Does anyone else have that problem where templates cover over bravenet's free website advertisement on the top of the page and the bravenet footer at the bottom? Can I center them if they never were to begin with also?

I'm using five different templates, none of which are affiliated with bravenet's site. Only the index works well. The fifth page has a unique, more advanced problem of its own.

The site is for younger people, so please bear with us. The templates were obtained from this site:

http://komettails.net/index.php?link=layouts&mode=layouts&type=Div%20Layers

Anyone who tries to use templates with absolute positioning and iframes, has the same problems that you do, with a free site. The designer uses absolute positioning, to position everything, and then z-index to make everything appear on the right graphic layer. While that may be considered very artsy, it's not very practical to use.

Generally, most web sites use the same basic structure, or template, for all of their pages. But you are using a different template for each page. This really complicates things. While the layouts are somewhat the same, they are different enough to cause complications.

Your fifth page is the one that is most different. For most of the body, it uses a table to confine everything, but above the body is managed by "divs" and a "iframe". The "iframe" is used for that little box above the navigation dropdown. Because the source of the "iframe" is a complete HTML file, ad banners are added to the file in the "iframe". This makes it pretty much useless.

There are some web hosts that allow you to suppress the banners, if they cause problems with the site. However Bravenet is not one of them. Your templates would work fine on paid hosting, but not very useful on a free Bravenet web site.

Browser: Firefox, Netscape, Sea Monkey, Internet Explorer, .....

OS: Solaris (Sparc,x86), Linux, XP

Thank you so much for the explanation Philo. Because of it, I got "inspired" to remove the fifth page's box... way better. I'm still changing stuff around but am wondering if the font color can be changed to black on the second page (I can't get visual editor to do that). I meant to say in the first post can the templates be centered if they were not made like that?

Since the index doesn't have trouble with the header and footer, can I somehow get the other templates to follow suit? Any way to get the templates to move further down? A code that can be applied to them from the index?
*sigh*

If not, that's okay. Philo still saves the day...

The answers are yes, maybe, possibly, and "but not without a lot of work".

Yes, the font color on the second page can be changed. However you would not do it with the Visual Editor. All of the templates are generally managed by their style sheets. For that page it would be named "getup.css". If you open the "getup.css" file in a text editor, you should find a property in the "body" style named "color". Right now it is set to "#FFFFFF". Change it to "#000000" and the font will now be black. That will only change the font color in the main body. The navigation link colors are managed by the styles that start with "A:".

Can the templates be centered? Maybe. The first thing you might want to consider is the "terms of use" from the originating site. Under "Designs" it says "Do not alter the layouts in any way, ie. source code, image, etc. without permission". IMHO, that's kind of a dumb statement. You have to modify the source code to make it useful. As long as you give them credit for the original design, you should be able to do anything you want with the template.

Don't believe that the index doesn't have problems with the header and footer. The header doesn't get in the way of the top banners, but it does cover up the links that are suppose to be a the bottom of your web page. All of the pages have problems with the advertisements.

Can the pages be fixed to play well with the advertisements and be centered on the page? Possibly, but not without a lot of work. Your index page is pretty easy to center. Again, this involves modifying the style sheet, "index.css". First you remove the "background-image:" and "background-repeat: properties from the "#contain" style. Then you create two new styles that look like this.

That style change moves the background image from the wrapper "div" to the "table". It then centers everything. In the process, moving the image to the "table" lets the template play well with the Bravenet advertisements. Notice the banners at the top and the links at the bottom in this example.

Then I looked at the template for your second page. The structure of that page was completely different than the first one. The same centering techniques do not work. To make that template play well with the advertisements and be centered on the page I had to change the whole structure. I went to Dynamic Drive CSS Library and picked out a fixed two column layout, and then modified it to closely match the original template. I did slightly modify the font color, size, and spacing. Here is a link to the result, Thinkers Centered.

But this last one completely violates the originators "terms of use". I only used their images and some of their styles. But the end result is a much more flexible template.

Because each of your pages are different templates, each one would need to be looked at individually, to determine whether it can be centered and made to play well with the advertisements.

Browser: Firefox, Netscape, Sea Monkey, Internet Explorer, .....

OS: Solaris (Sparc,x86), Linux, XP

Wow. I've just been wamboozled.

Thank you - I've got black font and the index is on target. For an easier question - can I set up links on the intuitive page's drop down navigation or should I lose that and do it manually?

For the rest, perhaps you could help me with the thinkers and I'll see if I want to do the rest myself. The css fixed layout #2.1- (fixed-fixed) is up there now. But I can't fill in the blanks. What comes next?

Yours is great.

Setting up links on the "intuitive page should be relatively easy. You already have it partially updated. Below is the code you currently have. The only thing that is keeping it from working is the "value" properties are not filled in. In the code, the first two "option" sections, with "value" set to "zero", are just there to create space. The rest are made operational by replacing the "#" with the URL for the web page.

When adjusted, the code in the navigation section should look like this.



It looks like you made an error on the "thinkers" page. It looks like you accidentally overwrote the "getup.css" with the HTML for the new layout you are trying to use. You may need to go back to the source of the templates, and re-download the template, to get the style sheet back.

To get a better idea of what I did to recreate the "thinkers" page, try downloading this thinkers.zip file. It's just a single HTML file and the associated image. You actually already have the image. If you open it in an editor, you can see the adjustments that I made. Right now, all of the CSS is within the HTML file. This can be moved to a separate file and linked to, like the original.

If you want the other pages centered, let me know. I can take care of them this weekend and send you the link for download. Then you can get on with your site building.

Browser: Firefox, Netscape, Sea Monkey, Internet Explorer, .....

OS: Solaris (Sparc,x86), Linux, XP

The intuitives links work now and I uploaded your thinkers version there, but when I inserted the image header it became left justified.

I tried to get the feelers page to work, copying adjustments to the thinker page, but it ended up way wrong. If you don't have time to make adjustments to the pages, it's ok. It is in the realm of experts (= you).

I took too long to respond, so if you don't have time for it I'm happy with the result. Thank u.