Hang onto your WordPress.com hats. You can now customize your own WordPress.com blog. I will be playing with this soon, but to get you started, here is the news.
WordPress.com has announced release of a Sandbox Theme by Scott Allan Wallick and Andy Skelton. It allows you to customize your own WordPress.com blog’s look.
This is not a free feature. The cost is USD $15.00 for annual access to this “upgrade feature”.
To help you customize your WordPress.com Theme, they’ve introduced a Custom CSS Editor that allows you to customize your blog’s look. You can’t change the HTML, but you can mess around with the look.
If this overwhelms you, or you want to show off, WordPress.com Forums has a new section on CSS Customization to help you you.
There are limits to this. Right now, you can’t add any CSS to your individual posts. You will be able to change the styles in the CSS references within your Theme, but possibly not to the very finest detail you might like.
This is also opening a can of worms for WordPress.com support. Before you rush there seeking help on every div, id, px, em, font, etc., please check the following resources and search online for CSS tips, tricks, and techniques. There is a ton out there. Even here.
- CSS and Web Page Design List of Resources
- CSS: Studying Your CSS Styles
- Secrets of WordPress Theming
- Finding Your CSS Styles in WordPress
- WordPress Codex – WordPress Lessons
- WordPress Codex – Design and Layout
- WordPress Codex – WordPress and CSS
- Designing a WordPress Theme From Scratch
- Designing a WordPress Theme – Building a Sandbox
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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network
Lorelle on WordPress 
12 Comments
“This is also opening a can of worms for WordPress.com support. ”
Not really – I’m not supporting CSS. I don’t have enough hours in my day and to do so would harm the support for users I currently do support.
All requests to me will be directed to the forum. The feature is a paid upgrade but enhanced support is not part of the package.
Hi Lorelle: Let’s be sure to keep Andy’s name firmly in that “by . . .” business. He’s really the mastermind behind the semantic functions of this theme, which is what makes it so flexible and ideal for skinning. 🙂
Lorelle, I’d love to see some examples of what this theme can do. It sounds interesting, but mostly for what you can add to it, rather than for what it looks like in its most minimalist form which is nice, but not stunning. Perhaps you’ve already linked to that and I missed it. Best, BL
This was just announced today. I don’t have any links to anything people can see and I haven’t tried it myself yet. I’ll let you know when I know more.
For those of you who have forked over the $15, how about some feedback?
If I didn’t have my own server and used wordpress.com exclusively I’d be all over this. After this feature being added I think there’s no good reason anyone has to stay on their blogspot blog.
Quite a good feature if you need better customization of your blog theme.
However, I would have moved for much greater level template editting since this is a paid service.
bloglily: Don’t think that the Sandbox is only good for just minimalist themes. Not true at all. It really is limited only be the intentions of the designer and has the potential for some really slick, elegant dynamic functions. Keep your eyes open. I think we’ll all be quite impressed with what we see 😀
Actually, if you have your own installation, you can download and use the Sandbox theme free, under GPL license, directly from Scott’s site:
http://www.plaintxt.org/themes/sandbox/
Not sure why he didn’t mention this…
As a newbie to blog building many thanks, Lorelle, for the resources. I have now installed WordPress and am in the process of customizing and only today started searhing for resources and this came up! I’ll check out the links and see where it all takes me.
thansk @galiel for useful link
and
thnks @lorelle good work
We’re in the process of changing the layout of our blog. We started by looking at the code and modifying all the the DIV’s etc and ended up having to resort back to the original file. I’ll take a leaf out of your book and keep it simple. Thanks for the tips on this. Regards Mog
I also recommend you see Designing a WordPress Theme – Building a Post Sandbox for a file that will help you design your post content, if and when you are ready to start over.
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[…] Hmmm… With this great release, and the talented Bryan Veloso joining Automattic, I’m not sure if developing a new WordPress theme for public release is worth it or needed at this point. But custom CSS is great news for all of you on wordpress.com. [Via Lorelle] […]
[…] Finally, it’s here. The ability to edit the look of your WordPress.com theme to your own liking by editing the CSS of the Sandbox theme directly. The catch? It’s $15 USD a year for it. But like someone said in the forums, people pay more over booze a week, so something like this shouldn’t really be a problem for people that can afford alcohol everyday. […]
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[…] I’m taking advantage of the new CSS Editor access for WordPress.com blogs, and working overtime to keep updating the Sandbox Theme CSS stylesheet list as I go. […]
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