As I review sites I notice that a lot of sidebars have difficulty with their banners, icons and text links. The objects are often stacked one on top of the other which can confuse visitors and even turn them off looking at them. What is required is a nice open sidebar with each of the banners, icons or text links having their own space. This makes for clearer viewing and of course invites the reader to click - which after all is generally their purpose.
What is the cause of this crowding? Experiences users will know that you can stack more than one piece of code into a text box in the widget area. (This also holds true for other platforms such as Drupal which uses a text block). Often all that is needed is a blank line between the code. In some themes this will place a blank line between banners and icons.
The theme I am using doesn’t oblige. I can put 20 blank lines between the codes and still get them stacked up against each other. The key lies in the use of the text boxes. Text boxes use HTML and Java (in some cases PHP) to render the objects you are placing. If you treat the text box as a mini page that requires coding you will understand the following.
For experienced users you can skip this first section.
Go to Admin, Presentation, Widgets. If you do not have a text box in your widgets area, drag one up. Click on the shaded area in the top left corner of the text box. The text box will open ready for editing.
Often you can use something as simple as the >br<
code or >br /<. My theme rejects even this code so I need to include the >br< >br< to get the desired result. You will need to play around with the code a little. You can use >br< or >br< >br< (note I have added spaces in these codes so they render on screen - you will need to remove these spaces) - try them out to see what works best.
I have included the >center< code at the start (don’t forget the >/center< at the end which of course centers the objects within the sidebar. The sidebar as a whole looks clean and tidy.
To finish, click the close icon, be sure to update then go and view the results. Once you get used to working on the sidebars you will find you can place all the related material together in the one text box.
Other quick tips: Keep your page alive when editing by using the right click on Admin to open it in a new window (or tab). Every time you make a change go back to you live page and refresh - if you don’t like the results you can go back to editing without having to click admin, presentation, widget etc. Just click between open screens. These tips will also work on Drupal, the process for inserting the code is obviously different - just go to the admin - manage blocks to edit a block - the code has the same results.
I am sure there are cleaner ways of doing this and if you do use a different or cleaner method - please feel free to share it.
