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1. healthywaysgreece
   Member
   Apr 14, 2011, 10:19 PM

   I'm thinking of some minor changes I want to have in my blog, but I'm not sure if it's possible with the CSS update, or worth of it for that matter. So here goes :

   1) I want to change the width of the Main Column and make it wider. Contempt is an awsome theme, but the pages are too narrow. It would be nice if I could change the Header's dimensions as well.

   2) I'd like to modify the Navigational Menu's scheme so that every item on it has a fixed width. Meaning, even if one page's title is longer than another one's, everything's in a nice order.

   3) I want to be able to add tables to my pages and of course use different fonts.

   Also, is it possible to make the theme credits more distinctive (not remove them) ?

   Thanks in advance!

   The blog I need help with is healthywaysgreece.wordpress.com.

2. thesacredpath
   Staff
   Apr 14, 2011, 11:00 PM

   All possible.

3. pigeonchess
   Member
   Apr 17, 2011, 1:05 AM

   I had the same question as Healthy (with regards to the same theme), specifically the width of the main column and the header (I just want the whole thing to be wider). The problem is I'm not familiar enough with the CSS to know where those numbers are to change.

   Any suggestions?

4. pigeonchess
   Member
   Apr 17, 2011, 1:07 AM

   P.S. when I change things in the online editor, nothing seem to change in the preview which makes me reluctant to pay for the upgrade. I'd like to know I'll get the results I'm looking for before I commit to paying for them.

5. thesacredpath
   Staff
   Apr 17, 2011, 2:19 AM

   How wide do you want to go? Right now the overall width is 750px (outer edges of #page) and the post content area is 450px.

   The preview function has been flakey here for the past couple months, and sometimes you have to force refresh the preview page in order to see your changes.

6. pigeonchess
   Member
   Apr 17, 2011, 8:42 AM

   I'm not sure exactly, maybe 600px or 650px for the content area. As for the preview, nothing I do seems to change things at all. I tried refreshing the preview and got nothing new.

   Thanks

7. thesacredpath
   Staff
   Apr 17, 2011, 8:54 AM

   #page {
   width: 950px;
   }

8. thesacredpath
   Staff
   Apr 17, 2011, 9:01 AM

   I've taken the content area to 650px. You will want to change the maximum width for images and videos to 650 as well. The field for that is below the CSS edit box.

   You will also have to create a new header image and upload it to the media library (950px x 140px), get the URL of that image and then replace the URL in #headerimg below. Once you go with custom CSS, you cannot use the header uploader in the dashboard because it will always make the image into the original size.

   #page {
   width: 950px;
   }
   
   #headerimg {
   background: url("http://pigeonchess.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/pigeon_banner5.jpg") no-repeat scroll 0 0 transparent;
   }
   
   #pagebar {
   width: 950px;
   }
   
   #content {
   width: 650px;
   }
   
   #sidebar {
   margin: -60px 0 0 730px;
   }

9. thesacredpath
   Staff
   Apr 17, 2011, 9:02 AM

   And sorry about the post with the incomplete code above. It is getting late here and I hit the submit button by mistake.

10. clovetechnology
    Member
    Apr 20, 2011, 3:22 PM

    Hi,

    I want to modify the Contempt theme so that the entire background is white (removing the border around the body content). Is this possible?

11. thesacredpath
    Staff
    Apr 20, 2011, 6:43 PM

    We need a link to the site you are talking about. The one linked to your username is not a wordpress.COM blog.

12. clovetechnology
    Member
    Apr 21, 2011, 8:48 AM

    Ah sorry,

    the blog is http://blog.clove.co.uk

13. thesacredpath
    Staff
    Apr 21, 2011, 9:40 AM

    The first two strip it down to entirely white. The third puts a 1px medium grey border on each side. You can try it without that and see what you think, but it looks a little strange without some sort of border

    body {
    background-color: #FFFFFF;
    background-image: none;
    }
    
    #grad {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 transparent !important;
    }
    
    #page {
    border-left: 1px solid #333333;
    border-right:  1px solid #333333;
    }

14. clovetechnology
    Member
    Apr 21, 2011, 10:30 AM

    You're a star, that's exactly what I needed.

    Thanks very much.

15. clovetechnology
    Member
    Apr 21, 2011, 10:57 AM

    If I could just ask another question - I would like to upload a background image, do you know what the optimum image size and layout would be so that it renders as best possible across multiple resolutions? I would like to have an image either side of the blog's main body?

16. thesacredpath
    Staff
    Apr 21, 2011, 6:08 PM

    The best thing is to use a small background that can be tiled since that means that no matter what size the visitor has their browser window set, they will see background. Also, since a smaller tiled background image loads faster, the search engines like it. They consider page loading times when calculating search engine ranking. Lots of big images and your ranking suffers.

    In general I would expect, for a single image, that you use a maximum of 1400px x 1200 px and then set the background color to something that is very close to the color at the edges of the image. That way if someone has their browser window set wider than your background image, the transition to the background color won't be as noticeable.

    Also, heavily optimize the image to keep the file size as small as possible. Generally I like to keep them under 100k in file size for faster loading.

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