NeoBox

NeoBox is no longer being actively developed or supported; I highly recommend the Thesis theme framework for all WordPress blogs!

Welcome to NeoBox, my first & (thus far) only WordPress theme release. Currently no demo blog is set up, but NeoBox hasn’t gone “gold” yet and is still being actively developed to fit my vision for it.

Requirements

An excellent theme … Thanks for sharing it. gestroud

I made the decision that NeoBox should be as future-forward as possible without loading the theme up with backwards compatibility code or stylistic hacks for sub-par browsers. I realize this limits my audience, but I do not foresee changing my mind about this.

NeoBox requires at least WordPress 2.5 or later as well as PHP 5 or newer.

Styling was done primarily using Firefox; no guarantees are made about other browsers, especially Internet Explorer.

Download

Features

  • Two widgetized sidebars with a center content section
  • Content section supports media (e.g., pictures, Flash) up to 425px in width
  • Improved gallery shortcode handler
    • XHTML-valid
    • Thickbox support
  • Microformats support
    • hAtom on posts
    • vCard on author information (posts & comments)
    • rel-external on outgoing links
    • rel-nofollow on redundant internal links
  • Fully designed theme hierarchy
  • Tags displayed on posts
  • Quick access to Next/Previous navigation at the top & bottom of posts and archives
  • Random header images
  • Ample whitespace
  • Avatar support if enabled in WordPress’ discussion options
    • No plugin required
    • “Identicons” used if no gravatar is available
  • Support for an optional custom.css file in the theme directory, to allow for future-proof customizations of the styling
  • [code]alert[/code] and [code]note[/code] paragraph classes for important or informational boxes in posts
  • Hierarchical headlines – Adding headers to posts? Start with [code]h3[/code] to maintain the semantic flow of content
  • Extreme semantics – A variety of meaningful classes are added to the [code]body[/code] tag of every page as well as to each post and comment container [code]div[/code]. The class-specific styling opportunities this affords is unbelievable. For example, if you wanted, you could add to your custom.css file code which would style posts in a category called “Hodge Podge” but that would only affect it when it’s being viewed during a certain hour of the day!
  • And more!

Plugin Compatibility

  • Brian’s Latest Comments – Styling & placement in the left sidebar when widgets are not in use
  • CommentLuv – Styling
  • FlickrRSS – Styling & placement in the left sidebar when widgets are not in use
  • ShareThis – ShareThis button appears along with post meta information on single post & page displays, if automatic output is disabled in the plugin’s options
  • Subscribe to Comments – Styling
  • WP-Super-Cache – Message warning users of Lock Down, if enabled in the caching options

Change Log

  • 0.6 – 2008/06/26
    • Support for WP-Super-Cache’s “lock down” feature; a message is displayed to new users warning them that their comments may not appear for a bit, until the cache is refreshed.
    • Added [code].foreign[/code] to style foreign words or phrases using an appropriate tag ([code]p[/code], [code]span[/code], and so on). By default, foreign text is shown italicized.
    • Renamed numerous files to maintain a consistent file naming schema.
    • Created page-links.php, a page which can be used to display your complete list of bookmarks.
    • Post meta information & next/previous navigation have received some styling updates. This still needs some work to be wonderful.
    • An icon now appears next to the author byline.
    • Some compatibility has been added for the ShareThis and FlickrRSS plugins.
  • 0.5 – 2008/06/05
    • Removed options panel (no longer needed)
    • Removed FreeRice banners
    • Extremely semantic code (thanks, The Sandbox!)
    • Silk icons sprinkled throughout
    • Added category descriptions (if present) to category archives
    • Added author descriptions (if present) to author archives
    • vCard microformatting present throughout, where applicable
    • hAtom support for posts
    • Next/Previous navigation at the top & bottom of posts and archives
    • Tags are now displayed on posts
    • Brian’s Latest Comments support — just activate the plugin and it’ll work (unless you are using widgets)
    • Avatars enabled on comments, no plugin required
    • Styling present to support the Subscribe to Comments & CommentLuv plugins
    • Improved Gallery handling
  • 0.4 – 2008/05/25
    • Removed hard-coded options from functions.php
    • Introduced new Design-panel options page w/ nonce protection
  • 0.3 – 2008/05/22
    • Replaced WordPress’ built in code for handling the Gallery shortcode with code from the Cleaner Gallery plugin.
    • XHTML validity improved, mainly thanks to the new gallery handling.
  • 0.2 – 2008/05/21
    • Slow & steady does it!
    • 404.php optimized and hopefully made both accessible and useful
    • WordPress generator meta information removed from header.php
    • Theme credit added to footer.php
    • Misc. CSS tweaks
    • custom.css file added; instructions for using this file are contained within the file itself. Never overwrite this file if you have added custom code to it!
    • sitemap.php & archives.php optimized. archives.php now displays a tag cloud.
    • Accessibility “Go to Top” link added to footer.
    • FreeRice.com banners added below content pages. It’s a worthy cause and should be supported, but if you want to disable it, the option is at the top of functions.php
  • 0.1 – 2008/04/13
    • Initial public release – NeoBox is still essentially Neoclassical; however, SandBox’s semantic classes have been enabled on the BODY tag as well as comments.

License

NeoBox is a combination of two themes; one of which was licensed under the GPL while the other was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Deed.

Basically, that gives you freedom to of course use NeoBox on your blog, but also to tweak it and to release your version of it as well — provided it is licensed under the GPL and the same or similar Creative Commons deed. If you release a theme based on NeoBox, please provide attribution by linking to this page as well as to the developers of its major base elements (see Credits).

If you are using NeoBox on your site, you are under no obligation to credit anyone for the style, but a link back to here and those listed under “Credits” somewhere on your site would be a nice treat.

NeoBox in the Wild

If you are using NeoBox, I want to thank you by linking to you here. I may not notice that you are using my theme, so feel free to let me know!

Credits

2 thoughts on “NeoBox”

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