Can someone help me with CSS?

[Nate]

If you have any knowledge of it, please let me know. I want to amend my site a bit and I'm an amateur. Thanks!

[slowpoke]

Well, William Petersen plays Gil Grissom and Marg....oh wait, you said CSS as in coding for websites.

My bad. I'm new to it to, so I'll sit here quitely and watch. Thanks for starting the thread.

[chicanerous]

I used to know it fairly well, but I haven't designed/coded in a year. Depending on what you're trying to do, I can try to help.

[Nate]

I'm trying to modify my site. Lemme see if I can describe what i'm picturing. (You've gotta check out the format first to see what I'm talking about)

I would like to make the width of the sidebar a little bit less.

I would like to remove "Posted in (category)" under each post.

I would like for new posts to start at the top of the page, and I would design a new graphic for the upper right hand corner.

And finally, I would like to remove post titles.

All of the code is open-source and I have easy access to it, so I could post excerpts. I just need help on pinpointing which code specifically that I'd need to edit.

I'm asking quite a bit, but any input would be much appreciated. Even links to tutorials or something would be good. I've search around a bit but I'm pretty clueless.

Thanks.

[Abdominator]

Originally Posted by Nate

I'm trying to modify my site. Lemme see if I can describe what i'm picturing. (You've gotta check out the format first to see what I'm talking about)

I would like to make the width of the sidebar a little bit less.

I would like to remove "Posted in (category)" under each post.

I would like for new posts to start at the top of the page, and I would design a new graphic for the upper right hand corner.

And finally, I would like to remove post titles.

All of the code is open-source and I have easy access to it, so I could post excerpts. I just need help on pinpointing which code specifically that I'd need to edit.

I'm asking quite a bit, but any input would be much appreciated. Even links to tutorials or something would be good. I've search around a bit but I'm pretty clueless.

Thanks.

Hmmm... I'm just delving into CSS myself, so I'll have to see if I can figure out what you're trying to do.

Here's my webpage and it's new look (I changed it last week):

http://www.skippypodar.net



My wedding page and my 20 year high school reunion page both use the same CSS, but my main page uses one that has a menu bar on the side which uses the <div> tag.

http://www.skippypodar.net/Wedding
http://www.skippypodar.net/Reunion



I'll examine your page and send you some info tomorrow. You can also e-mail me and we'll see what we can figure out. I like your layout by the way.

- Skip

[Nate]

Thanks skippy - Your site looks great. (I had actually browsed through it extensively the other day)

I like layout of my site as well, but it's certainly not my own. I'm using wordpress as my main template.

You can find the code at wordpress.org. I just want to customize it a bit, you know? And plus, I make posts all day long so I would like a lot more of them to fit on the page so I can hold people's attention a little bit longer...the farther people have to scroll down the less they are inclined to stick around and keep reading.

Thanks again!

[chicanerous]

I've never used Wordpress before but I downloaded the script and looked through it briefly for you.

You'll need to go into the folder "wp-content/themes/default" to modify the width of the sidebar. Make a back-up copy of style.css and then open the original up. Scroll down almost to the end of the document looking for this bit of code:

/* Begin Sidebar */
#sidebar
{
	padding: 20px 0 10px 0;
	margin-left: 545px;
	width: 190px;
	}

#sidebar form {
	margin: 0;
	}
/* End Sidebar */

Change the "width" attribute to a smaller number to decrease the size of the sidebar. If this doesn't work, reupload your back-up copy.

To remove "Posted in (category)", move new posts to the top of the page, and remove post titles, you'll
have to one of two things, depending on how the script is set up. Either you'll (1) be able to make these changes directly from the admin panel or you'll (2) have to create a new theme/template, which will be some extra work.

As for the number of posts that appear on one page, you can almost definitely do that from the admin panel.

[Nate]

Hardcore visual brainstorming!!

[Nate]

Thanks chic.

I changed the "width" attribute - no dice. Hmm...

[chicanerous]

You may also have to decrease the size of the search form in order to get the sidebar to decrease in size. Go back into style.css and find this code:

#sidebar #searchform #s {
	width: 115px;
	padding: 2px;
	}

It should be in the "/* Begin Form Elements */" section. Decrease the "width" attribute to 75px less than you entered for the sidebar's width.

[Nate]

Thanks again for the reply.

Still nothin'. I refreshed the page a few times just to make sure. The actual sidebar itself is an image, but shouldnt the text shift to reflect the changes?

[chicanerous]

As far as I can see, together those changes should work. I still get the old style.css on your server, which would be a problem:

http://www.projectnothing.com/wp-con...ault/style.css

Except, you're right, you need to reduce the size of that header image also. And you may need to do even more to the code. Yuck, the designer of your template didn't think about scalability at all!

[Nate]

Oh, I had already re-uploaded the original stylesheet. I'll make the changes again and leave them for a bit, hang on.

[Nate]

There ya go. :d_frown:

[chicanerous]

One more change to your CSS in the "/* Begin Structure */" section, near the top of style.css:

#page {
	background-color: white;
	margin: 20px auto;
	padding: 0;
	width: 760px;
	border: 1px solid #959596;
	}

Reduce this "width" attribute by the amount you reduced the "width" attribute of #sidebar (the first change you made); the original width of the sidebar was 190px.

If that don't work, I'm mad.

[Nate]

Haha, well, it shifted. Just to the left. Check it out, I'll leave it like that for a minute.

[chicanerous]

Well damn, why'd it do that? Ah, your best bet is probably to redesign the template from scratch -- you can make it exactly how you want it this way and fix the stupid scalability issues this one has. But, you'll need to know HTML and CSS to do so. :d_frown:

If you can wait a bit, I can write one for you (I can't stand shoddy-made templates).

[Nate]

Looks like I've got some work to do.

Thanks chic! I really appreciate it.

I'll keep posting here if I have more questions and if I make any progress. If anyone else has any more input that would be great, too.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by chicanerous

Well damn, why'd it do that? Ah, your best bet is probably to redesign the template from scratch -- you can make it exactly how you want it this way and fix the stupid scalability issues this one has. But, you'll need to know HTML and CSS to do so. :d_frown:

If you can wait a bit, I can help you out. I have to find a PHP install for my computer though.

I've got an early, early morning tomorrow so I'll probably be logging off soon, but if you'd like to post away and I'll be checking back tomorrow.

If it's any trouble at all, don't bother. Thanks though.

[chicanerous]

Took five hours, but I might have made something useful. It's in the exact same format as the other skin, but the size of it is able to be tweaked. The only problem is that I could only view the HTML + CSS combo, which works fine in my Firefox and IE, but WordPress uses its PHP system with inline code (instead of an easier to customize templating system, IMO, a la Greymatter). So, I split it up the best I could without being able to view it as WordPress uses it and imported all the extraneous styles from the old stylesheet. I have something that might work and look great, work and look horrible, or not work at all.

I'm now well acquainted with how WordPress' theming system works, so I can, at least, show you how to remove the "Posted in (category)" and remove or reduce the size of post titles.