What's happened to side menu's?

[aloebridge123]

Hi all,

I'm slowly updating the site, and feel that I'm nearly getting there - however, after making a few changes I've noticed that the right hand side bar has dropped from the side to below the centre frame in the shopping cart area - how do I get it back to the right side?

Click the link below to see what I mean.
http://www.aloevera-and-you.com/cgi-bin/ca000001.pl

Thanks

[leehack]

Linda

I've just had a look and i'm surprised it's working at all. Your code is so bloated and seems full of things not being used. When there is that much junk floating around, it is very hard to help you on what is going on.

When something wraps onto the next line, 99% of the time it is because it doesn't have enough room to fit into the area where you want it. Check your sizes, but first of all clean up your code, it's pretty horrific.

[aloebridge123]

Lee,

Thanks for your direct comments (on my previous posts aswell). I understand what you're saying re coding however as you've probably guessed I am not a web designer and I have built that site by myself with lots of hints and tips / plugins etc.. that I have taken from this forum and that's the only place i have taken code from.

So I have to say I would struggle to tidy up the code as i'm not skilled in that area. However I still have the problem with the menu - but only on the cart template - it seems to be okay on brochure pages - so why would size cause the issue on this template in particular and not the others?

[pinbrook]

often you get weird behavoiur that is simply caused by bad coding. I've experienced this myself with CSS - the correct code was then but it was being osfucated by bad code.

You will need to tidy up the code to get it to work....

this will also aid SEO efforts

[aloebridge123]

Thanks for your help Jo.

The problem I have is that I don't know what code is good / bad - should be there or shouldn't be???

Maybe I'll have to have a look and see what dreamweaver tells me - if it tells me anything??

[leehack]

I think the key Linda is to keep things simple and standard while you are getting to grips with the software and html/css. I know, before people jump on my back, that you can add code to pages if directed, but you will experience serious problems if it goes wrong as you haven't a clue what you are doing. If you have no idea it means the simplest things can get you stuck and more importantly render your site useless or lose visitors.

Although a standard actinic store is not the cleanest way of designing a store, it is infinitely better than what you are currently producing. I would suggest going back to a standard theme and if you then get stuck, we can offer more advice.

As previously mentioned the wrapping you are seeing is often due to size problems i.e. you are trying to fit a 150 wide column into an area that is only 140 wide. It can't fit so squeezes into the next available area where it can fit. This is a very common error, however it can be a right pig to sort out if you look at html and see double dutch.

Has it happened recently because of something, do you have a snapshot where it was working to which you can return?

PS - The cart pages are the first pages i check because they are the pages that always break a site, the reason being is that they need far more area than any other page does. You will often see a site designed thinking all is well, when in fact it is broken if someone goes to pay for anything.

Setting up hosting and checking the cart/checkout in your layout should be the first thing anyone does on a site, because of the problems these areas present otherwise. What is the width of your main area set in site options?

[RuralWeb]

The easiest way to sort out the problem is to create a new layout for the checkout pages that does not include the navigation or the right bar - this will produce a cleaner set of pages for your checkout.