Section header gaps and margins

[SteveM]

We have recently upgraded our sites to V8.5 from 7.5 - the upgrade which has been largely successful except for the following - oddities

1) We use SMART theme and now appear to have a larger gap between the top line of a product page and the first row of products (3 columns)

2) The left column seems to have shrunk

I'm sure I've forgotten to change something really obvious, but I have gone a bit gaga after upteen snapshots, installs, (we're also MU) as well as a the whole worldpay upgrade - so I apologise in advance - for what I I think I must have done in the past - but I've forgotten..

Is it a v8 thing?

Thanks


Steve
(now.. where's that send button?)

www.tableconfetti.co.uk

[jont]

Do you have this uploaded to a test area on a server? Much easier to track down what is happening.

1. the smart theme uses tables for the outer layout so simply find the <td> width for the left hand column and increase the width accordingly (it will be in the outer layout for the smart theme and also in the same for the brochure pages)

2. the gap could be anything hence a live demo would be good.. if you have Firefox (if not download it straight way) highlight the last part of the design before the gap down to the start of the design after the gap.. right click and view the source code to reveal what is happening in the HTML.

It could be line breaks <br> ... white on white text .... CSS margins / padding as a starter for 10

[SteveM]

site is live

Jont

thanks for the quick response, I'll get ino those areas you suggest, it's all a bit different from v7 - so not really comfortable with it yet,

The site is live - www.tableconfetti.co.uk it's all working
and you can see the "gap" in the product pages, and the left margin is evident.

We have several other sites that follow this theme - we change the colours, logos and a few other cosmetic areas, nothing too extravagent as we aren't designers .. so we have similar changes to make in a couple of sites.

Steve

[ackerman]

Looks to me as if the products are centred on the page. Maybe it is a fixed width but the outer layer is not.
Also your menu bar is behaving strangely in FF. When you point to a menu item, the one underneath is scored through. This must be vertical spacing I think, as the underline should be on the one where your mouse is.

[jont]

Steve - you have an addition block of code you do not need right above the advert for Actinic (do you really need that - and especially at the most important part on the product pages?)

<div align="center"><p></p></div><br>

That is adding a line of paragraph text and a line break

[jont]

The left column seems to have shrunk

I think the right hand column has grown! The CSS shows the column should be 150px which the left hand side measures. The right hand title with the underscore for the website could be forcing the right column to expand as there is no wrapping effect in HTML for contiguous words.

[SteveM]

Spurrious line fo code?

Jont,

Where is this line, (also how on earth has the actinic logo appeared at the top of the page - not at the foot)??

We delayed upgrading as it all seemed too complicated and our worst concerns seem realised,, I had managed all sorts of things with V7 and was relatively comfortable with the AUG and editing templates. Now that all seems to have disappeared.. so new learning curve.

WRT the right hand columns - they weren't there previously we could change that in layouts in V7 - cant find that in 8.

Pity there's not a simply conversion course to help..

Steve

[jont]

Editing in v8 is far quicker and intuitive in v8 than previous incarnations of Actinic. Switch to the design tab, click on the part of the code you want to edit in the preview window and the layout will appear in the code window accordingly.

For the additional code try looking in the layout called something like "section page with section name at top".. which is the main holding layout beneath te main outer layout hierarchy.

For the column widths either change the widths to be larger or change the text in the right hand column (make it a split word or reduce the font size) .. it is the size of the word causing the right hand column to expand.

HTH

[SteveM]

Thank you

Jont, thanks for your help we are tidying up things slowly but surely. It is a question of familarisation with where to look to find these templates and layouts.

As an aside - our adword conversion and analytics appear to have stopped - any suggestions - (we do have a number of "primary's" marked as "upgraded" following the upgrade,) is there something we need to undo and then reapply?

[jont]

Upgraded layouts may require any alterations adding back in there - the old copy should still be there for you to either reference or use

[SteveM]

Fixed the gap at top of product pages

After a little frustration at not fixing this problem of having a chunk of white space at the top of each product page, I tried the hotline.. ace response - they were aware of the problem - apparently sometimes when upgrading from V7 to V8 there can be an issue with "Cell Padding" - (which pads out space between the top of the page and the first product - a bit like inserting line feeds)

Resolution - from a product page, click on the breadcrumb trail and then click on the bottom left icon (Navigate to Parent Layout)

Click until you get to the

Layout Code - Standard Section Page

scroll down til you find the <BR> line then you should see something like
<BR>

<TABLE WIDTH="500" COLS="3" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ALIGN="CENTER">


My problem was that CELL PADDING which was set to ="10"

all we had to do was change this "0" - click apply and job done.

I don't know if that helps anyone - but we have done this on all our sites (it was a problem on them all) and that issue is now resolved, so we're now onto the next..

Thanks to the support desk for such a quick resolution.