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banners and other changes to the "header"
 
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qureus
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 12:35 pm    Post subject: banners and other changes to the "header" Reply with quote

Hi John,

Let me explain what I'd like to do and then maybe you'll have some suggestions, oh wise one.

I've added some affiliate ads to the sides of my blog. Now I'm thinking of adding a banner either over or under my masthead. I also want to make more use of a top nav bar to free up some real estate on the sides of my blog.

If I had to sum it up, what I guess I'm looking for is an expanded header section where I can have multiple header rows that might extend across the whole page. It might look like this:

- Header row 1: banner ad.
- Header row 2: Masthead with my image.
- Header row 3: Top nav bar (I think I figured out this one).

For the banner ad, though, can I just create a new component and stick it under or over my masthead component? Would you recommend I do a single component for the top nav bar too?

I'm also thinking of adding a banner at the base of my blog. Would that be a footer component?

Other thoughts?

Thanks for any suggestions.
Q
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john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 11:24 pm    Post subject: Re: banners and other changes to the "header" Reply with quote

While our system of custom components and layout blocks to manage your blog's look and feel will work for most of your needs, sometimes you come up with a design that just can't be handled using the control panel tools, making it necessary to go in and code some HTML and alter your templates.

This is one of those cases...

The Header area is designed to be a 1, 2, or 3 column row. It's not set up to have more than one row. So to have a 3 row header, you would need to make some changes to your base template.
  1. Login to your Blog Admin Control Panel through the Login page.
  2. Click on the Look and Feel tab, then the Templates subtab.
  3. Now you see a list of the Templates you can customize. We are going to customize the base template, which controls the overall structure of your blog pages, so click Edit in the row that begins with the word base.
  4. Now you'll be on a page listing the current templates (there will probably be only one row listing Standard), click the Customize button.
  5. You'll see a page giving you the option to Copy the Standard style to your staging area. Click Go.
  6. Finally, you'll come to the page where you can customize the base template, which is the template controlling the main structure of your page.
My suggestion would be to modify the base template so that the Control Panel still controls the bottom row, but we're going to add a TABLE with HTML that will hold 2 extra rows.

Look for the section at the top of the base template that looks like this:

Code:
{{if has_header}}
<tr>
<td class="header" align="center" colspan="3">


Directly below that and above this line:

Code:
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="blogHeader"><tr>


we will add a table containing 2 rows. You will enter your HTML content in this new table. Here's the HTML to add:

Code:
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
   <tr>
      <td align="center">the new top row stuff goes here</td>
   </tr>

   <tr>
      <td align="center">the new middle row stuff goes here</td>
   </tr>
</table>


Now replace my sample text the new top row stuff goes here with your own banner ad code, and replace the the new middle row stuff goes here text with your masthead.

That's it. Your nav bar part will still be controled by the same Layout control panel section you have already been using...

Hope this helps, let us know how it turns out.
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