mu.nu - "My Tamagotchi!" she said. "It has to poop."

August 08, 2005

saying UNCLE after committing act of hubris

On Friday night I had a 2 column site with a left sidebar. Feeling heady over getting an 85 on a computer geek quiz I went in to do some tweaking by:
- creating a pda version of my site + adding a PDA link on my sidebar
creating a category archive for my posts
adding categories & syndication section on my sidebar

I was careful to back up the index template but as things started to go wrong I overwrote my back up accidentally. Boy did I feel stupid! I've managed to put things somewhat back together, but I'm still having one persistent issue: my 2 columns are no more. My sidebar now appears immediately below my entries.

So far I've done the following: gone back to the MT manual, looked at websites and sample MT templates so I can view the source code for some inkling of what may be wrong (even though I'm not familiar w/CSS or Java). So far nothing that I see comes close to what I have because I originally used an old style template.

I would appreciate any suggestions and/or guidance you send my way. Thanks!


Posted by: Michele at 02:13 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 I do have backups, though it's a little fiddly to pick out just one template.

What you have right now is the "bottombar" problem. There are solutions, but I don't remember what they are. I'll take another look when I get home from work if none of our other geeks have solved it by then.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at August 08, 2005 04:45 AM

2 Michele:

In your main index template, just before the section where the the content of your sidebar starts, you'll see these lines:

<div id="sidebar">

<div id="links">

<a href="http://moblog.co.uk/blogs.php?show=1673"><___ alt="we are not afraid.jpg" src="http://lettersfromnyc.mu.nu/archives/we are not afraid.jpg" width="200" height="188" border="0"/></a>
<br>
<br>
<!--dictionary lookup box by TheFreeDictionary.com-->

...and so on with your sidebar content.

The fisrt line, that refers to the div for "sidebar", shouldn't be there, as that div isn't defined in your stylesheet. Try deleting the line
<div id="sidebar">
then save the template and rebuild your Indexes Only and see what happens.

Paul

Posted by: Light & Dark @ at August 08, 2005 07:15 AM

3 Thanks, I really do appreciate your help and input. I did try deleting that line of code L&D pointed too then saved the index template rebuilt and then refreshed my site... still nothing.

This is the reason I switched from computer science to English Lit in college. I don't do well with needles in haystacks as it requires enourmous amounts of patience and knowing tags cold.

Once I find a template Exactly like mine I'll have do line by line analysis. Unless ... you know where I can get a template like mine and i'll start creating from scratch.

Thanks for your help though!

Posted by: Michele @ at August 08, 2005 02:34 PM

4 I think you need to close another div (put in another </div> after the </MTEntries>

That section is in two nested divs, and if you only close one, I think you'll get pretty much what you've got.

Worth a try, anyway.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at August 08, 2005 03:20 PM

5 That first smiley isn't supposed to be there!

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at August 08, 2005 03:21 PM

6 Well, thanks for the extra smile anyway.

Tried your suggestion and still no sidebar. Mercury is in retrograde throught the 15th, so maybe some of this will work till then? Just kidding.

Posted by: Michele @ at August 08, 2005 04:03 PM

7 Sorry I wasn't much help. Michele.

At least I can point you to the copies of the original templates and stylesheet for your blog design.

The templates are at
http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/default_templates_26

The CSS Stylesheet is at
http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/default_styles_26

The name of your style is "Trendy".

Paul

Posted by: Light & Dark @ at August 08, 2005 04:41 PM

8 It looks like the <div class="content"> was changed from <div id="content">.

One of two routes that can be taken:
1) The index template can be changed back to <div id="content">

2) The Style-sheet can be changed from #content to .content.

Be sure to only do one of them.

Posted by: phin @ at August 08, 2005 07:11 PM

9 I'm not sure what you're going for, exactly, but here goes some help (likely worth what you paid for it):

At first glance, it does appear there is an extra </div> now where you have 3 of them in a row.

However, I got it to work by simply adding a few items in the style sheet. I added a couple options in the style sheet so that these options looked this way:

#links {
background:#333;
color:#CCC;
margin-top:35px;
top: 180px;
position: absolute;
width: 200px;
overflow:hidden;
}

.blog {
padding-left:15px;
padding-top:15px;
padding-right:15px; position: absolute;
margin-left: 200px;
}

(I have no idea how this is going to post in the comment section, but if it works, you should be able to copy and paste these lines into your style sheet and at least have a good start, including moving the column to the left, at least).

Posted by: Ogre @ at August 08, 2005 09:57 PM

10 Mercury retrograde? No wonder things feel so difficult lately.

Posted by: Mark Munu Astrologer @ at August 09, 2005 10:39 AM

11 Thanks to all the suggestions, order has been restored to my cyberworld

Posted by: michele @ at August 10, 2005 01:55 AM

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