Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and css

How do I restore the formatting in my blog?

FireStyle — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:07:21 -0800

I'm using the Hybrid-News blogger template for my blog. After doing some tweaking to the code, I lost the feature I loved the most - the condensed posts on the front page. Any ideas on how to get it back? (more in explaination). Here is the link to the hybrid-news template

Here is the link to my blog

Notice how in the template the stories are condensed to a few lines. Somehow, I lost that formatting, and my skills in CSS are elementary at best. Any idea how to get it back?

Thanks much, and if you like politics, feel free to comment on the site!

Altering Wordpres's Dashboard CSS

Solomon — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:44:55 -0800

Which .css file to I need to edit within my Wordpress 2.8 installation to prevent an annoying Dashboard layout issue, and what information do I need to change? When viewing the Wordpress Dashboard in Firefox, the menu on the left slightly overlaps the rest of the page, when it's expanded. Like this. When it's shrunk, the layout is correct. Like this.

Annoyingly, it all looks fine in Internet Explorer.

What values do I need to change in which .css file to ensure that there's no overlap?

How can I change the css of a post along with the theme?

Solomon — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:32:01 -0800

Using Wordpress, how can I call CSS for a post from a specific file, rather than having the CSS embedded within the post? Situation: I write a post, and have some text highlighted in a certain colour that matches the theme (for example). When I change the theme, the colour of the text no longer matches.

Idea: use a .css file for each theme that contains the CSS for the posts, and call the necessary font colour/size etc from that, instead of having it within the post itself. Sort of like a theme for posts, instead of the whole site. When the theme changes, I can quickly change the post .css file to the correct one, and have the changes reflected in the posts when they are viewed.

Problem: I have no idea how to do this. I have a vague idea of how to create a .css file, and can probably work that out. What I want to know is what to put in the post html to ensure that the correct .css file is called, per theme. At the moment, I have [span style="color: #5a008c"] - obviously with different brackets. I want to be able to have ["path to file" "correct section" "whatever"] instead, that will give me the same results as above.

How do I do that? What syntax do I need to put in a posting to make it call the correct .css file?

MY EYES MY EYES - help me avoid the WordPress interface and still post to my blog.

jessamyn — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:48:15 -0800

I don't like the WordPress 2.5 look and feel. I am not interested in switching CMSes. What are my options for basic postings to my blog with minimal interaction with the WordPress interface? The suboptimal things include having to scroll to choose categories and add tags, the "3D" look to the buttons, all the extra headings and colors, the small "publish" button and all the nagging (I know 2.5.1 is available, I'd like to dismiss that message). I'd like to not have to scroll to write and publish a short post with tags and categories. I think this must be possible.

I am fairly tech-savvy. I want to post a blog entry with maybe a category and some tags, nothing else fancy (this is for my "work" blog, not my personal blog). I can write my own HTML, don't need WYSIWIG. I'm okay using the admin interface for more complicated things or for editing. I like what WP does, just not how it looks.

I had a nice custom admin section before I upgraded; my fallback plan is just to hack away at the CSS like I did last time. I have tried a few things that have not worked so well.

- ScribeFire and Deepest Sender addons for Firefox both kick back errors that I don't quite understand. (I get through installing/configuring them and see my categories but can't post. DS returns "TypeError: node is null" SF returns "The server returned a malformed response. Please check that your blog and API URLs are correct." If this is a chmod problem, I can chmod). If I could get either of those to work my problem would be solved. I have command line access to my account and a medium level of comfort with command line Unixy stuff.
- I have installed a few plugins that claim to make WP easier on the eyes including Retro-Dashboard Admin Theme, Admin Menus, Dashboard Lite and a few more that I may have already deleted. They are fine but don't solve these specific problems.
- I do not want to install an older version of WP just to fix this.
- I have searched the WP plugins admin section and Google for something that seems to do this and tried many things and didn't find anything that looked good.

I'd be happy to hear if you've found something that works but please don't direct me to the WP site (unless there's really something you think I've missed) or to a Google search. Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!

Questions on design in Typepad...for which Typepad help is no help.

pearl228 — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:29:31 -0800

Aesthete in need of assistance with tweaking the design of Typepad blog. Subtle drop shadows with CSS and more... A little background:

I have retooled the design of a blog I currently have on Typepad (3 columns, total width 800 pixels) using iWeb to play around with subtle shadows, fonts, and spacing for visualization purposes.

I currently have a Plus account on Typepad. With this reworking of the design, all I want to do is:

a. edit the colors of the columns
b. improve the banner image
c. add very subtle drop shadows to the columns (think MocoLoco)
d. experiment with 1.3x line spacing for the text of posts

I know how to translate a. and b. to my blog on Typepad, but c. and d. are causing some confusion.

I'm pretty sure I'll have to upgrade to a Pro account to be able to use CSS for the drop shadows, if that's indeed how I will have to do them. (I've heard that the simplest way to do this is by using shadow "images" and placing them with CSS, but does this work when a shadow goes over top of an edge of a column?)

As for the line spacing in posts, is this something I can do, and how?

Thanks SO much!

WP Blog gone blank, Admin section is fine

Baud — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:53:01 -0800

WorpressFilter Blog gone blank, Admin section is fine - help ! I've upgraded my Wordprees blog to the latest version and all hell broke loose on me... First it was a full blatk blog and admin section. I've regained access to the admin section by deleting a theme folder but there is still a white page where somebaudy.com used to be

Deleting the content of the plugins folder did not help.

if it's of any help I'm hosted by DreamHost

A theme for wordpress and google maps mashup?

sethwoodworth — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:18:00 -0800

I'm starting a new tourism website for my local area. It's a mash of google maps, with photos and information of a given area featuring some of the neat stuff happening, or that has happened. And now I need some help with the wordpress theme. I'm using Wordpress to manage my stories and some of the photo linking, and I have most of the google-maps configuration for the pop-up photo galleries done. What I need is a nice two or three column layout for the google map on one side, a narrower column on the right for the wordpress content, and possibly a third on the far right (or far left) for a text ad column.

I am pretty new to css and wordpress, but I can do html, and I worked my way through the javascript for the google map. What should I look for in a wordpress theme, where do I look or should I customize one from somewhere else.

I'm sorry this is sort of broad, but I'm looking for someone to point me in a direction, not necessarily solve the problem for me. I've googled and found many resources for google map plugins and google map tools in general, but no themes that can display a big block of google map and my blog.

Help please hive-mind!

Easiest CMS/blog to get into design-wise?

dinkyday — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:40:13 -0800

I'm an experienced webdesigner looking for a CMS/blog whose themes are easy to change or build from scratch (preferably just through CSS).

I want a new theme, one that does what it should.

jbickers — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 04:15:57 -0800

Help me find the perfect theme for my Wordpress blog. I'm craving a redesign of one of my blogs (no self-link, but it's the music blog you can find through my profile). Here's the rub: I suck at CSS. I'm a pretty smart guy, but I find it to be largely indecipherable. Haven't broken the code yet.

I love the look of Lifehacker, and that general feel - light colors, rounded corners, fonts, cleanliness, etc. I've spent a lot of time looking at WP themes, and they all feel dated to me ... can you suggest a great theme, with the feel of LH, but perhaps more suited to a music blog?

I need to be universal baby :)

crewshell — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:10:42 -0800

Can you help me recode one part of my blog / website so that it works in all browsers? (I think its an easy fix that I am over looking) I have a blog at www.mentaldribble.com. I love the new theme I found but there’s one problem. On the upper right hand corner where it says PAGES, CATEGORIES, ARCHIVES, when you mouse over it there is suppose to be a drop down list. It works in IE 7 but not 6, and I believe it works correctly in Firefox too but I would like it to work in all the browsers.

What can I change so the code works in IE 6?

Also - I recently added a few more categories and the drop down is interfering with the links on the left of the page and I cant seem to select any of the categories that overlap those permanent links on the left. Namely "virgin islands" category on the drop down overlaps the search box, and when I try to select that link the drop down list just disappears..

If you can suggest a better way to accomplish this drop down list, or can just fix the way it currently works, that would be AWESOME.

Thanks hive mind.

Why are my individual Blogger posts using a different template?

beaucoupkevin — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:41:49 -0800

[BloggerFilter] My individual blog posts are not reflecting the template used at index.html file. As you can see, the individual post doesn't feature the Haloscan comments link or the social bookmarking stuff. It looks like the same DIV is being used for both, but I can't figure out why it's changing. Any advice, Blogger/CSS geniuses?

A possible hint: this all started when I attempted to switch to WordPress and had it munge up my site.

What's wrong with this CSS?

aaronetc — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:54:55 -0800

I have a CSS class that displays "correctly" in Safari and Mac IE, but for some reason knocks the font size down in Firefox and IE under XP. Everything looks right to me, but I'm not a CSS expert by any means. Anyone care to take a look? The site is here, the CSS here; it's the class "blogbody" that's causing problems. This is a modified Movable Type default template, so it seems like it ought to work -- the only thing I could think of to change in the HTML was to remove the second </div> and the end of each blog entry, because I couldn't tell what it was closing, but that had no effect. I tried altering the font-size in the CSS, which only changed the first entry; subsequent entries always stayed at what looks like 10px. Any ideas?

IECSS Filter

softlord — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:11:16 -0800

IECSSFilter: So I've been happily running my blog (link is relevant to post) all year, tweaking the design here and there, using Firefox and Safari as my default browser, when all of a sudden... [.More { location: inside; }] I check it out in IE and horrors! The main content section seems to ignore the right: 155px; position I've given it and is in fact going way beyond the right margin....but only in IE.

The content section is the only one for which I have both left and right positions set, as I'd like the layout to be as liquid as possible...

The portion in question is all in a div called #content, which has the layout info.

Could one of you CSS-Masters point out what I've done to make the evil IE gods frown upon me?

Stylesheet located here.

Started My Own Blog: Need Advice on CSS, Non-FTP Updating & Automated Archiving

anastasiav — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:22:50 -0800

I'm in the process of starting my own weblog (it launched on Thursday). I can write pretty decent basic HTML by hand (in notepad), but CSS wrestled me to the ground and stepped on my head and a lot of tech jargon passes me right by (I'm a designer and a writer, not a programer, I guess). What advice does Metafilter have for me? I should also mention, I guess, that I've looked at Blogger, but (I know this sounds stupid) I can't quite figure out how to make it work in any way that doesn't look like I'm using Blogger. My big problem at the moment is that I need a way to update from work without using an FTP client, and I know I'm going to need an automated way to archive things eventually.