Clear the server cache (minify), and then deactivate it (until done working on the site)…then look at site and see if your edits hold…
Yes, of course I do that. I’ve been working with CSS and HTML since 1999 and have built several sites (both HTML and WordPress), so I am no stranger to this world, but this damn Intrepidity has got me stumped!
Have you tried opening the CSS in Notepad or some CSS editor and using FIND or another means to locate the margin element?
Also visit here if you’re rusty:
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_margin.asp
Also try the demo of Stylizer 5. Probably the best and only truly real time CSS editor. You just provide your page URL, use the bullssye tool to locate the element by moving around on your page then selecting the problem area then you can play with the element causing the problem and see changes in real time.
This works in Firebug:
#sfw-respond {
margin-left: 50px;
}
I’d also suggest validating for errors that may be interfering with your CSS working.
FYI, the reason I asked about the minify and cache are that when we view the source code it is quite hard to read…so are the stylesheets…all the white space is removed…had nothing to do with your or your skills…Happy Blogging!
@billy-not-happy
Thanks for your suggestion for Stylizer. I got an eval copy and will be playing with it right away. Looks like a great tool! But here’s where the challenge comes in… I have searched on the style.css file in Intrepidity and there is no sfw in any of the styles nor in any of the php files under editor. It is generated (from where, who knows?) and only shows up after the page is live. So even if I do use Stylizer and make those changes, will they hold? I dunno, but I’m a gonna try!
@wpyogi
See above in my response to billy-not-happy. This is where I get lost. How does one change what gets generated by the theme if one cannot find where the original file lives?
@seacoast Web Design
Thanks for that suggestion. I was able to find the sfw, but not able to find where I would change it in my original css or php within Intrepidity.
@everyone
So I am going to go play with Stylizer and see if I can discover anything. I will report back. Thank all of you for your suggestions and time to have a look at my dilemma. You are all great!
If anyone has more suggestions… I am all ears!
If you use a browser tool like Firebug, it shows you exactly where the CSS is coming from – in the case of #sfw-respond it’s from the “spam-free-wordpress` plugin. But you do not need to know where styles are coming from – you should not change those files anyway – simply COPY that code to custom CSS or a child theme style.css and make the changes there. If you change theme or plugin files, your changes will be lost up updating.
Again, as Seacoast mentioned, it’s a horrible pain in the butt to try to help with CSS when you have minify enabled. Please disable it if you want further help.
IMHO – you don’t need anything besides Firebug to do all the work you need to with CSS :)…
@wpyogi
Thanks for your help! I have disabled minify. I didn’t realize that it was making it difficult for you guys to take a look… sorry! You gave me a clue about Spam Free WordPress plugin. I deactivated it and VOILA! my margins returned to normal. This is good news!
So is there a Firebug for Chrome?
@everyone
Now what remains is to be able to adjust the margins in my tag cloud which is a widget in the sidebar area. Any ideas on that?
You can also use Chrome Developer Tools.
Something is still going on with cache or minify – I can’t get Firebug to work with whatever the site is doing, but try adding a width to this:
.tagcloud {
width: XXXpx;
}
@wpyogi
Yer a freakin genious! Thank you! I used this to finally get what I was looking for…
.tagcloud {margin-left:10px; margin-right:20px }
I’ve emptied all caches. See if that helps you with Firebug.
Now, about that body text size problem…
Cool! Looks like the font size is set in various places, including inline-CSS here:
<body class="single single-post postid-2248 single-format-standard" style="font-size:14px;">
So that’s no doubt why it’s troublesome. Do you know where that’s coded? I’d remove it.
Or add font-size to wherever you want to change it and include important if needed:
.post {
font-size: XXpx !important;
}
Best to avoid using important unless you absolutely can’t do it any other way.
But a bigger question/issue really seems to me is why are you using a theme that is outdated –
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/intrepidity
It’s very likely to have more and more compatibility issues :(.
What I’ve found out in my trials trying to get themes working is often it is some plug-in messing things up and sometimes in the weirdest ways that make no sense. So while it’s a royal pain in the butt, if something seems off, I now disable plug-ins and turn them back on one by one to find the problem one.
Just my opinion… while CSS 3 is leaps and bounds ahead of prior versions, my big gripe is theme authors in general suffer from CSS bloat writing excessively long and needlessly complex style sheets that more often than not can mess things up.
@wpyogi
I’ll hunt down those various font settings and see if I can delete them as you suggested. Thanks for looking. And why Intrepidity? Well, when it came out two years ago, it seemed as thought he author would keep updating ALL his themes. He made it look as though he was in it for the long haul. Sadly, he bailed and at that point, I took the time to try out several other themes, but soon discovered that same with them… the author bailed or got interested in his latest and conveniently forgot about his previous ones. I had spent a LOT of time tweaking to get this site how I liked it in Intrepidity, and when trying out other themes, I ran into all sorts of other theme related issues, so I decided to hunker down and just stay wehre I was at. Dunno about you, but I’d rather spend my time driving traffic and cashing checks than tweaking away my days/months/years!
@billy-not-happy
Yeah, I hear ya, billy… me too. I have gone down that road several times to find the culprit. Pain in the ass, but the only real way I know how to sort it all out.
Well, just like any mono-focused programmer, it is really easy to only look for the features to work, and once they do, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it! So trial compilations many times don’t get erased or optimized in the interest of getting the software/theme/plugin out the door and the programmer on to the next project after it taking waaay too long to finalize.
I understand the process, but that doesn’t make it any easier to follow behind them and try to make sense out of their code, eh?
So in conclusion, I think I will take both of your advice. I’ll nuke the various font settings and do the trial and error plugin deactivation mombo. I’d like to be done with this site for now and to concentrate on bringing in the money honey. Wish me luck!
