http://www.makoura.nz.net/
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I've made a mess of trying to load a Calendar view to the ContentTop. There you'll see 4 news items. I want a view of the Calendar to take up one of those 4 items, the LH item [Kaye]. And, remain sticky on the front page only.

I've got the calendar into that block but I want it to be the same dimensions as the four news items. So, when the calendar is clicked on it goes to the Calendar link page [as can be seen in the Quick Links].

Comments

VM’s picture

I took a look at the link and this looks like you managed to accomplish the task?

drooperNZ’s picture

No I have not. Read my requirement. I've NOT achieved what I want. The calendar is there, yes, but not as I describe.

VM’s picture

I want a view of the Calendar to take up one of those 4 items

I missed that sentence.

The only way you can do what you want is to remove the block from where it is.
Generate a new region to hold that calendar. (You can model using the regions holding the news items.)
place the block in the new region.

regions are defined in your theme.info file and printed in the page.tpl.php file.
Style as needed in your style sheet.

drooperNZ’s picture

Ok I sort of follow that.
How do i create a new region?
Why can I not place it in the 'content top' where the other 4 news items are and make it sticky?
When you say 'remove the block', you mean the calendar block, yes?
Sorry, I have no clue what this means: (You can model using the regions holding the news items.)

I've been with drupal for just a few months now. So, learning....

Thank you

VM’s picture

The items are in a view with a grid style. therefore they are contained by the HTML surrounding each item. Your calendar is not.

Assuming you want the calendar to the left, what will you be doing with the empty space to the right? If something is intending to go there, or will in future you need to think about this now.

you can learn to make regions using the theme developer's guide. I've already provided an outline above. you can also study an already existing theme to see how regions are implemented.

A hack way to deal with your issue in the 'do it now, do it quick, I don't care' is to use CSS and add a width on the element holding the current calendar block.

drooperNZ’s picture

Thanks. I've used this method to create a new region:
http://www.mindfiresolutions.com/How-to-Create-New-Block-Region-in-Drupa...
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I now get this error:
Notice: Undefined index: content_bottomleft in include() (line 229 of /fs1/home/makoura.nz.net/www.makoura.nz.net/sites/default/themes/theme747/templates/page.tpl.php).
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After reading other forums for 90mins I'm stuck. Done everything suggested. There is no error in the code on 229 or any other line.

One thing that bothers me is that the 4 news items are in a block 'content bottom'. I did create content bottmleft but the block view showed this underneath content bottom. The whole idea is to have the claendar in the content block and not in a block/region of it's own. Now I've either been misinformed or I'm not doing something correct.

Let me try exp0lain again: there are 4 news items: 1 2 3 4. I want news item 4 to go away and items to be displayed as [space] 1 2 3. In that space I want the content bottomleft or the calendar squashed into that same space but looking as a square shape, not the rectangle that it is. How can I do that if the new region is being shown underneath the current News block?

Anyway...
To save time I've reverted back to the original code and so you won't see the error message online. I've a number of other changes to make and can't waste any more time. Bottom line, I STILL don't have the look I want after nearly three hours. I'm contracted for 4 hours and I have another dozen things to fix up.

If you have any suggestion then it would be good. It would be better if there was just a Module to help us insert regions :-)

----------------UPDATE
I just installed a spider calendar and now my site is dead. FFS................not happy

----------------UPDATE 2
It's back up. I had a friend who is a Drupal guru that fixed this particular error. Phew...........

VM’s picture

your news items are not singular blocks. As previously stated they are a single block of a view in a grid display with 4 items. You cannot do this with the calendar since the calendar is only a singular item. Therefore to restrict the size of the calendar to the size of 1 of the items in the view you must use regions which are similar in size to contain the calendar block. How many regions you use it completely up to you but you will need at least two. 1 the size of one of the news items and 1 the size of the other three news items.

Perhaps it would aid your understanding if you took the calendar block and placed it in a sidebar or a region that doesn't span the entire screen. view regions as fences in which the content placed into them are contained.

the steps in the tutorial you linked to are reversing step 2 and 3. files should be altered BEFORE the block is put in place. The tutorial also doesn't state to clear cache after altering the theme .info and tpl.php files.

Without seeing the alterations you made to .info and to page.tpl.php it's difficult to comment on the error.

drupal.org documentation for working with theme .info files = https://drupal.org/node/171205

drooperNZ’s picture

Thanks again. I think I'm getting the hang of it and understand your reply.

Qu. to make the region smaller do I need to use CSS?

If so, then I'd encase the new region in a div and give it a width equal to a news item and float that left. Then reduce the news items to 3/4 of current size and float that right.

If not, then how to get them to butt up against each other?

Another thing - I did manage to get an elongated version of the current calendar on there, below the news item. If I made it smaller [with css], then I'm thinking it would look out of shape. Which is why I went in search of a square shaped calendar and found the Spider Calendar. Installing that caused the crash.

Anyway, as i already have a calendar I didn't know if I could link the two. If I couldn't then I was going to delete the current one and use the new one.

As I had the crash I'm a bit gun shy to try again. I do have a backup but this is useless unless one can access the Admin page and I could not. As I said, lucky I had a drupal friend who can perform his magic but I can't be bothering him too frequently as he has a business to run.

Anyway, I'll be interested in your reply please VM - thanks.

drooperNZ’s picture

PLEASE IGNORE THIS AS I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DELETE IT
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I have created two users for my site, besides myself. User1 has admin rights and can do everything I can. User2 I have assigned as a sub admin and restricted rights.

When user2 tries to add content [a News Item], the interface looks different to Full admin rights persons.

I have spent 4 hours unticking, saving and ticking the boxes that grant permissions to isolate the one that might be causing the issue. No joy.

Then I realised that the text WAS being inserted only in white. So, i couldn't see it. I could not see it as the GUI is different for User2 and besides, there is no option to change text colour.

Another thing is that the Admin menu shows Content / Configuration / Help. How do I get rid of the Configuration option?

I know this is something to do with the Sub Admin permissions/rights/Gui but I can't figure out where it is controlled.

I would post an image here but I don't know how to do that. The Image icon is useless as it points to http://drupal.org/files/ and I don't know what that means in relation to me. Why does it not allow me to browse to my own PC? I can't an image paste into this text box either.