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posting a support ?

Teresa Crawford

29 Nov, 2011 08:48 PM via web

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I cannot seem to access to the main support page to post a question. Is it down?

I need help in sorting out the formatting on this page - http://www.westschool.org/about-west/psco

How do I keep it from shrinking some posts into one narrow column?

1. Support Staff 2 Posted by Dawn Russell on 01 Dec, 2011 03:02 PM

   

   Hi Teresa,

   We're aware of the multi-pass token expiration and we've been working with tender to find a solution. In the meantime, rest assured that your posts are coming through.

   In regards to your school site, you have a fixed amount of width for every website which usually ranges from 800-1000 pixels. If you have a three column layout, then it's a matter of figuring out how much width you want for column a, b and c. You could equally divide them which would give you the result of looking like a newspaper or make a wider central article and two evenly spaced sidebars which is the most common web approach. Usually these settings are easily modified in the template parameters, but the template you are using does not have this option. To see what I mean, go to your admin and click on Extensions>Template Manager. Click on the title of your template sw_education and then when the page refreshes you'll see you only have the option for a header and footer script. Click close and then open the sw_inspiron template. You'll see in this template you can control a number of options with the last one being "sidebar width". The other way to modify the sidebar width is in the CSS which I can do at an hourly rate of $75/hour. It should take less than 30 minutes.

   So the decision needs to be made as to whether or not to keep your current template and edit the CSS to make it perfect or to switch to another one. So far you have added the slideshow to this template since it didn't meet your needs, now the sidebar. Determining what other plans you have for the site would be helpful in making this decision. If you go the template route, you would need to reassign all of your modules since the module positions vary and this could be very time consuming depending on the number of unique modules - in any case, if you go the template route, I would definitely choose a template with the slideshow/banner position under the logo. Again, to see the module positions, add ?tp=1 to the end of the URL.

   If you decide to go the CSS route, please let me know proportionally what % you would like each column to take up proportionally and I'll modify the layout to reflect this.

   All the best,

   Dawn

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2. Dawn Russell closed this discussion on 01 Dec, 2011 03:02 PM.

3. Teresa Crawford re-opened this discussion on 01 Dec, 2011 03:28 PM

4. 3 Posted by Teresa Crawford on 01 Dec, 2011 03:28 PM

   

   Thanks for the tips and explanation. I chose the module becuase I was
   so new to Joomla and it seemed a good fit. But now that I have worked
   with it alot more I made ALOT of changes. I am open to switching to a
   different template but worry about how much time I will lose redoing
   all the customizations. Is there a way to figure out how long a
   switch to a new template would take?

   If I understand correctly it is the column size that is messing up the
   way this page looks - http://www.westschool.org/about-west/psco

   It seems like there must be some other blog article layout setting I
   may be missing as well. Why do the articles start piling up on each
   other in the way they do on this page with some really narrow/crammed
   on the left and others wider and on the right? Can I easily fix that?

   Thanks

   Teresa

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5. Support Staff 4 Posted by Dawn Russell on 01 Dec, 2011 04:16 PM

   

   Hi Teresa,

   Forgive me, I thought you were referring to the sidebar on the right
   being too narrow. No the article side by side thing you're seeing is
   the result of how you have your front page blog setup. To alter this
   you'll want to go to your menu manager and then click on the home page
   menu link. When open it will state that the menu link type is a front
   page blog. To the right under parameters, you'll see a number of
   options that allows you to customize the output. In this case you only
   want 1 column and maybe 3-4 articles showing at any time with the most
   recent being first. Play around with those settings by clicking apply
   and then previewing the site. You'll find the balance that works for
   you. When you're done, click save.

   All the best,

   Dawn

   Dawn Russell
   Support Specialist
   Simplweb

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6. Dawn Russell closed this discussion on 09 Feb, 2012 09:09 PM.

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