I have total redesigned my web page and hope you like what you see.
OK, so it’s not a redesign and, in fact, you may not even notice the change. But it is important to note what changed. archshrk.com is now more user friendly for those viewing this site with vision impairments. I didn’t make the text bigger (which has been an issue for some visitors) but I did make the site function better when viewed without styles. Basically, many people who use the web turn off styling or use a program that “reads” the web page for them. For the average user, you look at my site the way I intended with the content smack dab in the middle where it is easily identified as the “content”‘ of my site. You are not distracted by the sidebar items when viewing the page normally. Unfortunately, those using a “reading” program would have to sift through all the left sidebar stuff before getting to the “content” of my pages. It may be interesting stuff the first time but reading it every time they visited my site would get annoying. i could have incorporated special navigation tools into the header so they could skip ahead but that would be only half the problem and may require more work then I can do with my current knowledge base.
So back to the change.
When viewing the site today versus yesterday you will not see any changes. There is the header, footer, main content area and a left and right sidebar. But if you use firefox and select VIEW > PAGE STYLE > NO STYLE you will see that the left sidebar comes after the content are rather than before. This was a simple change in wordpress. I simply moved the code that called for the left sidebar from the bottom of the header to the top of the footer. Making this change on your site depends on the theme you use. Many themes only have a right sidebar so no problem. Themes with a left sidebar may have addressed this already. But it all depends on your style.css and div tags.
Your sidebar will need to be called out after your content area regardless of the theme you use. The trick is to have a sidebar that is left (or right) justified and have the content fill the remaining portion of your “container” area. I can’t get into all the technical stuff since I’m posting this on the fly but if you want me to explain it better or help with a specific theme, let me know and I’ll see what I can do. Sorry, I can only help with WordPress a my straight HTML skills are limited due to atrophy.
In my browser window – Firefox, not full-screen, roughly 800-900 px wide – I see left sidebar and post content. For the right sidebar and your header I need to scroll. Did you have a fixed-width content section before? I can’t remember.
Not a problem; just an observation.
My theme has always been a fixed width theme although it has gotten wider over time. It’s currently 960px wide and has been for some time. Only about 9% of my visitors use less than 1024 resolution. The original theme is sized for 800 resolution but it seemed too narrow on larger screens – especially wide screens like my laptop.