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By Aerodynamo on
I started theme development based on the Zen Classic subtheme for my website, http://drellingism.com. Everything was going great and I was working from the top down, starting with the header and primary navigation and working my way to the body. I was getting all the kinks worked out, had just started to switch from layout-garland.css to layout-fluid.css, got an offline maintenance page in working order, and lined up a maintenance.css. Those two css files I just mentioned were the only changes I made to my .info file.
Well, somehow along the lines, my website broke. It through my content on top of my left sidebar, moved my right sidebar below both, and seemed to put my website about 10px from any side of the browser. I won't call it a margin because I know it isn't, but the odd... I don't know what to call it really. You can check the website and see for yourself.
On top of this, my primary links are gone. Now, my first thought was that the header had overlap which made the sidebar and content do their own little formatting stuff, so I checked that first. No luck. I restored a backup of my entire site theme into the folder by removing all of my current theme's files and loading back what I had started with, meaning NO edits from my end. It kept the same funky layout. In this case, I have reason to believe it wasn't something I did, but perhaps a database issue or some other file being written that I don't know about.
For the record, I know HTML extremely well and CSS by heart, and I have a great deal of knowledge with PHP.
If someone could help me, I would appreciate it so much. I used the search feature to no avail--not exactly what to search for with my issue, either. I only have a bit more time to work on this for a while, and will spend the time trying to find the reason for this problem unless/until I get a response. I'm not sure if what I did is a common error, something simple I can't see, or something complicated I won't be able to fix... But any solutions or suggestions would be amazing.
Thanks, guys!
EDIT: Just found an attribute in my .css that makes my site go crazy, but I am still having the same issue. Just thought it might help, but it might also be useless info. Most of the .css responds normally with the recent exception of the 'container' id. Right now, the padding is 0px 10px 10px 10px. When I set it to 0px 10px 50px 10px, it did some pretty crazy things like push my website all the way to the right side of the screen. This is odd because I edited my padding-bottom attribute in doing this, and it gave it padding of like... 700px to the left.
Comments
a bit of telepathy - since you asked so politely
I guess knowing css by heart means you no longer choose to use any tools to help you.
What's on line 636?
That's not your problem though. From a few minutes with firebug, and inspection of the css I'm guessing you deleted something called #content-inner - which appears to have been the thing that kept the centre column away from the ones on the side. I dunno zen at all, but it looks like that from here.
Here's a good rule with code - if you don't understand why it's there - don't delete it.
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
Just because I claim to know
Just because I claim to know css by heart doesn't mean I never make mistakes, of course. :)
Also, as I mentioned in my post, it couldn't have been from my deleting anything. I restored the zen classic theme, something that I had never touched, and it maintained the same problem. Also, the problem seemed to have fixed itself, because 27 refreshes later, the restarting of three different browsers, and finally just letting it sit for 15 minutes, I went back to it and found it in (moderately) working order. I say moderately because I made a few changes in the admin panel to access some things while the overlap was in play.
I never delete something if I don't understand why it is there. Better yet, if I don't know why it is there, I'll look into what it is, and if I can't get an easy answer, I'll either give it some crazy attribute that lets me notice what it is doing, or I will, indeed, delete it and see what it effects.
The problem here is that I didn't go around deleting anything and I didn't make any changes. Literally nothing here was my fault, and I didn't even do anything to solve the issue other than sit here, which seems ridiculous.
As for line 636, I believe that is something in the zen classic theme as well. I use that validator and it usually helps me find all of my problems, and I noticed that after loading zen classic, there were at least 20 issues that popped up on the validator.
Thank you for your help, dman, and I hope you aren't actually being condescending with the stuff you wrote. I'm assuming I am reading it wrong and you're just trying to be helpful which is somehow being misread as, "Hey newbie, try not to fail at coding!"
Either way, I appreciate it. Thanks!
Nah, not too condescending I
Nah, not too condescending I hope ;-)
Just the usual "Validate first before complaining that your css layout broke" sorta finger-wag. Yours was actually only 1% of valid, so that's pretty good.
I can't explain your layout coming and going though - must be sunspots.
It really does look like there was supposed to be a #content-inner element there, according to the layout.css I saw. My only guess was that it had gone away.
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
It did it again, and it seems
It did it again, and it seems to happen whenever I save the configuration of a block arrangement in my administration panel because that is what I did last time. It can't be every time I do this, but it has been in the same place each time it has happened.
I thought it would just be a one-time thing, but sure enough, it has destroyed the site once again...
It is giving me a headache!
Specifically when you try to
Specifically when you try to put a block in the left column - therefore triggering the two-sidebars class?
Seriously - compare your page.tpl.php with the distro one. your css and page.tpl don't seem to agree about the structure of the page. It's maybe like you've got mismatched files from different flavours of the zen distro. What version are you using? 6.x-1.0 or dev?
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
No, not necessarily when I
No, not necessarily when I put anything into the left column or anywhere else. Just when I save the configuration--for example, I removed a block from the footer and BAM!, it broke.
I'm running Drupal 6.12 right now, I haven't hacked anything and in my theme specifically, I moved a few things around in the page.tpl.php but nothing that it seemed to reject. Looking over everything again now.
Not to mention that when I change the theme back to zen classic (more specifically, remove my theme and replace it with all zen classic files) and refresh my page, the colors and theme in general changes, everything changes the way I would expect it, except my odd error is still displayed in the weird way it is being displayed. Left column and content are mashed together with right column at the bottom right.
I'm comparing files now and taking a look... Hm...
Once again, it magically
Once again, it magically fixes itself.
This is driving me bonkers!
EDIT: Aha! After it fixed and I went back into the navigation to through the "Navigation" block back above the "User logon" block on the left column, it crashed again. The first time his happened, I was moving something from the right column into the disabled list, and the second time I was moving the Drupal badge to the disabled list (not to discredit Drupal, I have them referenced on the footer, just not using the block).
How could just going into the blocks page make my website turn inside out?
2ND EDIT: And once more, I go back to the page in five minutes and, lo and behold, it is fixed.
dman, would you recommend I submit an issue somewhere? I really don't think I am doing anything to cause this! I mean, I might be, I won't rule it out, but I can't find any possible reason as to why it would just be doing all this the way it is. I've never really had an 'issue' with Drupal, however, so I'm not sure what warrants it, either.