Page formatting skewed

Wait a sec, if you are paying, is your site on WordPress.COM? www.ads-software.com is totally free and staffed only by volunteers and this IS SUPPORT (again, it’s free – you are not paying anything for help here).

Here’s a direction for fixing your site:

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Validating_a_Website

Thanks so much for your reply and the link – will read it now. I pay to have my www.ads-software.com site hosted through GoDaddy. I thought WordPress.com was free; I have two free blogs on it – ??? I only know GoDaddy provides no WordPress support (their words) and that whenever I’ve requested support through WordPress, I am usually chastised for not figuring it out myself.

I hope I didn’t come across as snarky – I did not intend it that way. I’m not even upset; I’m just kind of confused as to what I can even ask for anymore. I’ve even sought to change my blog to Squarespace, just for the support; but it’s so wonky I can’t get it to work. Thanks again.

You’re paying GD, not WP – and since everyone here helps out for free, it sounded a bit off – but that’s a hazard of online communications — happens all the time around here both ways — no biggie :). It can be a bit confusing about help here, but basically we support themes, plugins and WP core. How extensive varies — depends on who’s around, what you are asking, etc. Your best bet is to start your own threads rather than posting in old/existing ones, provide good info about your issue and play nice :). You can always ask whatever you want – and some things will be possible, others not. Even that’s not personal – just a function of what we can do here. (Many of us volunteers love helping out here and wish we could solve everything for everyone…but just not always possible.)

Basic WordPress.COM is free – but they have various upgrades including for support of various levels. That’s why I though maybe your site was there.

So as to your real issue – looks like you have some code errors – the missing, extra or unclosed or other tag errors are generally the problematic ones. Others may not be a big deal.

Thank you, that clarifies a lot. I did look at the validation and it looks like a mess, 32 errors. I haven’t a clue how to even go about fixing those – I don’t even know which are important and which are trivial, or even which I caused. I am going to shop around for another theme – I love Vintage Camera, but I can’t devote the time needed to fix it.

Thanks again – I do appreciate the time volunteers take to help me out. I’ve had some very nice people help me here.

No problem – I would not assume the problems are in the theme though – or lots of people would have the same issues, and it’s a well-coded theme. It might be plugins or from tags getting accidentally messed up in your content. If you want help sorting them out, post back.

You’re right – I’m sure I messed things up somehow. I’d love to keep the theme – it’s the only one that really looks how I want it, and also looks decent on a variety of mobile browsers.

If you could just please help me tighten up the padding spaces throughout the theme (on style sheet?) and fix the page that I messed up, I would be very grateful.
Should I make a child theme first?

https://sweetpalettecakes.com (tighten all empty padding spaces to a minimum, but not have any elements touch each other)
https://sweetpalettecakes.com/gallery/ (skewed ribbon and text background – I’m sure I did this)

Thanks so much for any / all help.

Adding this to your style.css should fix the gallery page for you:

.hentry:before,
.hentry:after {
	content: "";
	display: table;
}
.hentry:after {
	clear: both;
}

That *was* a theme bug, and it should be fixed in the next iteration of the theme. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

Specific instruction on reducing padding is harder, because that could mean a whole lot of different things. But the gist is, you can use CSS in a child theme or a CSS plugin (like Jetpack) to do this.

Using Firebug (or a similar browser tool) to Inspect your code will allow you to see what margin/padding rules are applied to each element. You can adjust them directly in the browser to see how it looks (without affecting your live website) and when you’re satisfied with the appearance, copy those CSS rules into your child theme’s stylesheet or Custom CSS plugin.

Generally, if you’re customizing a theme, you’ll need to plan on spending some time with CSS. I understand that’s not always possible, in which case I usually recommend posting your project on jobs.wordpress.net.

Hope this helps!

Thank you so much! I’m so glad at least this one element wasn’t my error! ?? I just don’t know where on the style.css to paste the code – could you please advise me?

Firebug is awesome! I see now that I had the right idea – I reduced the margin, border, padding etc. in the stylesheet. But I reduced them all to 0. I can’t seem to change them back. If I have not luck with the child theme, I will post it on jobs.wordpress.net (which I’d never heard of!).

Thanks so much again for your help, and for a GREAT theme!

Also – I tried to paste the code into Edit CSS, and got an error message at Line 3: “Unexpected token ‘&’ at line 3, col. 14.”

Hmm, where are you pasting the code? Can you give me the path from your Dashboard — like, Appearance -> Edit CSS, or somewhere else?

If you’re using Jetpack and still getting that error, you may need to try updating Jetpack, or deactivate all other plugins to rule out a conflict. If that still doesn’t work, you may need to report it to the Jetpack devs as a bug.

(Don’t use the Custom CSS panel in the Appearance -> Theme Options area. That’s out of date and has since been replaced with better plugins, like Jetpack — I need to find a way to disable it for new users.)

Hi – I pasted the code in the Appearance / Edit CSS / Appearance Stylesheet Editor. I deactivated all my plugins and tried again – no luck.
Thanks again –

I mean CSS Stylesheet editor (though I’m sure you know that)….

Can you copy & paste the exact code you put into the CSS Stylesheet Editor? Sometimes if the markup is incorrect the plugin will give you an error.

(Don’t forget to put back-ticks around it when you post it here, or highlight it and use the handy code button^^^)

Hi again – this code is what I paste and save. When I first paste it, the error message at first is:
Unexpected token ‘&’ at line 3, col. 18. Expected RBRACE at line 3, col. 24

.hentry:before,
.hentry:after {
content: "";
display: table;
}
.hentry:after {
clear: both;
}

And after I save it, the code and message change. The error message changes to:
Unexpected token ‘&’ at line 3, col. 11 – and the code changes to:
.hentry:before,
.hentry:after {
content: "
display: table;
}

.hentry:after {
clear: both;
}

I hope that makes sense. Thank you.