Help me debug this simple CSS problem before I put my head through the monitor!!

November 19, 2005 8:54 AM

IHateCSSFilter: Help me figure out how to fix my website so that the left margin isn't smashed up against the left margin anymore....

I did not write the original CSS for the site, because I've never been able to master CSS, and this is a perfect example of why. I'm sorry if I can't explain this well, but trying to work in CSS always makes my eyes bleed and me want to tear my hair out, despite years of trying to learn how it works.

After having redesigned the site (back in July), I have a bug in it that I can't fix and its driving me crazy - so crazy that I can't look at the site, so I never update it.

I know that changing the pix number in the body margin attribute should fix this, but it doesn't seem to, and I can't figure out why. I know that my main page calls its CSS from a file called "styles-site.css" but changing the margin pix attribute in the styles-site.css file doesn't seem to change anything in the formatting of the site -- or, rather, it does, until I rebuild the site in MT, and then it goes back to 0px for the left margin, and I cannot figure out what it is about rebuilding that is overrding the styles-site.css file.

Can you help me? I'm losing my mind over this.

and please give me answers like I'm your grandmother. I'm apparently too stupid to be any good at anything other than simple html, even after years and years of trying.

posted by anastasiav to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Granny:

You forgot to link to the site in question...
posted by jpburns at 9:11 AM on November 19, 2005

Its on my user page.
posted by anastasiav at 9:13 AM on November 19, 2005

Here's the 2-minute solution.

I just stuck the whole site into a div poisitioned twenty points away from the top and left margins. There are other ways to do it, but this is simple enough not to mess with the rest of the structure that you're comfortable with.
posted by Mayor Curley at 9:15 AM on November 19, 2005

Are you rewriting your stylesheet within MT's tempate builder? If not, it's just going to keep doing that over and over again, as it's built to rewrite the code based on what's within MT, not if you edit the sheet manually.
posted by dflemingdotorg at 9:15 AM on November 19, 2005

Are you rewriting your stylesheet within MT's tempate builder?

I didn't know that MT had a template builder.

[tries it]

Ok, I went to manage templates, then template name "stylesheet" (which is indeed my styles-site.css file) and changed it, then saved it, then rebuilt it ... and ...

it worked!!

Now rebuilding the site as I would with a new entry ... and it stayed the way I want it!!!

** Kisses dflemingdotorg **
posted by anastasiav at 9:28 AM on November 19, 2005

Mayor Curley, thanks to you also for a solution -- and you're right, it does work for fixing the problem, but now I can change the site anytime I want.

** Kisses Mayor Curley As Well **

Thanks for the help and effort, though.
posted by anastasiav at 9:29 AM on November 19, 2005

Is Template Builder something that is for TypePadders only ir is there a way to use it in a local MT install? I'm on Movable Type duty this weekend as well.
posted by jessamyn at 10:25 AM on November 19, 2005

No, it's the main editing screen within MT. You can edit your index files, modules and whatnot within it.
posted by dflemingdotorg at 10:53 AM on November 19, 2005

Jessamyn, et al, if you're interested in just making a style sheet that MT can use, you'll want to check out Arvind's Style Generator.
posted by anildash at 2:34 AM on November 22, 2005