The Sandbox Designs Competition is the first WordPress “theme” competition since 2004. In 2006 there were two WordPress competitions that both failed at different stages. This competition aims to be different. It even has neat little goals, 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.
This competition is also different in its scope: to be highly design-oriented. Instead of challenging participants’ PHP coding skills, prowess at debugging scripts, or knowledge of the WordPress API, etc., this competition will be about designing (ie, “skins”) for the Sandbox theme, similar in spirit to the very successful WordPress CSS Styles Competition held by Alex King in February of 2004.
But blog themes have come a long way since that competition’s “Classic” theme. The Sandbox has tremendous potential for designers (as well as coders) in its exceptional markup (see About the Sandbox for more on this). There are exponential possibilities for CSS-only modifications of the Sandbox. Designers are being challenged to demonstrate how good they can make it look—and feel, and function, and so on.
This competition is also raising the bar for future competitions by offering US$500 in cash prizes (see The Details for more info); however, subject to sponsorships (and there will be sponsorships) the cash prize will increase, hopefully, to our goal of US$1000 in total, but that is contingent on supporters. Come on, supporters. The goal of a total cash prize of US$1000 has been met. Hoorah, supporters.
The competition is being organized solely by Scott of plaintxt.org, who is the cocreator of the Sandbox along with Andy of Automattic. But the success of the competition rests partially in the hands of the community at-large, so let’s make this one the best ever.
Great efforts have been made to make all the information available online here, but you’ll probably be mostly interested in reading about The Details, The Judging, and The Sponsors.
But if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
Good luck to all the participants. And may the best designers win. 
— Scott Allan Wallick, May 2007
