Making the post section wider in WordPress

Could somebody point me to a tutorial on modifying the default theme in WordPress “twenty ten” style? I’d like to make the text area wider but haven’t found where to change that yet.

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9 Responses to Making the post section wider in WordPress

  1. Scott K says:

    I don’t know, but I wanted to make sure you were aware of something closely related: the risk of using free themes found online.

    Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else | WPMU — [Armed only with the words “free WordPress themes,” builtBackwards’ Theme Authenticity Checker Plugin and Donncha O Caoimh’s Exploit Scanner, I’m going to take a look through the first page of Google to see just how safe pages ranking for “Free WordPress Themes” are.]

  2. tim says:

    from a glance at your style sheet, it looks like your div id=main has a fixed width of 940. that contains the id=container, in which your content is arranged. i’d suggest familiarizing yourself with the css, there probably isn’t an easy answer to this question because every component may be related to each other.

    a useful tool is google’s chrome browser, if you right click>inspect element on a page you can access their ‘developer’s tools’. there, you can change elements of your css on the fly to see what happens.

    • Oleg Volk says:

      I know CSS, used to teach web design classes. Just haven’t had time to see if I could get at the same controls through WordPress dashboard or if I have to edit styles directly.

      • John Hardin says:

        Kevin at Smallest Minority had exactly that problem, and it turned out that the template had an explicit fixed width. I’ll see if I can find the fix I sent him…

        Ok, here: (hope this comes through formatted usably…)


        On Mon, 2010-11-22 at 22:11 -0700, Kevin Baker wrote:
        > On 11/22/2010 10:00 PM, John Hardin wrote:
        > > Feel free to send me a copy of the theme file you're editing, I may
        > > be able to suggest something.
        >
        > It's attached as a text file. Feel free to, err. . . play with it.
        > Yeah, that's the word!
        >
        > Kevin

        Okay, I see what they're doing there. They let you define one width
        value (content.width) and then use that to generate the other variables.
        Without changes this template _forces_ you to be non-dynamic.

        Try this: a few lines past where you set content.width, you'll see:

        .content-outer, .content-fauxcolumn-outer, .region-inner {
        min-width: $(content.width);
        max-width: $(content.width);
        _width: $(content.width);
        }

        The $(content.width) bits are variable substitutions. This is the
        section of javascript that I was altering on my local copy of the
        rendered page, which has the numeric size value you provided substituted
        in place of $(content.width). The max-width line is what you want to
        change.

        I suggest for testing purposes change that to:

        .content-outer, .content-fauxcolumn-outer, .region-inner {
        min-width: $(content.width);
        max-width: 2000px;
        _width: $(content.width);
        }

        which will let you set the minimum and default width as you've been
        doing and sets a large upper limit for dynamic sizing. I don't like
        setting the min-width the same as the default width, but let's not
        fiddle with multiple things at once.

      • tim says:

        Ah, what I meant was the css specific to the default wp theme. I don’t think I have ever encountered a wp theme that didn’t force you to do some css hacking to get it the way you like unfortunately.

  3. Tarra says:

    It depends on the theme. Some have been thoughtfully created with built in dashboard controls but you’ll almost always find yourself hacking the CSS to make it work.

    As an aside, I just setup Multisite for the first time – Now the Little One has her own Photo Blog: http://arlynne.azrialgalleries.com/

    ~T

  4. Randy says:

    It is in your CSS even paid themes like I use from http://www.elegantthemes.com/ make you edit the CSS to obtain those kinds of tweaks.

  5. Jason says:

    Try downloading Artisteer. You can make your theme sing and dance with that program and do exactly what you want with it. I enjoy following your work, btw. Brock in SC recommended you.

  6. Jennifer says:

    I’ve had to mess with the CSS for all of that kind of thing. If you are hosting on your own server, that’s easy. Just update the file and FTP it onto your server. If you are on wordpress.org, I understand that is a rather difficult undertaking. We buy our own hosting rather than live under wordpress rules. You might look into some of the wordpress themes that are set up for photo blogs as they might come stock with better displays. Don’t go looking on Google for free themes as was pointed out already.

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