page/forum width

[tpr]

i want to have the page (main table) take 100% of the page and the forum to stay as it is (650px or something like that) how do i do that ?
now i went into stylevars and changed
main table width to 100%
and left the rest as it is but now all the forum is 100%

is this a bug or am i missing something ?

[Tommy Boy]

In order to make 'Liquid' (expanding width) versions of these styles, you will need to edit the Stylevars for each style and make the following changes:
Main Table Width: 100%
Form Width: auto
User Control Panel Form Width: auto

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88013

[himerus]

The "main table width" affects the entire board, not just the outer table.

It sounds like you want to use the extra space for other content on your site? if that is the case, you can edit the templates to create another table around your forum, and leave the stylevar for main table width to the default, and use the other "outer" table that you create as your 100% table to use other cells for other content... I hope that sounded right. I'm using an extra table on my isp forum that has the forums at a full 100% minus 125 pixels for the advertisements & links on the right.

[cdaknight]

Hi, I really like the way your forum is setup... but I was wondering exactly how you did that because I am looking to implement a side bar like that as well.

Thanks,
Chris

[himerus]

My implementation of a sidebar is a very minimal version, and there are tons of "sidebar hacks" out there, but I did mine just as a simple template edit.

In the "Edit Templates" section of the "Style Manager", in the header template, after:

<!-- /logo -->

I added:

<table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td width="100%" valign="top">

This puts the full body of the site into a new table which I can manipulate how I want. I specified that the first table cell (which will contain the main forum data, forums, posts, etc. would be 100% so that it would stretch to the full ammount excluding the sidebar that I include in the footer template.

In the footer template at the very begining, before any other code, I added:

</td>
<td width="125px" align="center" valign="top">
<br />
    <!-- This would be anything and everything you want in your sidebar -->
 </td>
</tr>
</table>

This closes the main table cell that was created in the header, and starts a new cell that I have made 125px, but can be whatever you want it to be. I had to add an extra <br /> tag at the start of this cell to shift everything to line up properly.

To make the sidebar content match the style of the site, you could try something like this INSIDE of the table cell for the sidebar, you can create another table that uses the class="tborder" attribute to give it the same border that the main forum section has... you can use then on table cells inside of that, the class="tcat" for the section that looks like my "Links" section, or also class="thead" for the darker cells. (I'm not using that one in my sidebar)

You can really customize this in about 5 trillion different ways to suit your needs. For me, this was quick, simple, and didn't require hacking any files like some of the sidebar mods do.

I hope this helps a little.

[rrottman]

This is the easiest and best description of a sidebar "hack" I ever found. Thanks so much. Only one question: Why do you create your sidebar in the footer template? Couldn't you just have opened two table columns in the beginning?

[himerus]

On my implementation, the reason the "content" of the sidebar is in the footer, was because I wanted it on the right side, opposed to the left, and since the "main" content of the site would always extend past the header file, the first cell was just created to start the table, and later add to the content on every page....

If you wanted the bar on the left, this would change, and the data would be placed in a table cell before the main table cell began...

I'm sure there may still be many easier ways to do it than I did, I just figured that out quickly, and didn't want to do ANY file hacks, so it was a easy template edit.

[rrottman]

Any idea on how to achieve that the "sidebar" starts at the same point where the navbar starts? I guess if you want to do that you have to change files, don't you? Any idea?

[himerus]

If you looked at my site, the top of the navbar, and my "sidebar" are the same.... is this what you are talking about?

[rrottman]

Yes, how did you do this?
If I do the changes you have described here, my sidebar starts at the top of the page while the navbar is way more down the page.

[himerus]

find the section that looks like this:

</table>
<!-- /logo -->

Add the new table after that... I did the same thing the first time I did it, and it looked horrible, so the "logo" section is a table all by itself, so just add the "new" table right after that one is done. this should do the trick... The only weird thing I had, was the sidebar was up an extra line from the navbar, so I added the <br /> tag at the beggining of my custom table cell containing the sidebar, and they line up beautifully.

On the same note, I closed my custom table immediately at the beginning of the footer template, so that the footer bar, and extra footer material I inserted would span the entire page, and not just the "main" section.

[rrottman]

Thanks again for explaining all that to me and being so patient... :-)

I managed to get it aligned with navbar and footer. Now I have another issue. To make it easy, just take a look at my test forum:

http://www.rottmann.net/forum/index.php

I edited the templates exactly as you described but "my" sidebar sits far at the right hand side of the page. Any idea?

[rrottman]

Found it: The Stylevar "Main Table Width", right? Changed from 760 px (default) to 100%.

[himerus]

Yes.... I think if you want to use the default 760px width for the main forum, you could just align that table cell to the left instead of the right... I like mine to be expanding to any browser size, so I avoid "static" templates.

The weird thing when I look at your page is how narrow the bar is.... it should be 125 pixels (or whatever you want), and I checked the source for that page, and it looked right, but it appears very narrow... only the width of the word sidebar... hmmm...

I also changed the stylevar for the outer padding of the table... I think by default it's like 20 px or maybe 15, but I changed mine to 5 to give me the extra room on page.

Now that you've created that new cell, you can really do anything you want with it. I took my new sidebar cell, and have several nested tables in there, and the <fieldset> section that my links are in that match the look & feel of vB. The template system with vB is amazing... my site is the first time I've set it up, and I've only been working with it for a little under a month.. truly amazing system. <plug>

[rrottman]

I hope I do not bother you too much. Now I run into another problem, maybe it's simply to late where I live. (Middle of the night here in Germany.)

If you might take a look into my producton site?

Go to http://www.kurt-nilsen.de . Select the FORUM link to the left. (I cannot provide you with a direct forum link as I set it up in a way that would not allow to go directly into the forum.)

You see that my sidebar now starts one line above the navbar. But my footer template seems to be like you said:

</td>
<td width="125px" align="center" valign="top" class="tcat">
<br />
    Sidebar
</td>
</tr>
</table>