Website templates

I manage a website for a small gaming community that I purchased from a
hosting site that caters to gamers. Recently, they released some templates
to help us customize things a bit more.

What I have currently is a site with a banner/logo on top, and menus on the
right side, page content on the left. What I want to do is put the menus on
the left side and have the page content shift over accordingly.

If I change the layout.html and style.css to put the menu on the left, I can
do it easily by adjusting the absolute position and calling it "leftmenu"
instead of "rightmenu" - the problem is that the page content doesn't shift
over like I would expect it to. So I'm guessing that I'm missing something
somewhere in either the layout or stylesheet.

I'm not familiar with HTML or CSS at all, so it's been a trial and error
process so far. Can someone give me some pointers or link a tutorial that
would be help for this kind of thing? I can post my layout and stylesheet
as well, if needed. So frustrated right now.

-I

Ieyasu wrote:

I manage a website for a small gaming community that I purchased from a
hosting site that caters to gamers. Recently, they released some templates
to help us customize things a bit more.

What I have currently is a site with a banner/logo on top, and menus on the
right side, page content on the left. What I want to do is put the menus on
the left side and have the page content shift over accordingly.

If I change the layout.html and style.css to put the menu on the left, I can
do it easily by adjusting the absolute position

Oh, Lord.

and calling it "leftmenu" instead of "rightmenu"

This is a fine example illustrating why class names should be
functional/content-based rather than positional. If the element had been
named "menu" in the first place, you would only need to change its
declarations in the CSS. Possibly the markup could remain untouched.

- the problem is that the page content doesn't shift
over like I would expect it to. So I'm guessing that I'm missing something
somewhere in either the layout or stylesheet.

Speaking of guessing. And missing something. How about providing a URL?

I'm not familiar with HTML or CSS at all, so it's been a trial and error
process so far. Can someone give me some pointers or link a tutorial that
would be help for this kind of thing?

I really like the tutorial for CSS at Selectutorial:
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/selectutorial/

http://www.html.net/ has tutorials for both HTML and CSS.

A site that gets mentioned regularly around here is HTML Dog:
http://www.htmldog.com/guides/

But if you're as unfamiliar as you say you are with both HTML and CSS,
you might be better off getting somebody else (professional,
experienced, both) to help you, especially if you have a large project.
Learning this stuff takes time (which you may not have), and as a
beginner you probably ought to steer away from changing templates with
absolute positioning.

I can post my layout and stylesheet as well, if needed. So frustrated right now.

If you post anything, make it a URL to your page/template. We'll be able
to see the code with that. Maybe somebody can help.

--
John
Pondering the value of the UIP: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

"John Hosking" <John (AT) DELETE (DOT) Hosking.name.INVALID> wrote

This is a fine example illustrating why class names should be
functional/content-based rather than positional. If the element had been
named "menu" in the first place, you would only need to change its
declarations in the CSS. Possibly the markup could remain untouched.

Can you explain what you mean by this? Are you referring to using margins
or padding or cellspacing for tables?

Speaking of guessing. And missing something. How about providing a URL?

http://www.archonsofluden.org/

But if you're as unfamiliar as you say you are with both HTML and CSS, you
might be better off getting somebody else (professional, experienced,
both) to help you, especially if you have a large project. Learning this
stuff takes time (which you may not have), and as a beginner you probably
ought to steer away from changing templates with absolute positioning.

Thanks for all the links, I'll have to do some reading up tomorrow. I have
a lot of time on my hands and am willing to learn, but don't know any people
willing to help. I only want to make some slight modifications to the
positioning of things right now, the rest is fine with me.

In article <Lyazi.598$uP7.144 (AT) newsfe12 (DOT) lga>,
"Ieyasu" <nitesbane (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

"John Hosking" <John (AT) DELETE (DOT) Hosking.name.INVALID> wrote in message
news:46ccebe6$1_5 (AT) news (DOT) bluewin.ch...
This is a fine example illustrating why class names should be
functional/content-based rather than positional. If the element had been
named "menu" in the first place, you would only need to change its
declarations in the CSS. Possibly the markup could remain untouched.

Can you explain what you mean by this?

JH is way past his bedtime. Let someone more youthful help you.
It means that if you call something by a class or id of "left"
and you want to make it go right, it requires a double change on
paper (name and css) and/or more memory in the brain being taken
up by having to understand that something called "left" can be on
the right. "Little John" in the story of Robin Hood was a joke.
There is no room for jokes in html/css. It is serious business.

I do hope this has helped you.

--
dorayme

Ieyasu wrote:

"John Hosking" wrote in message news:46ccebe6$1_5 (AT) news (DOT) bluewin.ch...
This is a fine example illustrating why class names should be
functional/content-based rather than positional. If the element had been
named "menu" in the first place, you would only need to change its
declarations in the CSS. Possibly the markup could remain untouched.

Can you explain what you mean by this? Are you referring to using margins
or padding or cellspacing for tables?

No, I'm referring to using CSS for positioning. If the markup has
discrete elements which may be positioned (relatively) freely, then CSS
can be used to specify the desired positioning. Using tables for layout
all but makes that impossible.

Speaking of guessing. And missing something. How about providing a URL?

http://www.archonsofluden.org/

Thanks! I see that you are using tables for layout, and a lot of
(broken) JavaScript to generate the tables. Ick.

I also see 62 errors in the markup (starting with a lack of doctype) and
20 errors in the CSS. I would be astounded if you, "not familiar with
HTML or CSS at all," would ever manage to get the page flipped successfully.

In addition, I get:
Warning: The stylesheet http://archonsofluden.dkpsystem.com/tscss.php
was loaded as CSS even though its MIME type, "text/html", is not "text/css".

The first JS error comes at page load, before I even start hovering or
clicking (after which they really start piling up):
Error: missing ) after argument list
Source File: http://archonsofluden.dkpsystem.com/news.php
Line: 431, Column: 83
Source Code:
var password=window.prompt('Enter the teamspeak server password for
Archons of Lu'den', '');

You snipped the part of my post where I hinted that I or somebody else
might be able to help, but it's just as well. The only help I can give
you is to suggest that, since you're trying to rework the page anyway,
it might be the right time to redesign it from scratch.

HTH... GL

--
John
Pondering the value of the UIP: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html