MCE in Wordpress. You do not need to post anything for the word count to show up, it does it in real time using Javascript.

sHeise Ticker displays X headlines in your sidebar. The length of each hyperlink can be edited through the admin Control Panel.

Gossamer Threads Tag Cloud allows you to display tag clouds for your posts on the sidebar. Tags with more hits are displayed in a bigger font to express popularity or emphasis. Tags can also be displayed underneath the post entry.

Feed Footer allows you to add footers under all your blog posts in your RSS feed.

Fullscreen 1.0 for WP-Super-Edit is a plugin for WP Super Edit to enlarge your TinyMCE editor to fit the full screen of the browser and toggle between those two views.

Monsters Editor 1.0 for WP-Super-Edit brings the magic of Fckeditor back to TinyMCE.

GeoAddress provides a contact/address list in a Google map. The representation the Google map and/or the address form can be affected in the Admin tool by means of numerous options.

gpx2map displays your geo track data on Google maps.

wp-wishlistr allows you to view your wishlist from wishlistr.com in your WordPress installation, either on a page or in a post.

Zorpia Hot Box lets users publish articles of your website to Zorpia.com directly, vote the published articles of your website, show voted points to each article with the widget, and allow for configuration of theme & style of the widget.

Mother Approves Vote Button adds an external Vote Button on individual posts on your blog that allows readers to “approve your post” at MotherApproves.net (A Digg for Parents) right from your individual post with a user-friendly graphical vote button.

Image, Audio and Video Plugins
Thumbnail Viewer adds libs from DynamicDrive (www.dynamicdrive) to WP for displaying nice image links. It overlays images on a page, similar to Lightbox JS.

Image Control Size lets you have more control over your thumbnail customization.

ipeRSS allows you to add your images from ipernity directly to your Blog (as a site, in an article, in the sidebar, etc.). For images as a site or in an article you need something similar to Exec-PHP or runPHP.

JAlbum allows you to integrate JAlbum galleries directly into your posts.

Plastic Tunes allows your blog to display and collect information about the music you play in your media player.

Gametrailers WordPress plugin allows you to embed the high quality gametrailers.com gaming videos into your blog posts

Language Plugins
BGtoLAT converts Bulgarian Cyrillic characters in post title to Latin characters. Very useful for Bulgarian users of WordPress.