Instructions for adjusting column size

Ok, I've been poking at Firebug since I posted this trying to figure it out on my own and I finally hit on a combo that works. I just added this to my CSS:

body.one-sidebar #sidebar-right,
body.one-sidebar #sidebar-left {
width: 330px
}

body.one-sidebar #content-inner {
margin:0 120px 0 250px
}

It seems to be working. If doing it this way is going to come back and bite me in the butt down the road, I'd appreciate a heads up. ;) If not, well, then documenting this is quite easy. Not much to it once you finally figure it out.

Michelle

Well, you can get a two column layout simply by putting everything into the right sidebar. The trouble is that it ends up being 220px and I really wanted it wider to fit a standard ad size, and other things. The fix I posted seems to work but I don't know CSS very well and didn't know if that woudl break something else.

Thanks for looking at it,

Michelle

FWIW, here's what it looks like with my adjustment up there.

Oh, sorry, I never answered your last post. I tried the padding but didn't like the look of it. That's ok, though. It was changing the column size that was the real challange. Would be good to have that documented for other css newbs like me. :)

I've put my theme on hold for a bit so I can work on APK so that's it from me for now.

Michelle

Actually, looks like I need help after all. I thought I had it but then I changed the background color and realized there's a border on "far-left" that's sitting in the middle of my right sidebar. I can't figure out how to move that. So I could still really use instructions on how to properly set this up as a two column theme. :)

Michelle

Oh, nice! That would actually work great as there are some pages here and there I may want the three columns on. Having the option would be great. Is this theme available? I'm really struggling with my theme right now and what you have there would get me a lot closer than what I've managed on my own. :)

Thanks!

Michelle

Well, what's usable to me might not be what you want. :) I can tell you the changes that I will make to it for my own site and you can decide if any of it is something you are interested in.

• Top block white with two regions: Logo on the right and user login / dashboard on the left
• Under that a bar with the primary menu, possibly with the search there if enough room
• Right sidebar different background color (maybe grey) with a more graphical border on the left
• Large footer with mini site map

Beyond that, it would be mostly colors / graphics to match my site. What you have there in your demo comes really, really close to what I need. I'm excited to get it and play with it. I've been so frustrated because I'm a programmer, not a themer and my attemps so far are getting me no where. You've given me hope!

Now get some sleep! :)

Thanks,

Michelle

For reference, I'm trying to do something like this except with two columns at a 630/330 split. Different colors and graphics, etc, of course, but that layout is pretty close.

Michelle

Better example: http://www.revolutiontheme.com/city is what I'm really going for. That's it to a T except for color/graphics changes.

Michelle

Oh, that last example is awesome! I'm not married to grail at all. I just picked this theme because it was the closest Zen subtheme I could find to my goals. As long as the layout is sensible under the hood, I'm fine with it. I think what you have there would be a great start if you could release that!

Thanks so much. I think this will be a nice starter theme for a lot of people. The Wordpress theme I wanted to use was very popular and this doesn't copy it but has a lot of the same layout.

Michelle

I know I'm being impatient but I'm chomping at the bit to get to work on this theme. :) Can you give me some idea of the plan, here? Are you going to release that "forum" one as a seperate project? Any idea when? Not rushing you to finish it but if you can put up a dev of what you have, I can start playing with it and then just update when you have it done.

Thanks,

Michelle

Thanks, you are awesome! :)

Michelle

That looks like a very nice theme and I think it will be well worth a project but I think you've moved farther away from the direction I was trying to go. And that's fine; you need to do your thing, not mine. But I've made some progress using the Plain Grail theme and the main issue I'm having is that the columns still aren't right. I've attached a screenshot so you can see the problem. The black outline is around "main-inner" and the yellow outline is around "sidebar-right". As you can see, I've managed to get the content itself in the right place but having the containers wrong mean I can't put a border on the sidebar.

If you need a link to the site itself I can provide that. If this is too much support to be asking, I understand that as well.

Thanks,

Michelle

Oh, doh! I didn't actually attach the screenshot, did I?

Awesome! Just based on a quick look so far, looks like you fixed the layout. You rock! I agree, though, that docs would still be good. It's a better use of your time to document it rather than fix everyone's themes for them. :)

Well, cool, I can switch over to using that layout and I should be good to go. Thanks so much!

Just out of curiosity, what did you use to grab the images? I sure hope they don't actually look like that in any browser. Wowsers!

Thanks,

Michelle

Ok, finally had a chance to get back to this and I'm comparing the differences between Plain Grail and "Coulee Grail" and there's a lot of differences. So much, I'm not able to pick out the layout changes to copy over. So I'm back to needing those instructions, I guess. :(

Michelle

Thanks! TBH, I couldn't follow the comments in the readme. I think there's still room for work there if you have time some day. But singling out the exact parts that needed adjusting did it for me. With a bit of playing around, I realized that if I subtract the exact same number from each of the big numbers, I can shrink the right column as needed. So that worked out great for me. :)

Ironically, after all this, I don't think I'm going to put a visible border on the sidebar. LOL! But it's nice to know that the layout is in good enough shape that I can do so if I ever choose to.

Michelle

One other thing... If you are going to make what you have there in that zip the new version of Plain Grail, is there any chance you could do an alpha release of what is currently in the dev snapshot first? The reason I'm asking is because, while the new instructions are nice, the rest of the new version wrecks my subtheme. If you make an Alpha, I can just stick with the Alpha and it will always be there for me to go back to if something were to happen to my copy. If you just overwrite the existing dev with the new version, it's lost forever. :(

Thanks,

Michelle

Actually... Don't hate me but I was really struggling with this on IRC last night and found someone able to help me but he uses the Framework base theme so I ended up switching to that. While trying to see if I could get my subtheme to work with your latest version, I looked in all the files and realized this theme is a lot heavier than I realized. There's all sorts of javascript and just misc stuff in there and the filesizes are quite large. To put that on top of Zen and then my theme on top of that is going to make the theme really sluggish.

I don't think your time was wasted, though, because adding those instructions will help others using this theme. Also, I suggest paring the layout.css file down to just layout. One of the first things I tried to do was just grab the layout.css since the only thing I needed from this theme is the layout but found it was filled with non layout CSS. Having a clear line between layout and "decoration" will help people adapt your theme to their needs.

Thanks for all your help. I do really appreciate it even if I ended up switching in the end. And this is still a nice theme for folks who don't need to modify it quite as extensively as I do.

Michelle

You're doing a fine job and I understand perfectly that this is still in dev. What it comes down to is that what I wanted was your layout, not your theme and I realized that taking a whole theme just for the layout made no sense. You've got a fine theme going that I'm sure many people will love; it just wasn't what I really needed in the end.

Thank you for your time,

Michelle