change the color of the space outside of the content area
 

Does anyone know how to change the color of the space that is outside the content area?

Frank

Hi.

By outside the comment area, I assume you mean outside the center section? If that is the case, the answer is" you can tweak pretty much anything you wish. The "trick" is knowing where and how.

There are a whole host of configuration points within ATO (Atahualpa Theme Options) for 3.3.3 ... starting with the default settings for the entire site that are set in --> Body, Text, And Links. These are for every element of your site that does not have its own configuration option: "The styles you set here will apply to everything that doesn't get its own style." -- Flynn.

I'm attaching a spreadsheet (as a zipped up .CSV file) that I finished last night (or maybe it was the night before) that may be of some help. I created this to keep me "sane" while "tweaking" and "re-tweaking" all of the style locations for color, lines and text options until I got what I wanted. For now anyway. :)

This .CSV covers the vast majority of the configuration locations but I don't guarantee it has all of them; in part because you can add styling codes where it isn't necessarily obvious; an example would be in --> Post/Page Styling --> Headline Box.

By the way, you will notice that I "short handed" some of the section/feature names in the spreadsheet so they would fit within the column width I set up, but these abbreviations should be fairly obvious. The only "styling" name in my .CSV that may not make sense right away is "Color - All w/o" which stands for "Color - All without" ... which is the purpose of the Body, Text, Links section, as noted above.

Hope this helps.

P.S. If I've missed any obvious tweak points let me know and I'll update the .XLS.

Thanks for the spread sheet that will certainly help. The space that I am talking about is the space that is NOT the header, sidebars, body, and footer. I did find in the Body, Text, Links tab that I can change the color of entire background including the space around my site, but as soon as I put an image in the background, the space around my site defaults to white.

Frank

fcitino,

That, adding an image to the background of the site, is not something I've tried so, unless its one of the settings on the XLS that you haven't gotten to yet, I can't be of further help.

Hopefully one of the pro's will jump in with an answer. And when you do resolve it please let us know on the forum.

Glad you liked the XLS, maybe that can be made a "sticky" somewhere so other folks can find it.

Good luck.

There are two things you need to do, (1) set the background color of the BODY, then (2) set the background color of the LAYOUT. The LAYOUT (the container that holds the header, sidebars, center and footer) sits on top of the BODY of the page. If the LAYOUT color is not set, it is invisiable and you see the background color of the BODY.

Here is a sample that will set the BODY to a red, give the LAYOUT a padding and set it's background to white, plus a couple extra things:

Body Style:
------------------
font-family: tahoma, arial, sans-serif;
font-size: .9em;
padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 30px;
background: #AD4744;

Layout Container Style
------------------
border: solid 4px #000000;
padding: 10px;
background: #ffffff;
-moz-border-radius: 30px;
-khtml-border-radius: 30px;
-webkit-border-radius: 30px;
border-radius: 30px;

Each of the other areas: HEADER, SIDEBARS, CENTER and FOOTER (which each rests on top of the LAYOUT), the widgets (which rest on top of the SIDEBAR), the POSTS (which rest on top of the CENTER) each have their own backgrounds and styling, which keeps the whole thing interesting :)

That partially worked. I say partially because I am using a background image for the layout and the layout height changes with each page so, how much of the image that is visible varies with each page. Is there a way to set a fixed height the same way you can make the width fixed?

Frank

I just realized that I can do it with CSS!

Frank

Not really, the problem is controling the amount of content in a post. Even on a single page post, the height of the page is going to vary with the number of lines in the post and since a single page post by nature is going to contain the entire post, you can't control the height of the page (unless you figure out some way to limit the number of characters in a post)

You could repeat the background image and maybe use an image where the bottom could merge into the top so it looks like an endless image.

so there isn't any way to have a body image show in its entirety when you have a very short post? If there is a way to do that then I can make the body image fade into the background so that posts that are longer than the image will not have an abrupt background transition.

Frank

just have to say thank you: your code got me a little bit closer to understanding what's going on.

Hello Flynn or Juggledad: I have spent a few hours trying to make the wrapper/background, i.e. the browser window outside of my WP blog, a different color from my blog background. I even uploaded a black jpg image to try to follow Juggledad's instructions for using an image rather than just color #000000. But whatever I try, those areas of the browser window to the right and left of the blog just stay the same color as the background of my main column. Any easy to follow (for newbies) suggestions?
I'd really appreciate any help.

what version of Atahualpa and WP?
What is your url so I can take a look at what you are doing.

Atahualpa 3.2 and WP 2.8.6
http://www.lookingattheleft.com/2009...ver-give-in-2/
thanks!

I'm going to suggest that you upgrade Atahualpa. the current version is 3.4.4 which you can get at http://wordpress.bytesforall.com/?p=81. Once you are up to date, if you still have the problem, I'd be glad to help