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Sandbox with Skin - edit widgets?

  1. templenh
    Member

    Hi, I'm new to wordpress, and a little green with CSS.

    But I couldn't find a theme that would do the very simple layout I want, so Sandbox seems the right answer.

    I found a skin I like, Leaf: http://sandboxskins.mycoolrealm.com/2009/07/sandbox-skin-leaf/

    I like how it looks, and it will be pretty easy to adjust the colors and such to what I want. http://templenh.wordpress.com

    But there's a few very basic issues I can't figure out:

    - How do I edit the Widgets? All I need is one left side column with a list of links. But I can't figure out how to get rid of the right side column because I can't edit the Divs.
    - Can I call a list of links something other than "blogroll"?
    - How do I edit the Menu/Top Nav?

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

  2. thesacredpath
    Staff

    The right sidebar is under #secondary and you can do a "display:none;" on that to get rid of it. You will then have to adjust the width of #content to around 776px to widen it to take up the space that the right sidebar took up.

  3. thesacredpath
    Staff

    The links widget takes on the name of the category that you assign the links to. If you have multiple categories for links, then each link category will be a heading in the widget with the links that are in that category listed underneath it.

    Simply go to links > links categories and change the name of the blogroll category to whatever you wish.

    The top nav will show the pages you have created and published on your blog. Since sandbox does not have custom menu support, and since the the "trick" for adding non-page tabs to the top navigation does not work on sandbox, you are sort of stuck on that.

    If you hide the top navigation, you can use the custom menu widget in the sidebar which does support the advanced features for custom menus and you can then add things other than pages to the custom menu widget.

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/

  4. templenh
    Member

    Excellent! That's working for the other stray bits as well.

  5. templenh
    Member

    Top Nav Menu: I really need a top nav. That's why I abandoned all the other themes and came to Sandbox.

  6. templenh
    Member

    Oh, I should mention, the site has dozens of pages... they can't all be in the nav.

  7. thesacredpath
    Staff

    See the section in the custom menu support page I linked to called "additional info" as it lists which themes here support the custom menus in the top navigation.

    Sandbox was officially retired nearly a year ago and is no longer under development, which means it is highly unlikely that staff is going to modify it to support custom menus in the top nav.

    Sorry.

  8. thesacredpath
    Staff

    You can also go to appearance > themes, click the "feature filter" link to the right of the search box and then click "custom menu" to filter all the themes and show which support the custom menu.

  9. templenh
    Member

    I was able to hide pages from the top nav by giving them a "parent" page...

  10. templenh
    Member

    But it looks like I can't chose which order the links are on the top nav.

  11. thesacredpath
    Staff

    You can set the page order for the top nav.

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/page-attributes/

  12. templenh
    Member

    Oh fabulous!

  13. hallluke
    Member

    You can add a Custom Menu Widget and then reposition it so that it appears like the regular navigation section at the top. This is what I've done with both of my Sandbox sites. The trick is to set the position of your wrapper div to relative but without actually moving it. Then you can set the widget to use absolute positioning and the top/bottom/left/right values you set for it will be offset from your wrapper. I hope that helps.

  14. templenh
    Member

    That sounds good too hallluke.

    So, my leftover issues are this strange white gap to the left of my header image,

    and, I need to learn how to make a table. I've got all these tables that are cut-and-pasted, and I'm going to get rid of them all, because they're such a mess to edit. I'd like to make new tables that the client will be able to edit content without having to see code.

  15. hallluke
    Member

    That gap is part of your header image, it is nothing to do with the CSS.

    If you will end up having other people use the site you can make sure they only use the visual editor, no code knowledge is needed then.

  16. templenh
    Member

    1) A quick question... how to I replace my header image?

    2) A tougher question: I had the top nav all set up, and had a "home" page... but that page is different than the landing page when you first go to the site.
    http://templenh.wordpress.com/

    So, I tried deleting the home page and creating a custom link to the landing page (I don't want to have to update the landing page and the home page every time there's a change...)

    But the custom link won't work, and it added a page I don't want in there.

    Any suggestions?

  17. templenh
    Member

    Solved part of question 2... deleting the "home" page took away the parent from another page, that's why it ended up in the nav.

    However, I still want the "landing" page and "home" page to be the same... any suggestions?

  18. thesacredpath
    Staff

    You go to settings > reading in your dashboard and set the desired landing page as the "static front page."

  19. thesacredpath
    Staff

    As far as changing the header image, you have to upload a new one to the media library, get the URL of that image and then put it into the background declaration for #header in your CSS.

  20. templenh
    Member

    Wow, it's really working! Almost done.

    I never would have figured out that "settings > reading" location without help.

    thank you so much!

  21. thesacredpath
    Staff

    You're welcome.

  22. templenh
    Member

    And yet... another question. Can I edit the footer text? I can make it transparent, and make the blog info disappear, but I'd prefer to have a © line and email down at the bottom. I can change the color of the text, but I can't find where to change the text.

  23. thesacredpath
    Staff

    You can use pseudo CSS classes to add text to the footer, but the problem is IE does not support it so 60% of the internet users would not see the changes.

    There is no way to actually edit what is there since we don't have access to the underlying theme PHP script files.

  24. templenh
    Member

    Wow, no footer? dang. Well, I'm pretty far along, and I'm scared to screw it up... but is there a way to add a widget without messing up what's already there? I'd like to have contact info at the bottom of each page... even if it's under the link/blogroll section on the left.

    I tried creating another div, like the one on the right on the home page, but that made the blogroll on the left disappear.

    http://templenh.wordpress.com

  25. hallluke
    Member

    You can reposition a text widget as a footer quite easily though. You already have a text widget in the second sidebar it is just hidden with the CSS. Try the code below to move and style it however you want:

    #footer {display:none;}
body #secondary {display:block; margin:0;clear:both; background-color:#455F4D; width:100%; color:#eee;}
#secondary .widget {border:none; padding:0; margin:0;}

  26. templenh
    Member

    Oh that looks promising hallluke. I'll give that a try.

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