changing the colour of the grey stripes on the menu?
 

Hiya - I want to change the colour of the grey stripes so they are the same as the background colour of my menus - so I'd have 2 stripes of orange rather than grey (http://www.lactivist.net)

Huge thanks
Lisa

Those gray stripes are a background image. You will have to create a new one to replace what is there. The image is called in ATO>Body, Text, & Links as:

cool, thank you! there is still a chunk missing though, should I do backgrounds 5 and 6 as well?

I'm not sure what you mean by there is a chunk missing but it shouldn't have anything to do with the other images. You just need to remove that background line in ATO>Body, Text, & Links. You also may want to go to ATO>Add HTML/CSS Inserts>CSS Inserts and take out the background line.
Change This
To This

The bit missing is the grey section next to 'polls' that runs all the way up to and past the search box on www.lactivist.net. I tried taking off the search box but it made no difference.

Thanks, sorry to be thick but I can't see what I am supposed to do on the first bit you suggested, there seems to be no option for that, and on the css inserts there is no place to change code just this:

CSS Inserts Add CSS code here that you want to append to your theme's CSS file.

So it looks like I can add code but not take it away or change it

In ATO>Add HTML/CSS Inserts>CSS Inserts in the big box you should see a whole bunch of CSS. One of entries should start with div#menu ul.rmenu. You need to take out the background:transparent line.

Here is a video of what I mean.

I don't get that big box of code, I just have a narrow strip with this code in it:
td#header {

I can't scroll up or down

you probably have a plugin conflict. several plugins can cause this behavior, try disabling all your plugins and see if the box gets bigger.

I was looking for a solution to this problem as well. Larry's solution worked for me. Thanks again Larry.

Thank you but I can't get it to show up and I am reluctant to disable any more plugins - which file do I need to change if I upload it directly instead? I looked on style.css but I can't see the code you are talking about.

If you post a list of the plugins you have installed we MIGHT be able to tell you which one is the problem. Disabling all the plugins is just a test though. What I usually do is disable all the plugins to see if the the problem goes away and then start adding them back in a few at a time until the problem reappears. Then it's just a matter of narrowing it down from there.

I'm happy just changing the css honestly, if only I knew where it was!

The CSS is in the box mentioned. If you put your cursor in the box and hit Ctrl+A to select all then paste what you selected in a text editor such as notepad (NOT Word or a word processor) you will see all the code. You could edit in the text editor, select it all and paste back into the box by hitting Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+V to overwrite everything that is there.but if you don't do it just right it will mess up the CSS that is there.

If you send me a PM with a login and Password I will take a look.

thanks, I have done it now but I wasn't happy messing around with code I could not see, it would have been a whole lot easier to just tell me where the code lives :-)

As moderators we sometimes don't know how much the individual asking the question knows and so hesitate answering in ways that COULD cause issues if they don't follow instructions exactly. In this case you are pasting code into a box and where can't see that what you pasted is right without copying and pasting into a text editor. For many this copying and pasting thing is very confusing.

Also you should be able to see the whole box and this issue will make maintenance more cumbersome.

At least you are working and that is a good thing.

FYI the CSS that is in the CSS Inserts section is stored in the wordpress dAtabase as part of the atahualpa options - it is in the wp-options table. As of 3.4.7, all options are stored in one row to reduce calls to the db.

So what this means is that if you want to change the CSS there, in your case, you can disable all your plugins to see if one is causing the conflict (you could turn them off a couple at a time, check it, then turn them back on) or you can use the cut and paste method Larry laid out.