How do I make "structure" theme "pages" look like home page?
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In terms of content width, being able to change the background color easily, the layout, structure is the best theme I’ve found for my site. However, the content width, on the home, normal page, when it’s set to showing latest posts, is not broken up into the usual content-sidebar layout. It’s like a magazine layout, so my posts don’t even show up in the middle of the page. Instead, there’s this grey square where it almost looks like there’s supposed to be a photo uploaded. And even though my settings are set to showing the latest posts, and the full posts, it only shows a summary of the posts beneath this picture area. You can see what I’m talking about here.
http://puckcircle.wordpress.com/
And in theme options, there is no layout selector, no way to select content-sidebar, or to change any of this.
However, when you go passed the home page, to one of the other (test) pages I have, it looks almost exactly like I want it to. There’s a nice 630px width content area that I’ve been looking for in a theme, and a sidebar to the left.
You can see that here. http://puckcircle.wordpress.com/main-page/
Because the pages look like this, I know this layout is installed in the theme. I don’t know much of anything about CSS, but I’m betting the way to make the home page look like the other pages is my moving the page layout code in CSS into the home layout code area. I’m hoping that would do it, anyway, or that there’s some other way.
Can someone please help me make my home normal page look like the supplemental page look?
The closest to remedying this I could come without getting CSS help was by changing the blog to a static home page, and then making the “posts page” in the settings the same one as the static page. So I made it a static page, but then I made it so all my posts showed up on the static page. It looks a lot like a normal non-static home page would look, except you couldn’t click on the names of each post, and the biggest problem, you couldn’t comment on them individually. There was just one comment box at the very bottom of the static page for all the posts, not one for each post. It’s like they weren’t individual posts, even though they were individual titles.
I thought I’d fixed it there for a second, but of course, it’s always something it seems.
Can someone please help with this? Thank you very much!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Structure is a unique theme and there are many threads in the forum searchbox with regard to how it is designed to be used. We cannot edit themes or templates at WordPress.com. I suggest that you read this article devoted to the theme >
Introduction to the Structure theme > http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/introduction-to-structure/ -
Threads on the Structure theme > https://en.forums.wordpress.com/tags/structure
See also the Themes Showcase there there are 130 themes to choose from. It’s a live demo site and there are search filters you can use for specific features.
http://theme.wordpress.com/ -
theme showcase? I’m 80% sure that’s where I found structure, except the link you sent just has more description about each theme.
Yeah i think this is the same. I went through every single one of these that fit the criteria i need (either 2 column or 3 column, with custom header). Structure is the only one that works.
What do you mean you can’t edit themes on the forum? This is CSS. Are you allowed to talk about how you change the font of text? The text color? This is the same, CSS coding. I just need to know what code to use. If you say “we’re not allowed” that just keeps other people from helping when there’s probably someone out there capable. This is a very specific question which is why I figured another structure topic would not have the answer. If it does, then a link to the answer would be much appreciated!
Thank you.
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Nothing at all about this, not even a mention, in the first link. Thank you for posting it and trying to be helpful, but it didn’t really have anything to do with my question. Going to the search link you sent me as well, I did not see anything about making the page layout the home page layout.
And about editing themes, I think I understand what you meant now, that you can’t change all the images in the themes and edit it that way. That’s not what i’m asking. I think if the layout did not exist at all, and I was asking to change the theme completely to something it doesn’t already have in it, that would be editing the theme. But what I want is already part of the theme. It’s the page part. The layout of the page, it’s already programmed in the theme, so we don’t have to edit the theme or add anything. I just want to move it, move the page layout to home page layout.
There is probably a code where it holds the normal home page layout, and then another code where it has the page layout. I just want to know which codes those are, so I can take the page layout and copy it in CSS into the home layout, replacing one layout with another.
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When Timethief mentions editing themes, she is talking about editing the underlying structure of themes. Again as we’ve talked about, that cannot be done through CSS. CSS is for styling and positioning of existing page elements only.
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enter this into the structure theme.
#homepagetop {
float: left;
display: none;
width: 960px;
height: 100%;
margin: 0px 0px 30px 0px;
padding: 0px 0px 30px 0px;
border-bottom: 5px solid #000000;
}#homepagetop .textbanner {
float: left;
display: none;
width: 960px;
height: 100%;
margin: 0px 0px 30px 0px;
padding: 0px 0px 30px 0px;
border-bottom: 5px solid #red;
}It completely takes out the picture part, completely restructuring. Ive gone through every single line, putting each one into my CSS editor, and previewing each line to see what it does since i have no idea, and by doing that for about 1/4 of the total original stylesheet, and editing certain parts, I have figured out how to do about half of what I want, which is get rid of the big picture area. Now I have to remove the left sidebar where it says “categories,” and make it so my full posts show, not just previews.
But it is possible. I’ve never done CSS in my life before and I just changed it. So it’s possible. It’s just taking me hours upon hours because I have no idea what to look for, which is why I’m asking for peoples help.
If you can’t help with the entire project telling me what to edit, maybe you can tell me a better way to edit something out of CSS.
For instance, the way this wordpress CSS works, it doesn’t actually give you the whole original stylesheet to edit, and then you can just take out the parts you want to delete. It seems to use an overriding method instead, where you just edit the changes you want, adding them in on top of what’s already there. This makes sense to me when you’re overriding something, entering a new thing on top of an existing code, but what about when you want to delete a bracket of code? Short of copying and pasting the entire original stylesheet in, and then deleting the part you want, I dont know how to delete something thats not there. The way I’ve done it so far is by going to the part where it says “display” and putting “none” afterwards. But i’m not actually deleting the whole code or anything. Is there a way to truly delete it?
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Re: Themes » Editing Templates and Themes
The Custom Design upgrade, however, does not permit the editing of the core PHP or template files of any theme. If you require this functionality, please consider moving your blog to a web host that supports theme code modifications.
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I don’t know what that means, the core PHP or template files of any team. All I know is expert CSS people are telling me here it can’t be done, and as of this moment, I, a CSS novice, have changed absolutely everything I wanted to, using only CSS, except for the post previews vs full posts.
But so far I have:
• removed the big picture in the middle, and that whole content area.
• changed the content (text) post on the home page from being very skinny, to now being 640px wide.
• removed the left sidebar, so that the page is now content-sidebar like I wanted.Essentially, I have done absolutely everything I wanted to besides make my posts take up the full page.
Which exactly was the part that was supposed to be impossible? Did you guys even look at the theme before answering? Maybe this is the one single part, making the posts take up the full page, in which case I may still be able to use the theme because everything else is fixed how I wanted, or maybe I won’t. I’ll have to think about it. But I’m still hoping I can fix that, since I’ve been able to fix everything else I wanted to. And a lot of these things definitely weren’t unfixable in CSS. I don’t know where you’re getting that. Saying it can’t be done here makes everyone who reads it looking to help decide not to help because you can’t help when it’s impossible, so instead of someone just posting the codes quickly of what I’d have to change, I had to go through it all myself, which I’ve been doing for hours. And now the last part, if it can be done, it would be helpful if someone posted the exact code. If it cant, it would be helpful if someone told me that, but after confirming it, and being sure. At this rate if someone says it’s impossible I can’t really trust that unless they really demonstrate how sure they are.
Thanks for the help people
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Here is the link to my scircle blog which I’ve applied the changes to after experimenting with them in puckcircle.
http://sharkcircle.wordpress.com/
As you can see I have completely revamped the theme using CSS only. What was once a magazine style theme looks like a standard content-sidebar theme in every regard aside from the short post previews (which some standard blogs use by choice anyway).
If anyone needs help on how to do what I’ve done here, let me know and I will send you the code I used.
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@puckcircle: In my blog I told you you can change widths and hide things but you cannot turn excerpts to full posts. So where’s the difference between what we told you and what you managed?
As for whether we “even looked at the theme before answering”, perhaps you should check the more than 300 comments that precede yours in my post on Structure.
Bye.
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No you said in your post that I could delete the photo area. And in terms of what I asked, you said “bet lost” and it can’t be done. Considering I’ve done 4 of the 5 things I wanted (or whatever the number), that hardly makes an all encompassing answer like “it can’t be done” accurate. I don’t know if you were too worked up that I posted a forum question on your blog (which was linked to me by someone else here, by the way, so take it up with them) or what exactly, but clearly in hindsight you didn’t give me an accurate answer. An accurate answer would have been, “you can do everything in CSS that you want to except change the excerpts into full posts. If you are okay with that limitation, then what you want is possible, besides that one thing. If you aren’t okay with that 1 limitation, then you won’t want to bother changing everything else because you still won’t be able to change that.” That’s a lot different.
But heck it’s not a big deal. This whole wordpress progress has been pretty frustrating and that’s not your fault, it’s just wordpress’s fault, the theme maker’s fault. WordPress actually has a built-in function to choose whether you want full posts to show or just excerpts, because that’s such a core feature, such an obvious thing that every blog owner wants control over. How thick would you have to be to bypass wordpress’s built-in feature and not allow people to at least have the choice there? In structure, it actually still has the settings button where you can change from excerpts to full posts, it just doesn’t do anything when you change it because the theme maker actually overrode this.
Then in elegant grunge, the theme I was using earlier, the maker of the theme made backgrounds for a super thin layout, and a super wide layout, both of which are not not common and seem out of style from what I’ve seen (for instance, about 19 of the 20 sports blogs I know of use 600px or bigger layouts), but this maker only included the too skinny and too wide options. He really should have included a middle option in the actual theme options section, where it’s super easy to change. But even if he didn’t do that, okay, fine, you at least let it be possible in CSS. But he made it about as difficult as you could make it.
And it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t even be on this forum asking random people for help with CSS. Who actually wants to help with CSS? Who actually wants to go in and spend an hour looking through internet code to help a stranger with his lame sports blog? I doubt it’s a top hobby. And that’s not your guy’s fault. If these themes were designed better I wouldn’t need to ask 50000 questions to put my blog up. These are such elementary things, the width of your blog, the background color, whether a full post shows or not. These are supposed to be the easy things, the things you don’t even need CSS to use, where you select it through a template, but either wordpress or the theme makers make it so difficult. Asking how to make curvy lines with teeth as my background, with a shark whose jaws open and close when you toggle your mouse over it, that would make sense if it was hard to do, and complicated. But this stuff, this is just the basics that should be included in every theme, in every template, where you don’t even have to use CSS, but for some reason they aren’t. For crying out loud, I remember maybe six years ago I set up a blog on some free service, maybe geocities, or something I’m not sure what, and it was 10x easier than this. I had tons of pages up and everything.
Alright well I’m still looking for help. If this structure theme’s excerpts can’t be changed in CSS, how do I change it? There has to be a way.
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If this structure theme’s excerpts can’t be changed in CSS, how do I change it? There has to be a way.
You cannot change it because excerpts are coded into the underlying template and those files are accessible only to Staff. This is multiuser blogging platform. Every blog here wearing the same theme like for example Structure is using the same underlying template. Any edit Staff makes to templates files changes every blog wearing the same theme. The Structure template is coded to produce excerpts. It is not coded to produce full pages. This is a no -can -do.
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@puckcircle: There is a way to change the code in the Structure theme… but not at WordPress.com.
If you go self-hosted (WordPress.org), you can change the theme’s coding to your heart’s contempt. There are some pros and cons though:
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Aren’t bloggers allowed to upload user themes to wordperss.com? What if I downloaded the theme, or someone else downloaded the theme, someone told me the code I needed to change, and then I could upload it as “structure changed” or something. Or what about adding code? Yeah I forgot about that. In css right now for structure theme, there is nothing there that you can edit or take out that changes the excerpt thing. But what if I added it? There has to be a CSS code that you can add that can alter that, even if it’s not there to begin with, you can add it. Or maybe you could do it individually for each new post with HTML, making sure the whole thing shows up.
Right?
Someone help me here. Positive thinking. I bet it can be done.
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Bloggers cannot upload their own themes on WordPress.com. On WordPress.ORG they can though.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/themes/adding-new-themes/ -
Themes that are used here have to be modified to support the unique features here and to make sure they are secure. There can also be instances where some features are taken out of the themes that are introduced here. Sometimes that is for security reasons and sometimes for other reasons.
A box-stock theme you download off the internet would not work here. There would be many things typically missing and it might not even come up if you activated it. And the point is moot really since we have no way to upload them. There is no FTP access and we cannot use any sort of script files and wordpress themes are written in PHP script.
CSS is theme specific, so you can’t download a theme and then apply that theme’s CSS to a theme here. It won’t work.
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Alright well thank you for the explanation sacredpath. Sounds like I have to start over yet again trying to modify a new theme. I dont even know where to start. Hopefully i’ll get some good help in my other topic asking which theme people recommend. But thanks everyone.
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