I ticked always allow html, so don't know why the links are not working, but you can work it out I am sure.

Hi Ray..
My suggestion is that you look through the available skins at http://skins.b2evolution.net/ and find one that closely seems to suit what you want in basic structure and width etc.

You can easily add it to your current installation by uploading it to your skins folder and selecting it.
Read the links provided in the left panel on how to USE and CUSTOMISE skins

Your current skin is designed as a fixed width skin. You could edit it's CSS by making the #wrapper div wider and adjusting the bPost and bSideBar widths and margins but selecting another skin is easier in the long run.

Oh to be sailing at Auckland once more.... sensational

just for info, to make a link you need to use [url=http://forums.b2evolution.net/faq.php?mode=bbcode#8]bbcode[/url] instead of html ;)

I'll convert the ones in your original post.

¥

Thanks John, I am looking at a few. One thing I am unsure about, some have permalink and others not. Does the little chain symbol mean permalink?

Thanks killer expert, it says in my profile tick for bb code and another tick for html, so I assumed that it had both.

Ray

Ray, the permalink system is different with different skins, but yes... a chain icon or small "document" icon or text link is used. Your current skin uses the small grey document icon right next to the post date.

Give it a go, as you can always switch back to your current skin until you get it set up how you like.

I don't want to mess with my existing permalinks, because I have used them in SU (stumbleupon.com) to get thousands of references. If a different skin will change the permalinks then I most definitely do not want to change skin. I would rather mess with the existing one --- I only really want to change the width in pixels of the main part.

I have found a couple of other skins and uploaded them.

I thought that I remembered some configuration parameters for a skin in my blog, but cannot finmd that anywhere any more. Are things like left or right for the side stuff parameters, or are they preset for a skin?

Too many possibilities and I get confused.

I found a skin that looks nice, but it didn't have permalinks shown. Then I found that it used the title of the article to get the permalink. Unfortunately I have mentioned in articles that the title goes to some other web page. That means big time changes if I allow such a skin to be used. It is unfortunate that there are these discrepancies between different skins.

Anyway, I am off to watch the America's cup now. Will look in tomorrow. Thanks all.

Ray, in your custom.css change the following two bits of custom.css AFTER you save a copy of the original
Find #wrapper and replace it with

div#wrapper {
	background: #fff ;
	width: 1024px;
	margin: 0 auto;
	padding: 0;
}

and then find /* Styles for posts */
.bPosts and replace it with

/* Styles for posts */
.bPosts {
	float: left;
	width: 740px;
	overflow: hidden;
	/* background: #090;*/
}

That gives you a place to start from...

RTomes wrote:

I found a skin that looks nice, but it didn't have permalinks shown.

You can copy the permalink code from your current skin and use it in that skin ;)

¥

What skin doesn't have permalinks?

They might all have them - but some have little chain symbol and one has it in the wrong place - on the title, which is supposed to be a link to another page.

Ray, you can always
cut n paste small things like permalink styles and code from one skin to another...

Please name the skin that doesn't link a title to it's "link to URL" when present, as all that stuff can be fixed.

You can replace the chain link symbol with the "folded page" or whatever icon you like, and you can move them anywhere you like. It's always the same permalink though, so there should be no worry about using the same picture in the same place to maintain your permalink.

BTW I'm pretty sure b2evolution will do it's best to figure out where a link goes if someone links to something then you change to lets say "clean URLs".

Anyway I think you're making assumptions about what permalinks are and how they work that just aren't so.

The one that has different behaviour is wpc_default
There is no listed link for permalink.
The title when clicked goes to the permalink.
There is no way to get the original intended link that the title normally goes to.

I copied a few extra styles to my site, but they didn't work. I am guessing that this might be because I am not on the latest version of b2, so am checking that out.

I still think that the best thing for me would be to simply change the width of the custom style that I am using now. I like it in every other way but the main panel width.

Ah okay. I hate the WPC_ skins because they were made to be a quick version of a WP skin. They have that disclaimer that says "not doing all the b2evo stuff" because they don't. For the record I didn't upgrade that skin ;)

Changing the width of the custom skin (what version are you using by the way) isn't as easy as it sounds because an image is used to put the "border" lines in place. Here it is: http://ray.tomes.biz/b2/skins/custom/img/bg_content.gif and now I see you're running v1.8.6, which was a good version, but the skins on the skins site are for v1.9.* and won't go backwards nicely. I do recommend that you upgrade to 1.9.3 before you get into customizing your skin very much, as you will have to make the customizations again when you eventually choose to upgrade.

Back on track, there have been many threads about expanding the width of the custom skin. Some that include the image and css that would make it be certain dimensions and ratios (main to sidebar), but I don't have links to any of those threads handy.

There used to be a link to skins for 1.8.* but I don't know what happened to it. Ah well. Best bet is to upgrade now before you spend a lot of time that you'll have to re-invest later.

I am getting some weird forum stuff when I post now. It brought up a page with two post form layouts at the top (ready to be used) followed by a topic review section that had lots of previous posts in a little scrollable window. But my post seems to have disappeared. Will try again, so please excuse double posts.

Hi John

I missed your post before. I just did what you said and it worked fine thanks.

I need to check now that I didn't queer the formatting of some posts because I used a few left and right aligns etc based on how it was.

One little thing, there is a faint gray line vertically at about where the main window used to finish.

Thanks very much.

Ray

Hi EdB, all your points taken on board. I will do an upgrade to the latest version. I think that I will stick with this custom skin. I don't know how to tell which custom skin it is - I just got it off the b2 evo site some time back.

I am not planning to allow visitors to use custom skins because it makes it too hard for me to check that my layouts are working OK when I make a new post.

I am intending to keep custom.css it as it is without upgrade or I will have to go through these changes for each new release. Will that cause me problems in the future with extra add-on gadget/tools things?

I made a post about my understanding of permalinks that disappeared I think. I will do it again in a new thread as it is a big topic that I want to raise.

Manyn thanks to All.
Ray

Hi EdB I made a post about permalinks here:
http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?p=54966#54966
You can check out if I am confused. :-)
Ray