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Manipulate/change the appearance of thread topic headings? Default 1.2.22 Theme
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Donald Wallace
Rookie
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Jun 15, 2017 - 4:17 pm

Hello,

I would really like to do what I state in the subject line:

In the theme "Default", I would like to be able to control the appearance of the thread topics - the h1 level heading that appears at the top of a thread page.

Currently, it appears that the entire title that is displayed is just one h1 text.

For example, take this headline from the forum I support:

Image Enlarger

I want to be able to style each vertical bar delimited section. Perhaps line wrap segments of this text, or not. Or render sections invisible (IE, the final "board name" item, "Cafe Write Discussions" here is unnecessary - our users know where they are.) In fact, I want the vertical bars to be optional - if I style the heading they junk up the appearance.

The current style is unsuitable on a narrow device like a phone because of line wrapping.

I attempted to trace through the source code for the theme and SP but of course I got nowhere.

It would be great to have a solution that is stable across new updates of the theme (IE, it doesn't get overwritten when I update your theme) but I'll take anything I can get.

This is a usability improvement. The title looks OK on a desktop or tablet but not on a smaller device like a phone.

Thanks for your help.

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Yellow Swordfish
Glinton, England
SP Master
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Jun 15, 2017 - 6:10 pm

Before getting into discussions on styling - which is mainly controlled by your WP theme - have you looked at the forum admin > components > SEO panel where you can decide which parts of the title to display and which ones to exclude? And set the delimiter to be used as well...?

andy-signature.png
YELLOW
SWORDFISH
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Mr Papa
Simi Valley, CA
SP Master
Free Members
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Jun 15, 2017 - 7:40 pm

and before making any sp theme changes, please be sure you have created a child theme or a custom theme...  ensures you dont lose any changes on updates...

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Donald Wallace
Rookie
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Jun 16, 2017 - 12:23 am

Thanks for the reply so fast.

I wasn't aware of these settings. (I have the same problem with an SMF board I run, feature settings deeply buried that I don't even know about.)

I'd really want to wrap the forum name and the topic name with their own spans or divs, which these settings don't support at all.And I can't put simple HTML like
in the delimiter - it removes it.

Hmmm.I played with the check boxes. It doesn't seem to let me suppress page title (the final vert bar delimited item). The thing I want to remove I can't.

I guess I could hide the h1 page title or use the simplest format for it, and style the breadcrumbs to create a "title" for messages. The message title information wouldn't appear in the same place but it would be physically closer to the message body (right above it) which might help users.

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Mr Papa
Simi Valley, CA
SP Master
Free Members
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Jun 16, 2017 - 12:31 am

lots of options... not entirely sure what you want to do... 

you can adjust the template function to change what is shown... see: https://simple-press.com/docum.....eadcrumbs/

you can remove the forum home link (think that is what you mean by page title) by passing an empty link...

and as you  have indicated, you can also adjust the css... each element of the breadcrumbs is targetable...

both tweaking the template function and/or css would be best handled with a child theme or custom theme like I mentioned previously...

an alternate option would be to use a standard wp hook to tweak the breakcrumbs...  do you know how to use wp filters?  you would use 'sph_BreadCrumbs' without quotes and you can change whatever you like...

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Donald Wallace
Rookie
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Jun 16, 2017 - 12:38 am

I was quite clear. Just follow this example. You've probably given me the direction to make this change but I would like to know that I'm doing the least effort approach.

A title for one topic is like this (from the screen shot example above):

How Attending a Seminar Pushed Me Over the $100k/Yr Mark | Getting Started and Beginner Support | Café Writer Discussions

So you're displaying this stuff:

(topic-name) | (forum-name) | (Page Title)

And all of this stuff is wrapped as a string of text in an h1 tag and I can't get at any of these individual components in order to style them.

So, I'd like to separate out these elements into their own divs or spans:

(topic name) printed out in a div or span of a particular class

(forum-name) printed out in a div or span of another class

(page title) printed out in yet another div or span of yet another class.

What's the easiest/best approach for this?

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Mr Papa
Simi Valley, CA
SP Master
Free Members
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline
Jun 16, 2017 - 1:23 am

perhaps I misunderstood...  thought you were talking about breadcrumbs...

but appears you are talking about the page header which is output by your wp theme and not us...  at least based on h1 tag comment, I think so... 

so we dont provide any markup for that since its done by the wp theme...  we do set the page meta head title tags with the info you mention (and now see what Andy was getting at), but its your wp theme that is choosing to output that for the page header... which frankly is unusual... typical its just the page title...

what you are asking to do to the page header is exactly what our breadcrumbs do...  typically you wouldnt want both the page header and the breadcrumbs...  we can control the breadcrumbs, but not the page header (again, wp theme)...

try going to forum - options - general display settings and try removing the page title completely... that is how the majority of simple press users operate...

if you really want that page header, you will need to adjust the wp theme...  as andy said, you have some flexibility with the seo options to tweak it, but you are really tweaking what we do to the meta title tags...  if the wp theme uses that for the page header (not really that abnormal), its up to the wp theme how it displays it...  and some themes, control how much we can even change the elements with in it...

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