Looking for themes with minimal L/R margins

So … it’s too much trouble for you to look through the theme viewer yourself – you’d rather someone else do it for you? And then guess what kind of theme suits your purposes/design needs best?

This is not a very helpful response for a newcomer – why bother responding at all if you have nothing of value to add? If you think about my question you might understand that there is a deeper question/issue being posed.

FWIW I did review lots of themes before posting and almost all use wide L and R margins. I also reviewed the docs and (so far) have not found any discussion or examples that discuss the customization of column widths and margins – this is not always simple and there can be unwanted side effects).

The only one I them I found that comes close is an old Rubic theme which is not currently supported. Here’s a link

If you can point me towards similar links/examples that would be great.

Very sorry you don’t find it helpful – but the fact remains you are asking exactly that. Nobody has any idea what you are looking for other than a 100% width. maybe – that’s not clear either. I doubt seriously a single person who follows this part of the codex can name off hand more than 1 or 2 themes that offer what you ask for – let alone render an opinion what might satisfy your needs. A little reality check here, okay?

You are not likely to find discussions in this forum about customizing column widths, margins, or the like – this is not the place for that, as the forum name states clearly. If anyplace, the themes and templates forum might be a help – but most people understand that trying to edit all the files needed to change a theme around is a waste of energy and would simply look through all the themes until they find something that fits their requirements out of the box. OR – you could try one of the many CSS forums to see if anyone there could help with adjusting your theme.

Everyone starts someplace. I have only been using WP myself for less than a year, know absolutely no PHP coding (though I have more experience with CSS and markup) – yet I have managed to modify my chosen theme fairly extensively. Nobody can or will do it for you. Scan the themes directory, find one that fits your need, then get to work modifying the colors, graphics, what have you to get what you want like everyone else does.

And BTW … if you think anyone is going to spend their time pondering what “deeper question” you are referring to – you are definitely in the wrong place. The volunteers here will respond to a pointed question – not reflect on what you might me considering from some metaphysical source.

Well, I’ll answer the why. The left/right margin space has to do with browser size/screen resolution. The default theme, which many themes are based from, will display nicely in a 800×600 browser window without the need to scroll horizontally, and with very little wasted white space.

I keep mine at that size so that my folks, who run Windows at 800×600 can view my blog ok. Many websites are going to a 1024×768 minimum it seems, or even slightly larger (how wide the browser has to be to prevent horizontal scrolling).

In any event, the width is controlled by the style.css file of the theme. For example, the #page id has a width of 760px, and then other elements have widths below that to ensure they fit within it.

Go to style.css in the themes directory, and change the margins yourself. You’ll be looking for something like this:

margin-left: 30px;

or

margin: 20px 30px 20px 30px;

In the second, those measurements are for top, right, bottom, left, respectively. If you wanted to change the left and right margins to 10px you would then type:

margin: 20px 10px 20px 10px;