WordPress SIDEBAR positioning

by toivo
16 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
  • |
Building my site and added some descriptive text underneath my banner in HEADER area. See: Dans Cartoons | Cartoons available for reprint. Licensing cartoons are ideal for use in books, print advertising, web pages, Facebook pages, newsletters, magazines and newspapers. uses for cartoons include rerint on apparel, giftware, catalogs, Power where the top text RECENT POSTS in sidebar interferes or overlaps that text. Can I move that entire sidebar further down the page? If so, how? best way?
#positioning #sidebar #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author David V
    Originally Posted by toivo View Post

    Building my site and added some descriptive text underneath my banner in HEADER area. See: Dans Cartoons | Cartoons available for reprint. Licensing cartoons are ideal for use in books, print advertising, web pages, Facebook pages, newsletters, magazines and newspapers. uses for cartoons include rerint on apparel, giftware, catalogs, Power where the top text RECENT POSTS in sidebar interferes or overlaps that text. Can I move that entire sidebar further down the page? If so, how? best way?
    No, not the ideal thing to do.

    Change the top margin of the #wrapper in dynamic-style.php line 110
    40px to 50px looks like enough.

    This is what you have:
    Code:
    #wrapper {
    position: relative;
    width: 960px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    overflow: auto;
    padding-bottom: 250px;
    }
    change to this:

    Code:
    #wrapper {
    position: relative;
    width: 960px;
    margin: 50px auto 0;
    overflow: auto;
    padding-bottom: 250px;
    }
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    • Profile picture of the author toivo
      Great, I will do this. Now, where do I click to get into the HTML for this? No one seems to tell much about this aspect of accessing one's HTML. I am customizing a theme. However, show I go into my account and then THEME> and?
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  • Profile picture of the author toivo
    OH yes, and I just noticed that sidebar went from LEFT side to RIGHT side after I updated my theme. Again, can you mention the set of steps I need to take to move that entire sidebar from right to left side?
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  • Profile picture of the author David V
    Since your in wordpress, you'll need to login to the admin area,
    go to the "appearance" tab > then to "editor".....
    Make sure your theme is selected in the top right dropdown box. If if is, good, if not select your theme and hit "select".
    By default you should see the theme style.css in the editor, if not look in the right column and click it.

    You can scroll down to find the code block I pointed out, or do this:
    Place your cursor in the editor,
    hit "Ctrl+f" (if windows) then enter "#wrapper" in the search box (no quotes),
    the editor should scroll right to the spot.

    Change the margin as shown, click "update file"
    Open a new tab and check site.

    As far as the sidebar, you need to select the correct template for your page, or the correct sidebar, depends on your theme settings.
    Usually under the page edit tab for the page that is home. Might be in your theme options.
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    • Profile picture of the author toivo
      I sure do appreciate this....let me go into my account and try this. If I have questions, I will ask. Great!
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      • Profile picture of the author David V
        Originally Posted by toivo View Post

        I sure do appreciate this....let me go into my account and try this. If I have questions, I will ask. Great!
        Yeah, no problem!
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      • Profile picture of the author toivo
        See attached image screenshot....I did go through all the steps...however, the info the only info that appears in the editor is what is in the screenshot -would there be another way?
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        • Profile picture of the author connorbringas
          Thats an extremely large hyperlink you have there..why?
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        • Profile picture of the author David V
          Originally Posted by toivo View Post

          See attached image screenshot....I did go through all the steps...however, the info the only info that appears in the editor is what is in the screenshot -would there be another way?
          Looks like your theme stylesheet is inside the styles/ directory. No biggee but you can't edit it in wp admin. You need to access the server another way. (FTP, SFTP, Shell). Even if you have someone do it for you, you'll need to have FTP info for them.

          How do you access your hosting? Do you have a Cpanel? There is a file manager in there you could use to access the stylesheet.
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          • Profile picture of the author toivo
            Goldarn it....yes, I did have someone change it for me quite a while ago now that I recall it had to be done via Filezilla. Thank you for this reminder. When I updated my themes afternoon, it automatically changed it back to the right side. Oh boy....as for "looong" hyperlink, it was not of my choosing. I went into my WPadmin and added descriptive text I hoped would appear directly underneath that banner that you see.
            When I came here to Warrior and gave the URL http to my wordpress site, that is the text hyperlink which appeared....and am not certain why. I am trying to learn WordPress (which has been frustrating) and switching my existing site from my webhost's Windows based server and get a WP site on the Linux server. They gave me a temp. domain URL to use in the meantime (and it's running on their Linux). While my site I have on their Windows server still percolates: CARTOONS | CARTOON | PICTURES
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            • Profile picture of the author David V
              Originally Posted by toivo View Post

              .....When I updated my themes afternoon, it automatically changed it back to the right side......
              I'm not familiar with your theme, but based on what I see on their website, it looks like they might provide you a way to either use a child theme, or a custom.css stylesheet.
              Don't make the direct style changes to the theme file since updating will override them. Just something to keep in mind.
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  • Profile picture of the author David V
    @toivo,
    Before you log out of admin, I want you to make one more change....
    That works fine, but you also have an issue with your description cramming up against the top so change this line also:

    style.css - line 341
    Code:
    #branding .description {
    font-size: 16px;
    font-family: 'Josefin Slab', serif;
    color: #999999;
    }
    change to:
    Code:
    #branding .description {
    font-size: 16px;
    font-family: 'Josefin Slab', serif;
    color: #999999;
    padding: 10px 0;
    }
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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    Not directly related to your question, but you really need to change the length of your title.

    See Watch Out for Long Title Tags | SEOmoz for some information as to title size and how Google handles it.
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  • Profile picture of the author BerlinSianipar
    Originally Posted by toivo View Post

    Building my site and added some descriptive text underneath my banner in HEADER area. ... where the top text RECENT POSTS in sidebar interferes or overlaps that text. Can I move that entire sidebar further down the page? If so, how? best way?
    Wow what a mesh you have in your site

    Is that a theme you bought or do you try to create by yourself? If you bought that theme, you should contact your seller and ask for support.

    WordPress is a newbie friendly blog platform, but if you don't have any experience with it, you should ask someone to do your theme customizing job.

    Btw, I visit danscartoon.com, I think you can use Twenty Eleven or Twenty Twelve theme to build your new site. You only need to customize the header image and the body background color which is easily done in theme options page from your WordPress admin dashboard. You can install both themes free from your Appearance>Themes page in your WordPress admin dashboard.

    I understand that even a simple thing can be so frustating when we don't have the knowledge we need. But once you understand the basic of WordPress, I'm pretty sure you'll find it as the best blogging platform
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    • Profile picture of the author toivo
      Appreciate your feedback regarding my site's description UMS. I realize I will have to change it. Initially, I wanted to put a paragraph or two underneath that banner of mine in the header area and am figuring out a way. And I also appreciated Berlin's input on my theme I chose. Initially it's a theme for photographers....but will work ideally for presenting my images like those on my current Windows-based site.
      The aspect I like regarding the Photocrati theme is they offer a variety of image gallery styles to present/display your work and there are built in components available in the galleries such as social media tagging for separate images or any galleries themselves. They also offer PayPal integration into each image gallery and or per image including changing colors and layouts for different galleries on the fly. I have been in contact with their support (off & on) and they seem to have it available for direct questions relating to customizing that theme although they've also provided various in-depth instructional videos.
      I guess my questions here have come out of frustration in dealing with the minor adjustments, i.e. moving a sidebar, making that specific sidebar go down lower on the page. I have had experience in HTML in the past with my current FrontPage based Windows hosted site DansCartoons....but that's been up for a decade and it's losing alot of SEO due to that web editor's ability to not getting software updates via Microsoft as needed plus all the new algorithms that seem to be constant across the web (HTML5 and the Google Penguin updates blah blah) My current web host currently is keeping my old FrontPage site running and then installed WP3.5 for me on their Linux side and I then installed Photocrati....my host then assigned me a temp domain URL (I won't type the full http:// because Warrior displays that long description UMS mentioned as a full text descrip) so I can experiment and add/tweak pages in the future WordPress site on the side. It's been great coming back to Warrior and get some feedback and assistance. In a sense, I like getting into the guts and work a site myself....then I eventually have it looking the way I want and operating the way I want. Ten years back when I built the FrontPage site you see, I knew zero about computers but learned hard about WYSIWYG, pros & cons of this web editor and that one, HTML do's and don'ts etc. Now I'm drooling with WP.........
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      • Profile picture of the author toivo
        David: Recveived your PM but the Warrior composer won't allow me to attach screenshot (or for some reason, even answer you via PM - full in box or something). Please email me directly: dan@danscartoons.com so I can show the screenshot.
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