Can this be done or will I need help customizing?

[johnferris 0]

I'm working on a website using Platform Pro but am hitting a bit of a wall and I think I may need some help customizing what will be the home page. I'm hoping it's something I can do myself but am beginning to think it's something I may need to employ one of the pros to help. Can someone tell me if this is doable on my own or not? What I'm trying to do is basically a similar concept to boxes but I need to be able to have a few boxes running side by side that are of differing widths. I've attached an image (link below) to show roughly what I'd like the page to look like. Can someone tell me if this is achievable using Pagelines in its current form? http://cl.ly/0T1i0j0V2O471O350v0x

[Kate 3]

Hey John, Unless I'm looking at it wrong, it does look like it will take some customization. So, I guess it gets down to how comfortable you are with coding.

[johnferris 0]

Kate, thanks for the reply. I'm kinda happy enough coding, though I'd guess with the timescales we're looking at, it might be simpler to get one of you gurus to do it, explain what you've done and then when I need to do similar customization down the line for other pages I should be able to figure it out. Can I drop you a line about it?

[Kate 3]

Hey John, That sounds like a good idea. For myself: unfortunately I'm a little swamped right now, and I'm trying to clear some projects out. I'd recommend hitting up one of the other "pros", and of course if you need to, you can e-mail me as well. Thanks

[johnferris 0]

I would be happy to try myself if you could maybe give me a pointer of where to start... would I need to use hooks, or would it be simpler to edit the boxes files?

[cmunns 16]

John, It may be easier for you in this case to try plugins that can be inserted into these areas instead of hacking up the core files or making your own section files...of course it's just a matter of how easy it needs to be for your customer to edit information?

[johnferris 0]

Adam, it's for our own organisation and I'll be managing the site so I'm not all that bothered about it being very easy to edit. As long as I understand it. What kind of plugins would you suggest?

[Kate 3]

Hey John, Here's a couple that may help you: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagespot/ http://justintadlock.com/archives/2009/03/15/query-posts-widget-wordpress-plugin

[johnferris 0]

Great, thanks Kate, much appreciated. Without sounding like Columbo, just one more thing... I've set up PageSpot okay but the template I set up is coming out like this http://cl.ly/1P3b0f0i2w2w3R2m2Q06 it's left of the theme. Is there a specific template that I can use to duplicate and put in the code I need? All I see in what I think are template pages is:

setup_pagelines_template();

Should I be using something else? Seems to me that both those plugins will sort me out, thanks a million!

[cmunns 16]

How did you add the PageSpot snippet?

[johnferris 0]

Basically I just used their north/south/east/west template (I was trying to get a feel for how it worked before I customised it):

<?php
	/**
	 * @package Wordpress
	 * @subpackage PlatformPro
	 * @Template Name: North-South-East-West
	
	*/
	
	the_post();
	
	get_header();
	
	?>
	
	<div id="content">
		<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
	
	    <div id="main">
	    	<div class="ps-wrap">
	        	<div class="ps-row ps-north">[[PageSpot:North]]</div>
	            <div class="ps-row">
	            	<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
	                <tr>
	                	<td class="ps-west" valigh="top">[[PageSpot:West]]</td>
	                	<td class="ps-east" valigh="top">[[PageSpot:East]]</td>
	                </tr>
	                </table>
	            </div>
	            <div class="ps-row ps-south noborder">[[PageSpot:South]]</div>
	        </div>
	    </div>
	</div>
	
	<?php get_footer(); ?>

[Kate 3]

Hey John, If you choose to use a custom template, this thread may help you out: http://www.pagelines.com/forum/topic/8799

[johnferris 0]

I've been able to set up a template okay, just not sure what div class or what way I get the content to show underneath my menu rather than being pushed to the left like it is in this image: http://www.cl.ly/1P3b0f0i2w2w3R2m2Q06 If I include the line

setup_pagelines_template();

in my template it ignores everything after that. In a nutshell I just want to move the content "This is the north..." to begin in alignment with the news menu in the image provided if that makes sense?

[cmunns 16]

If you want to add a page template that's fine the way you have it...but the loop is really where you need to be adding this snippet..you could even just a hook instead of creating a new page template.