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1. serenalove
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Hello,

   I am using this theme for my blog: http://xuyiyang.com/wordpress-themes/unnamed/ and because I do not know PHP and only know very little CSS, I can not figure out for the life of me how to change the column structure. I would like my layout to stay three columns, but have one left column, middle main content, then a right column the same size as the left (like this blog: copyblogger.com). I'm assuming you have to edit the CSS file and index.php, but I have no idaa how to do this! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2. samboll
   moderator
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Look in sidebar.php
   You will have to split this up
   <div id="sidebar">
   This section calls the right sidebar -

   <div class="left-sidecolumn">
   This section calls the left sidebar

   Likely you will need to make a leftsidebar.php with the above section and omit it from the sidebar.php

   index.php calls the sidebar
   

   <?php get_header(); ?>
   		<div id="primary-content">
   <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/theloop.php'); ?>
   		</div>
   <?php get_sidebar(); ?>
   <?php get_footer(); ?>

   You will need to call the leftsidebar.php in here probably before the call for the loop. Maybe like so
   

   <?php get_header(); ?>
   <?php get_leftsidebar(); ?>
   		<div id="primary-content">
   <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/theloop.php'); ?>
   		</div>
   <?php get_sidebar(); ?>
   <?php get_footer(); ?>

   I'm not positive about this as this is not my area of expertise. :>)

3. moshu
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   <?php get_leftsidebar(); ?>
   That will never work. You have to call it in the same way as theloop.php is called.

4. samboll
   moderator
   Posted 1 year ago #

   aargh...forgot the template path include. Maybe you can explain it better moshu.

5. moshu
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Well, when the posts starts like this:
   

   only know very little CSS

   then the proper advice is: get a theme that has the layout you want.

6. samboll
   moderator
   Posted 1 year ago #

   That's me - I'm lazy.

7. MoTStudio
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Well, if WP would make it absolutely clear PRE-installation that in-depth theme customization and/or Theme Development is best left to the savvy front-end web developers or, at the very least, to the people who have -some- sort of front-end knowledge, then maybe there wouldn't be so many people flocking to the forums with the 'Help me theme my WP because I don't understand CSS or XHTML!' issues?

   Just a thought?

   The impression I'm getting is that everyone ELSE is getting the impression that WP is easy-peasy to custom theme by oneself when it isn't easy-peasy without having at least some working knowledge of what goes into WP theming.

   For the record, I like WP how it is and have no complaints myself, but I actually do front-end stuff.

   To the OP serenalove:

   Yes, you will need to rewrite the CSS code, but in addition, depending on what you want in your second sidebar, you might need to rewrite the PHP coding if you want widgets in that sidebar and you will need to rewrite XHTML as well. If you don't understand PHP or CSS, doing this on your own will probably be rather difficult to do

   For these reasons, I also suggest taking a look at some 3 column layouts, picking one that is closest to how you want your site to work, and then working from there to make it look like how you want it to.

8. moshu
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   MoTStudio,
   I agree with you. I called the phenomenon the 5 minutes trap of WP...

9. Gangleri
   Member
   Posted 1 year ago #

   Hehe, nice post Moshu. I actually liked messing around with themes, but Serena starts with the most difficult questions. I myself just got a theme that was basically what I wanted and started chaning fonts, colours, background, etc., but I pretty soon found out that trying to mess with sidebar widths or text area sizes is way over my head. I'm happy that my sites look quite like I had in mind, so I'll leave that alone for a few years.

   But maybe in some future release of WP, there will be something more than widgets and changing header images from the dashboard living a bit more upto the five-minute-easyness.

10. MoTStudio
    Member
    Posted 1 year ago #

    A total spot-on post, moshu.

    Completely agree with you on all accounts and then some.

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