If you mean you want the editor to go full-width then that is not the way that theme is currently set up to display – it is displaying as designed.

If you would like to switch it back to the default theme then we should be able to sort out the ‘white’ areas easily enough but we will need a link to your forum page. We can take a look at the other issue at the same time.

I was hoping that there was some way to make the post wrap expand with the topic editor on the sub forums like it does on my default page template. It expands fine on the homepage of the forum, but not on the sub forums… on sub forums it expands about an inch and then stops, leaving the above display hidden behind the topic editor. And if it works fine using my default page template, then the problem is in the coding of either the forum or the individual page template for my theme.

Also, the site is currently down for construction. I can not allow any access to it at this time. Sorry… Here is a picture of the second problem I described:

Thank you for your support on the matter. As you can see, the css issue is taking place within the forum display… I tried changing the background of the page post wrap itself, but there was no change to the issue. Somewhere there is a css command for a white background, and I have not tried to find it yet. The way the forum incorporates php for color settings is rather confusing for manual edits. I am not as familiar with php as I am with css. Is there a standard css file anywhere within the forum files? I have been unable to find it thus far. The css element in which the background problem is taking place is in the .sppostform section.

Update: Fixed the CSS issue of the white borders around the topic window. Went into the default.php file and found the correct line to edit. I figured thats where the CSS comments were, I just never got around to digging through it. I will probably just end up using the default template now that I got that issue solved… unless there is some way to correct the first issue I brought up. The iForum template is pretty slick, just annoying how it doesn’t expand to my content like I expected. I am happy that I figured out how to edit the default template though. It’s slick as well. 🙂

And rest assured, once the site is done, I will post the links to the forum just so you and everyone else who supports the forum will be able to see yet another example of how this software has been put to go use.

What was the CSS change you made please? It would be useful to know. Remember – As always we recommend that you create your own SP theme so that any customisation is not lost during a future update. (http://codex.simple-press.com/codex/themes/theme-basics/creating-a-theme/)

As to the first issue I have not seen any problem with my test sites and am having difficulty visualising quite what you mean. Perhaps when you are up and running you could switch to that theme and let me come over and take a look…?

Yeah sure, here’s the line I pinpointed in the theme’s default.php css file… This change was actually relatively easy to make. I am finding however, that subsequent changes to the layout are rather difficult to make post installation. I did notice that in the raw files, there’s a more readable css file. I’m assuming that during the installation process all these css settings are converted to php encoding in order to more closely sync up with individual theme installations? That’s what I figured anyway… Makes editing the layout anything but intuitive, but I suppose setting up a forum to certain specifications isn’t really supposed to be.

Anyway, to fix the white border thing, this is what I did…

Looked up this line in the default.php theme style on line 652. Its the parent element for spPostForm.

652.    background: <?php echo($mainBackGround); ?>;

to

652.    background: #EBE1C8;

Basically just changed the <?php echo ?> to the exact number instead of the php command. In this case, it was the color for the Brown-Creme theme overlay. Worked simply enough… Like I said though, modifying additional aspects of the layout is more difficult. I’ve made significant progress though. Definitely glad I purchased the upgrade after seeing all the plugins you guys made for this forum too. I had no idea how many were out there. You should advertise them so people have more incentive to purchase the memberships.

*If you read my original post, it has been modified and I apologize for the error. This is the correct line and I just tested it.

Also, on line 1494 you will find the settings for the add topic form. The settings were not properly set on my theme and I had to add a line to correct another css error.

#spMainContainer textarea.spControl,
#spMainContainer select.spControl,
#spMainContainer input.spControl {
1494.    resize: vertical;

If anyone else has problems with the post content box expanding beyond the limits of the post wrapper settings, that’s how you fix it. Pretty simple css edit I suppose. I have a little experience on these matters at this point me thinks. Lol. 🙂

If I notice any other easy modifications to the theme I will post them here. Also, if I ever figure out how whats causing my initial problem, I will post the solution to that as well. I did end up going with the default theme. I did end up having extensive difficulties trying to constrain all my proportions in the forum to roughly 600px or so… So I ended up freeing one sidebar in order to accommodate the default settings. I managed to get it pretty small, but certain proportions were linked to eachother in the css so it it became a domino affect when trying to correct one margin here and one padding there… Perhaps someone can come out with a micro version of the forum? That would be sweet! hah. I’d spend more time on it and do it myself, but I really have other things to accomplish right now. Thanks again for a great forum plugin.

yeah, 600px is extremely narrow…  you could remove the images from all the buttons – that would free up some space…

or try the stacked theme where the user info is displayed above the post content vs on the side…

did you make your own theme before the changes as pointed out by Andy in post 5??  otherwise your changes will get overwritten if you update the core theme…

Thanks for the response. I did not create my own theme yet, as I have had to work on other aspects of the site, however, I will either have to do that, or annotate all my changes for future upgrades. Considering it operates well as of right now with only 2 css edits, I will probably just annotate my changes and redo them once an update comes up. I am pretty used to tweaking wordpress plugins at this point. 

I’ll give the stacked theme a try. I never really thought of it. I appreciate the suggestion. It would still be cool to have it operate seamlessly at a smaller width, simply because it would be more accommodating to the layout of my site. However, most forums are simply built to have that extra girth on the hips it seems. 🙂

I’ll let ya know. And if I decide to markup my own theme, I’ll give you guys a holler… It seemed a bit daunting when I skimmed over the article that Swordfish posted in all honesty. Would just take time me thinks.

As long as you don’t upgrade your theme the changes will remain. You can tweak it and before you upgrade convert the one you are using to a custom theme. That way you don’t have to edit a newly released theme when upgrading.

You can then add anything that may be new, and something you want, to your old theme. All the theme changes from what is current now to what is changed/added in a newly released theme will be documented. That way you can compare the new with the old easily.

Sounds good Brandon. Preciate it. We will see how long I can stay with these changes before having to worry about upgrading. I was thinking that I might just be able to swap out the default.php files after an upgrade, but the more I thought about it, the more it would probably conflict with other potential changes that could happen during an upgrade that are unrelated to css concerns… Normally that’s how I would do it, but when the php and css are so closely integrated in a plugin such as this, it would be wise to take extra steps to insure a safe upgrade. Any thoughts?

Any update to the Simple:Press core plugin does not require that you update your theme. When a new theme comes out it there can be several reasons for it. New options, bug fixes to take advantage of a new SP plug in. That’s why the changes are documented so you can see what was changed. If a bug fix like what we just released for the iForum theme then you would want to include those changes in your theme. If the changes are for features you don’t need or want you can stay with your old theme.

For example there will be some changes to the next new theme’s to allow adding nofollow to links in the user info area of topic view. Like the twitter logo. If that is something you don’t care about then you don’t need to add that to your theme.

I still recommend you create your own theme though. That way when you are editing your theme if anything goes wrong and it doesn’t work you can revert back to a default theme while you diagnose and fix the problem.

Good advice. Thanks man. I will keep that in mind for when when I am about to launch the site. Probably be something I do a couple days before going live. Will have to dig into the documentation on it, and I really just don’t have the time right now.

Editing wordpress login page templates can really be a bear… Especially when you thought you could just redirect it completely to begin with… but turns out I need to keep it active in order for a specific plug which blocks bum registrations to work. Luckily theres another plugin out there that makes editing the default login page doable in a more intuitive manner… but the css is still pretty lame, hah. Plus, my edits are very obscure… Its not so much I need to edit it, as just cloak the whole darn thing. lol. Luckily the plugin saves all changes to a separate css/problem-with-post-edit-buttontml file within the plugin so no upgrades will reset it. Yay.

Anyway, got it done. I’m ranting cuz I’m tired. lol. Goodnight. 

I know what you mean on the available WordPress login page plugins. I decided just to make something myself it was easier than using theirs and then changing it to fit me.

Sounds like you could use a blacklist of disallowed user account names when registering with Simple:Press.

Maybe there is something in the works….