How to switch Kubrick sidebar

What have you already tried?

Well, I’ve tried so many different ideas I don’t know if I can remember them all. However, all attempts (in their various forms) have been to modify:

.narrowcolumn {
float: left;
padding: 0 0 20px 45px;
margin: 0px 0 0;
width: 450px;
}

And/or:

#sidebar
{
padding: 20px 0 10px 0;
margin-left: 545px;
width: 190px;
}

I have tried making .narrowcolumn float right. I have tried making #sidebar have no margin-left or even no margin-left and a large margin-right. I have tried to modify both .narrowcolumn and #sidebar at the same time.

Nothing. Not a thing. I refresh my browser and I see no change in the visual display. This does not make sense.

I am modifying the CSS from within the WP admin interface and I’m beginning to wonder if this is somehow not taking.

. . . Or maybe I still haven’t changed either .narrowcolumn or #sidebar correctly. Any help would be great.

This is a lot more complicated than you may think. And I thought I saw somewhere that someone had made a new template that featured this switch…might want to do some searching on this and save yourself some trouble.

Couple of things to try.

Try add a float:rightto the sidebar to make it “go” over to the right around the narrow column.

Then, instead of using the margin-left, try right:0 and top:0, or change the top to a height below your header if it doesn’t work, like top:150px.

I think the first thing is to carry out a really gross change like putting the bg to red to make sure that you are in fact editing the file. If you are not, then we can advise accordingly. Good luck.

Okay . . . something is not working right. I took the advice of Root one step further. I went into wp-admin/theme-editor.php and opened up the stylesheet using that interface. I then selected all of the text in the stylesheet and deleted all of it. I then clicked the view site link. Once the site came up I pressed the refresh button . . . nothing. The site still appears as if it has a style sheet.

Then I go back to the theme editor and–vola!–all of the css I just deleted is back. What is going on? It seems every change I put in using the theme editor will vanish into thin air. (Eeeergggh! And I spent hours typing stuff into that window. Hours of pointless labor.) Why is this so and how might I fix this problem?

Thanks for any help.

Give this a whirl:

switch
.narrowcolumn { float: left } to float: right

#sidebar { margin-left: 545px } to margin-right: 545px

Kathy to fix the technical before we get into the coding I would switch to ftp

Okay, switched to ftp. Coding change then worked. So, how I thought to change the layout was correct to begin with, the WP interface simply wasn’t doing it. I have to do it with an external editor and then upload.

Can anyone explain that?

Possible explanation: your css file wasn’t writable.

Then is any file writable in the WP interface or must it be set manually?

If it must be set manually it might be a good thing for the instructions to point this out during the install. I didn’t even get an error telling me that my changes couldn’t be applied when I was editing. This could end up as a large stumbling block to other new users.

Well at least you are rolling now. There does seem to be a bit of borkage in the presentation manager every now and again but nothing we can put our fingers on.

1. Theme editor.
Just deleting something in text area doesn’t change enything. Below that area you can see either:
a) a button on the right saying “Update file” – if the file is writable
b) a warning “If this file was writable you could edit it.” on the left – if the file is NOT writable

2. For experiencing with styling/design I wouldn’t do it directly on my server (no backup or undo if things go wrong!) – I’d rather have a local install or a testbed until I finish my customisation

Thank you, Moshu!

I saw the text “If this file was writeable you could edit it” however, I figured that since I could click in the text and start editing then, apparently, I could edit it. Not so, obviously.

Perhaps the warning might better read “This file is not presently writable. No changes you make will be saved” and include a link to instructions on making it writable, chmod, etc.

As for issue 2.–I am fooling around presently. Also, I tend to save the safe backup copy on my hard drive and fool around with the copy on the server as I want to be able to see my changes in the program. (I don’t know how one could do a local install–that would be interesting!)

For local install you can try Podz’s tutorial for XAMPP
https://tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/xampp/
and if it is a new install you can skip the DB backup part.

Thank you, Moshu–that’s a very interesting link. And I really appreciate all your help.