[frostdawn]

Take the traditional 2 column template layout where the main content area takes up about 2/3 of the screen real estate, with the sidebar column taking up the last 1/3 (approximately). Is it possible to have a widget (especially the text widget span the width of main content area? I’m trying to make a custom page layout that goes something like this:

header
content area (full width)
widget area (2/3 screen width); widget area (1/3 screen width)
footer

Breaking the page up is easy enough, but getting the first widget area to display the width I need it to is proving problematic.

Here’s the reason:
The only customizable animated banner plugin that seems to work without breaking the site’s base functionality or relying on a blog category of nothing but images (which would confuse members) is FIAGallery, but the plugin doesn’t have a template friendly implementation- only shortcodes. When I was using the plugin ‘Nivo Slider for WordPress’ it worked and had a means to embed the slider in the template so I could have it span the width of the page right before the main content and sidebar were called in the template. However the Nivo Slider for WordPress breaks the navigation for WP/BP as well as the members page functionality and the author hasn’t responded to anyone in months.

I’m now looking at a content area that serves to hold the FIAGallery banner, and have to put the rest of the page’s contents within a text widget.

Any suggestions or recommendations?

[@mercime]

== but getting the first widget area to display the width I need it to is proving problematic. ==

What specifically is the problematic part? site uri? Can’t you just set the style of the div surrounding the widget area in your stylesheet?

[frostdawn]

Thanks for your response mercime. I’ve built out the template, and it winds up looking like this:

| ___________ . header _____ . ____________ |
| ___________ . content _____ . ____________ |
(blank space) | widget area 1 | widget area 2 |
| ___________ . footer ______ . ____________ |

I need ‘widget area 1’ to span 2/3 of that row, not 1/3- and it’s starting from the center of the page, not the far left. Even putting a div with a css clear:both after the content area doesn’t solve this. I’m not even sure if widgets can span more than their standard width. The alternative layout to the one above is this (haven’t gotten close to this yet since I can’t seem to get the first widget area to even render on the page):

| ___________ . header _____ . ___________ |
| ___________ . widget area 1 . ___________ |
| content ____ . ___________ | widget area 2 |
| ___________ . footer _____ . ____________ |

So the same basic layout, just swapping out the content area for a full width widget- if I can get that to work, it would be preferrable since what has to go above the footer will be a pain to code with pure html.

Basically I need a widget that is a non-standard size. How can I define that?

Thanks

[@mercime]

@frostdawn Could just be that the surrounding divs for either or both content area and widget-area-1 are already styled to specific widths in stylesheet. You’d then have to add new style at the bottom of your stylesheet to override default widths.

Open up the revised template with the widget-area-1 at 100% width which you’ve posted above, copy all code, post in pastebin.com, click submit and post the generated URI here so we can have better reference.