Would Like to Remove Most Elements

chesleyhicks · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 9:36 pm
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Hi everyone!

I am customizing a blog:

Home

and I would like to completely remove most of the non-essential elements, like:

– The search box
– The Feed / Post / Comments functionality
– The “by” line
– The whole “Archives / Categories / Pages” column
– The footer (it it’s OK to do so)

Basically, I want to remove everything but the nav bar, the custom header, and the posts.

I am customizing the CSS of the theme “Mistylook.”

Thanks so much in advance for any help! I’ve been banging my head against the wall here…
boblets · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 9:41 pm
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Most of those things are widgets- remove them from dashboard -> design -> widgets.
boblets · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 9:42 pm
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….and you’d might be better off starting with another theme, that is a little more minimalist.
chesleyhicks · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 9:44 pm
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Thanks for the response.

It says there are no widgets being used currently. Hmm…
boblets · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 9:46 pm
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I’m not familiar with mistylook, but I’ll have a look :-)
ellaella · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 9:49 pm
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Try hiding the search box with display:none. You can’t change the underlying functionality with CSS.

You could remove the footer but it’s considered very, very bad form to do so. Please reconsider that.
boblets · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 9:51 pm
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If you have paid for the css upgrade, you could simply disable the elements you don’t want in the css. Your sidebar is called sidebox, for example. Try that first, and tell us how it goes.
chesleyhicks · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 9:56 pm
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Thanks so much, guys (so kind of you to help!) I will try this and get back to u in a sec…
chesleyhicks · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 10:09 pm
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I do have the CSS upgrade. What part of the CSS do I remove it from? (sorry for being such a dumbo… i just tried removing everything called “sidebox” and it removed the header and blew out the layout.

PS – ellaella: thanks for the word on the footer… I didn’t know the protocol on that.
boblets · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 10:30 pm
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It’s a little too late for me to dig in to it today, but -ouch – that is not good.

You can use /* */ to comment things out in css, so you don’t actually delete it.

I suggest you reload the original css, and play around with it a little.

Make sure you don’t remove the curly braces } for the selector before… if so should happen, that will disable the code ahead too. I will get back to you tomorrow.

Glad to help.
chesleyhicks · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 10:39 pm
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I got it back to its original state, no prob :-)

Thanks, boblets!
panaghiotisadam · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 11:16 pm
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If it still “says there are no widgets being used currently”, just add one and they will all appear; then you can easily remove them (click Edit).
rosclarke · Member · Jun 23, 2008 at 11:24 pm
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If you don’t want a sidebar, the easiest thing really is just to choose a theme without one in the first place.
boblets · Member · Jun 24, 2008 at 4:43 pm
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First – try panaghiotisadams suggestion.
Rosclarke has a point, though. It might be easier to use another theme. Changing colours and such is easy-peasy.

I am of course full of no(n)sense. The sidebar is called sidebar, and the little boxes inside that, that says archive etc, are called sidebox.
If you remove the sidebar completely, you’d most likely end up with all sorts of odd layouts.
try commenting out the sideboxes like so:
```
/*li.sidebox {
	padding:10px;
	background: url(img/sideheadtop.gif) #ededed no-repeat left top;
	margin-bottom: 10px;
}
html li.sidebox {
	padding-bottom: 10px;
}
li.sidebox h2 {
	font-weight: normal;
	font-size: 1.6em;
	text-align: left;
	color: #242;
	font-variant:small-caps;
}*/
```
…and tell us what happens – or show us. This is learning for all of us.
nickmomrik · Staff · Jun 24, 2008 at 4:50 pm
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When a themes says it’s using 0 widgets, it is actually using a default set of widgets. As soon as you add a widget to the sidebar, the defaults are no longer used.

So…in order to remove a widget that’s showing up with the default set, you need to add whatever widgets you actually want to appear.

Hope that helps!
boblets · Member · Jun 24, 2008 at 4:54 pm
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aah– I see. Interesting. The thing is that s/he wants to get rid of them all. Nevertheless, that was enlightening.
nickmomrik · Staff · Jun 24, 2008 at 4:59 pm
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If you want to get rid of them all you can add an empty text widget.
chesleyhicks · Member · Jun 24, 2008 at 5:06 pm
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Let’s see. I’ll take all your kind suggestions in order:

1) Panaghiotisadam’s widget idea doesn’t work on this, unfortunately

2) I did what you just suggested, boblets, and here’s the result:

Home

The header is gone and the background of the sidebar is gone, but not the content of the sidebar.

3) So maybe Rosclarke’s suggestion of using a whole new theme is indeed the right way to go. Do you guys have any suggestions of super-minimal themes that I can add a header to and strip out as many elements as possible?

THANKS SO MUCH EVERYBODY!
ellaella · Member · Jun 24, 2008 at 5:32 pm
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Try Sandbox. It’s pretty much a blank canvas.
boblets · Member · Jun 24, 2008 at 6:17 pm
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Happy to help. Or confuse, for that matter. :-)
To me it seems that did what you wanted? Unless of course you changed it back :-)

You could try sandbox, indeed, or one of the themes without sidebar.
Sometimes I become like a dog with a bone – not letting go!
wouff, wouff!
Css is all about experimenting….

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