Sandbox Designs Competition

As I wrote yesterday on the Weblog Tools Collection, I am very pleased to announce the Sandbox Designs Competition. I briefly outlined the scope and purpose of the competition yesterday and, as promised, will go in to more detail here on the first post of the SDC.

Before I get started, I’d like to point out a few things about sndbx.org: we’re running WordPress, using the Sandbox (with my modest attempts at a basic design), and married to Microformats.

Which means you can access the information here in useful ways. For example, when you see a date (like on the The Details page, it’s been marked up as an hCalendar. You could save it to your calendar straight from the page if you were using the Operator plugin for Firefox. Or you could subscribe using the Technorati Events Feed service. The information (to come) on The Participants and The Judges pages will be as hCards, too.

Which brings me to revealing the relatively inconsequential second-tier goals of this competition, the full-disclosure: (a) to demonstrate how excellent markup can profoundly affect the accessibility and functionality of a blog, and (b) to encourage designers and developers to use the Sandbox because it does much of that currently.

Now I’ll give you the primary goals of this competition, which are:

• To be transparent, organized, and fun;
• To solicit new, excellent designs to benefit the WordPress community;
• To reinvigorate the creative energy present in the WordPress community; and,
• To provide a challenging competition appropriate for experienced and novice designers.

Reasonable, I think. It’s good for designers, it’s great for the community, and hopefully the Sandbox will be the useful tool for community it is intended to be.

Anyhow, I’m already repeating myself as pretty much everything I’ve written above is available in the contents here. So as an introduction to this competition, let me run through the table of contents:

1. The Competition: Just some general information, not unlike this post
   1. About the Sandbox: A quick introduction to the Sandbox theme
   2. Contact Us: If you really, really need to, you can get in touch with me
2. The Details: This is what you should first, probably; includes important dates and more
   1. How to Submit: Instructions on submitting your design(s); very important for participants
   2. Official Rules: Also important, the official rules spell out pretty much everything, protecting all involved
3. The Judging: Broad description of what the judges should look for, but remember that judging design is inherently subjective
   1. Judging Procedures: There is a simple, qualifiable, and quantifiable scoring schedule for judging
   2. About the Judges: No judges yet, but if you have someone you’d like to recommend, tell me to contact me (see above)
4. The Sponsors: Ah, sponsors; where we will feature those generous enough to support the competition
   1. How to Sponsor: Instructions for sponsorships; remember, sponsors may have no influence on competition processes
   2. Promotion Tools: Everyone likes buttons, so here are some for general consumption
5. The Results: Obviously the winners have not been announced yet; when they are, here they shall be
   1. The Designs: All accepted designs will be featured here and have their own page for commenting, praise, etc.
   2. The Participants: All participants with an accepted design submission will be featured here

One question that has come up is whether or not any PHP- or script-based modifications to the Sandbox theme will be allowed, and the answer is no. Why? Well, this will come up again and so you will hear me say again and again, this is about design, about form, and less about functionality. A competition about creating whole themes is entirely different. In such a competition, design is but one aspect of the judging criteria. Here, aesthetics are everything.

Plus, it is also my personal feeling that while a great number of recent themes look alike, but may have vastly differing functions and features. Just as Web standards promote the separation of content and presentation, so does this competition promote the separation of theme and plugin.

For now, that is all. I will leave you with a few notes:

• The Sandbox Live Preview is available and designs will be viewable here after submissions close.
• The dummy content on the Sandbox Live Preview site will be made available very soon; this content will be provided only to encourage completeness of designs
• A forum will appear after the weekend; I imagine I will be looking for at least a few volunteer moderators—please.
• If you’re going to participate in this competition, do yourself a favor in advance and register now.

That is all for today. Enjoy, have a look around, and—most importantly—good luck.