How wide can you make a template?

Technically, a template can be as wide as you want it to be. The reason many templates limit their widths is due to browser concerns – not everyone runs their browser in full-screen mode, and most people still browse at an 800×600 screen resolution. Horizontal scrolling is evil (generally speaking), so many templates that use a fixed width are no more than about 770 pixels wide.

On the other hand, if you use a fluid-width style, your content width will adjust automatically to browser window width.

In any case, as far as the Kubrick template goes (the default WP1.5 template), you can adjust the “widecolumn” class to be wider (up to about 600 pixels I think) without ill effects. The “narrowcolumn” class can maybe go to 470 or 480, but it is limited by the overall width of the template and the fact that there is a sidebar on pages that use the “narrowcolumn” class.

You can make a template as wide as you like. *Most* designs are made to fit within an 800X600 viewport, less chrome and vertical scrollbar. If you make it about 770px wide, you’ll be fine. It’s totally up to you whether you wish to force your readers to use the horizontal scrollbar, but from what I’ve heard, most people don’t like it.

You could always use the Vesuvius template or some other fluid layout that will resize according to the user’s view window.
https://positioniseverything.net has a lot of good info on this.

EDIT: LOL – Ya beat me to it, RustIndy! ??

Ok, RustIndy and NuclearMoose, thanks for the good explainations. Some of the fixed templates have too too narrow a text area, (4″) but otherwise looks good, if only I can make it about 1-1/2″ wider.

NuclearMoose, I tried the Vesuvius and like it a lot. The Trident was a bit too narrow but I’ll try to make it wider.

Thanks!

You’re welcome, knotty!