WordPress.org

1. misselaineous
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #
   

   Yes I am new to WordPress, so this question may sound really silly to anyone who has been at this for a long time.

   My blog is at http://www.miscellaneous.ca/blog/wordpress/

   I installed a theme and got everything up and running the way I wanted it. It was working beautifully. Until I did something - I don't know what - and my sidebar is now all messed up. It's not appearing where it's supposed to - on the left side of the page. It's now down underneath my posts. I don't know how it got down there. I tried to email a post to my site. Could that have somehow messed up my layout???

   I do know HTML, but I don't know ANYTHING about PHP so looking at the source files is like trying to read Japanese to me. I actually chose WP because I want to learn PHP and thought it would give me some motivation... I guess I need my first lesson, huh?

   Anyway, thanks in advance for any help. I will be forever grateful.

2. yosemite
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #
   

   Get it to validate and it may solve your problem (div's).

   http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.miscellaneous.ca%2Fblog%2Fwordpress%2F

3. Chris_K
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #
   

   Hmm yeah. That most recent post appears to have been typed in something like MS Word and then copied and pasted into the blog. Which, unfortunately, carries Word's HTML'ish formatting attempts and, if you're not careful, spews broken/unmatched tags hither and thither.

   Quick fix? Edit that post. Select all the text and cut it. Open notepad and paste the text. Then select the text in notepad and copy/paste it back into the blog post editor. Save.

   What's that do? Removes all the extra formatting and fixes your sidebar. :-)

4. varresa
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #
   

   The same exact thing happened to me and I have yet to figure it out. A friend of mine who is a web designer and also uses WP tried to fix it and changed some things in my CSS file. She got the side bar back in the right place, kind of... it's okay when I have 3 short posts - but whenever I add a new post of a different length it throws off the placement of the sidebar. She hasn't had time to try to really fix it, so I put the original CSS file back and once again, the sidebar went down to the bottom. So I put her modified one back, since it is better than it being on the bottom.

   Here is my site: http://varresa.org/

   I have never used anything other than the WP admin to post to my blog. I don't believe my blog problem stems from anything to do with copying from Word, etc. Maybe we can figure this out together?

   Thanks!

5. yosemite
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #
   

   varresa: You do have li and div tag problems:
   http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fvarresa.org%2F

   Also, the following:
   <blockquote><font face="georgia, bookman old style, palatino linotype, book antiqua, palatino, trebuchet ms, helvetica, garamond, sans-serif, arial, verdana, avante garde, century gothic, comic sans ms, times, times new roman, serif"><strong>“The sun lay like a friendly arm across her shoulder.”</strong></font><em><font face="georgia, bookman old style, palatino linotype, book antiqua, palatino, trebuchet ms, helvetica, garamond, sans-serif, arial, verdana, avante garde, century gothic, comic sans ms, times, times new roman, serif"><br />

   does look like you're trying to define blockquote properties within the post/page. That should be done in your css.

   The other thing I'm seeing that concerns me is that your sidebar (.secondary) is listing as a child of your content area (.primary). But I'm hoping that fixing the li/div issues might help address that.

6. varresa
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #
   

   That put me on the right track - thank you! I have a follow-up question now...

   The problem was that block-quote in my post, which by the way, I thought looked really cool. Now I didn't do anything with the CSS at all. All I did was type a sentence and then highlighted it, and clicked the "Indent" icon on the WP post and it automatically made it a block-quote. That is what messed up the sidebar. So, I'd still like to have those blockquotes in my posts (right now I just have that post marked as Private)... how do I put a block-quote in a post so that the CSS tells it what to look like, rather than pushing the Indent button?

   Thank you so much!

7. yosemite
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #
   

   The indent should work. I turned off the visual rich editor, but then I installed *gasp* EditorMonkey, so the bhavior here may be different... Many here would suggest turning off all manner of WYSIWYG, and frequently I agree. But with those caveats:

   One method would be to put the quote in as a normal paragraph, then click on the 'html' button (click on Word Wrap) and put [blockquote] before the 'quote' and [/blockquote] after (but with gt and lt signs ;').

8. whooami
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #
   

   its worth noting also since Ive yet to actually see this ONE thing brought up when it comes to the "moving sidebar" issue, that internet explorer does not handle italics well and will wreak havok on pages that contain them, given the opportunity.

   http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/italicbug-ie.html

   I myself learned this the hard way. Since ppl typically italicize those blockquotes that link is a good read. The bug IS fixable; I know I've done it.

9. misselaineous
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #
   

   HandySolo wrote: emHmm yeah. That most recent post appears to have been typed in something like MS Word and then copied and pasted into the blog. Which, unfortunately, carries Word's HTML'ish formatting attempts and, if you're not careful, spews broken/unmatched tags hither and thither.

   Quick fix? Edit that post. Select all the text and cut it. Open notepad and paste the text. Then select the text in notepad and copy/paste it back into the blog post editor. Save.

   What's that do? Removes all the extra formatting and fixes your sidebar. :-)/em

   WOW! I guess that really was a newbie question, because it was so simple to fix. THANKS A HEAP HANDY SOLO!
   Now my blog is back to looking BOOTEEFUL again. :D

   So if I want to email a post do I send it in plain text format? I would assume that if I send it in HTML format it will screw up my blog the same way, by trying to use it's own format.

10. drursi08
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #
    

    I too am having this problem here: http://www.sevenstripes.com/blog but its only happening in Internet Explorer. I can't figure it out!!

    Ive tried the MS Word trick but to no avail.

    Any other ideas?

11. drursi08
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #
    

    heres my markup, full of errors :(

    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sevenstripes.com%2Fblog&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&verbose=1#result

12. drursi08
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #
    

    Bump - any one please?

13. ryoken
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #
    

    how about fixing the errors?

14. drursi08
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #
    

    "how about fixing the errors?"
    Thanks for the helpful comment, but I'm not a PHP pro over here, and thus, I do not know how to go about fixing the errors.

    Care to help with some advice?

15. yosemite
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #
    

    Those aren't PHP errors, they're html.

    You could try this: WordPress Troubleshooting: I have to validate? Oh MY!!

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