new user question

[weedris]

I've had a blog up for one day so I'm a really NEW user. Someone else installed everything for me BUT:

- How do I format the "coment" section that appears at the end of each of my submissions to look like the rest of my blog? (appearance, text size, color, etc)

Thank you if you can help!

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

You can either use CSS formatting by editing your templates style.css file, or if you need to change the RAW HTML coding, you can edit the comments.tpl template file of your template directory.

Regards,
Garvin

[chickens]

@garvin: You probably just went right over this person's head. Let me take a stab at explaining it to the non-programmer...

@weedris: To change most style elements of serendipity you have to edit the HTML and CSS code in the template. By the sounds of it, you might not be up for this yourself. If that is the case you might want to talk to the person who setup the site for you. If you do know a little bit of HTML and/or CSS then editing the template files are not that difficult.

You can find all of the necessary files in the template directory and then in the folder named whatever your current template is called. From there you can find all of the necessary files that are needed to edit your template.

If you are looking for something simpler you might want to check out the Bulletproof template engine. It makes many of the small things much easier. The only issue with it right now is that it is new and many of the current themes are not based on it. Therefore it might be a little hard for the non-geek to figure out.
http://s9y-bulletproof.com/

[weedris]

And i am a beginner.

it looks like I don't have a separate template "comments.tpl template file".
Looks like everything is in the style.cc file (yes?)

would it be this text:

/* Comments */

.serendipity_comment {
font-size: small;
margin-left: 10px;
margin-right: 10px;
padding: 3px;
overflow: auto;
}

.serendipity_comment_source {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #999;
}

.serendipity_commentsLabel {
font-size: small;
}

.serendipity_commentsTitle {
font-size: normal;
font-weight: bold;
text-transform: uppercase;
}

If so what can I change? Or should I copy and paste from another template?

[chickens]

If you could give a link to your site so we can see what you want changed it would be much easier. Also a brief description of what you want changed.

[weedris]

the link is here:

http://www.edrissalon.com/blog/index.ph ... l#extended

or more simply here: http://www.edrissalon.com/blog/index.php

the 'form' for the comments is just ugly. I'd like to change this area so it looks more like the blog above (text size, type & color) and maybe changing the background of it to the same as the side bar.

thank you again, I've now been on this forum and looking at user docs for sixteen hours

[chickens]

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a designer. I am by no means an expert when it comes to CSS. There are quite a few of them around here and if they give different advice than me, take it.

Now that I've stated that we can get into the fun stuff...

To change the background color for the entire comment section form you will want to add serendipity_section_commentform to your CSS file. You can then add a background to this section of the CSS and it will provide the background for the entire comment section.

Code: Select all

.serendipity_section_commentform{
  background:#fffff;
}

The problem will be that there is that the comments are below the post rather then in their own separate section. By this I mean, well just take a look at the screenshot first.



That red box is the section serendipity_section_commentform on the site. To fill in the rest of the page around it you will have to do some major tweaking to the template.

The box is from web developer tools extension for firefox. If you choose the highlight current element it will show you what you are looking at in the design of the site. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

[weedris]

how do I just get it to pop up instead?

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

how do I just get it to pop up instead?

Go to the "Configuration" section of your blog. Under "general options" or "design" there should be an option to say "Use popups", which you can turn on.

Regards,
Garvin

[weedris]

That's what I can't figure out, as:
Enable use of popup windows is YES
??

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Ah, okay. Your template doesn't evaluate to hide the comment section from the extended entry view when popups are chosen. I believe there are some templates that don't do this.

In that case, one would need to edit the entries.tpl file and add a check {if $use_popups} around the comment(form) section.

I'm tired as hell so I can't be more precise than this...maybe Zak or some other helpful spirit can flesh out the details here...

Regards,
Garvin

[Don Chambers]

Your comment form does pop-up!!

I think what might be confusing you is how/when the comment form is present. It can be displayed in 2 ways - first is what that screenshot above shows. The entry has been expanded (ie, "continue reading blah blah..."). The comment form always shows at the bottom of that page. However, if you click in the entry footer (ie, "posted by ..." ) on Comments(#), that will trigger the comment popup if you have it enabled (which you do).

[weedris]

Thank you. That lest got rid the ugliness embedded in my file. Now I just have to figure out how to format it!

Thank you, this is a big help.