MainBody Positions - Why 4, not 6?
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- BlogMinded
- Newbie
- Posts: 7
- Thanks: 0
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Hello,
Could anybody clarify for me please, Why in all templates and in Gantry in general there are only 4 MainBody Positions and not 6 (or even more), like in the the rest off the layout settings?
Who "stole" the remaining 2"
I took time making an effort trying to understand as to why not go with the super straight forward logic and not just make the whole thing to be uniformed in terms of providing the ability to size thing up uniformly across the whole height of the website? I could not answer that and keep wondering.
In my opinion, this is a very serious drawback for the whole framework, which is SO significant that it pretty much strikes out the rest of utilities, which I do appreciate a lot. Note that below I am talking about default Gantry's 12 grid settings. Luckily, the templates with 16 grid for instance are allowing for a "workaronds" to a good degree, although they TOO do not have the same number of divisions at the main body level, as the rest of the widget positions (Why not?).
Here are two simple examples where this problem shows for my clients A LOT and which forces the site owners to struggle finding the workarounds:
1. Imagine someone wants to put in a forum hooked to WordPress blog, but wants to keep the overall look and feel of the main site, which includes having a NARROW side bar (for banners, text ads and the other whole load of desired widgets for instance). If 2 positions are assigned, then the most narrow side bar size there could be will be at the 9/3 ratio. This does not look good at all, because it squeezes the forum way too much by the "bulky" sidebar. It is especially true if the forum is a busy one, with many threads and topics. So, if only there were 6 positions assigned to this level of the site, the 10/2 ratio would have been just perfect.
The only alternative is to set the main body to just one position and have forum at full width, thus LOOSING the ability of website owner to present extra info in the sidebar, that she/he would have wanted to.
2. One of the very (VERY!!!) common banner/text ad sizes is 728 x 90 leader-board and it simply does not fit into the 9/3 setting, but it WILL easily fit into the 10/2 one. There is plenty of examples when fitting such sized ads is needed at the level of the main body, but it will be impossible if side bar is there. Note also that even if (as a workaround) the ad of such size is placed above or under the main body level, in most cases this may significantly distort the look of the website as a whole!
Please see the standard sizes of text ads and banners for Google Ads for instance (the 728 x 90 is top listed) here:
support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=97526
support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=185665
Basically, I guess what I am saying is that the 728 x 90 sized ads are pretty much incompatible with the Gantry framework as of right now.
Please tell me, can the MainBody Positions be of the same division factor as the rest of Gantry's framework's widgets and please advise how can I achieve that (coding wise).
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- David Goode
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 17058
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- Web Designer and Host
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Hi there,
We have developed the templates to meet the needs of the majority and sometimes that means that our members have to customise them to suit their needs.
For the mainbody changes you would like to have I would suggest you check out the tutorials on our main Gantry site - especially the information here - www.gantry-framework.org/documentation/w...stom-mainbody-layout
Hope this helps
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- Henning
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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- Volunteer
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The mainbody positions are different from rest of the widget-positions.
They are using the push/pull schemas of the 960px-grid-system for source ordering.
Wich means in the source-code the mainbody comes always before the sidebars no matter wich layout setting you have (for SEO reasons).
see here.
www.gantry-framework.org/documentation/w...stom-mainbody-layout
and here (tho that is for joomla ... the idea is the same)
www.rockettheme.com/forum/index.php?f=30...ement&rb_v=viewtopic
If you would have more "sidebars" or positions in the mainbody the number of combinations would just go through the roof.
In Joomla there is a way around it but not in wp (afaik).
With the rise of responsive layouts "source ordering" isnt the coolest thing anymore.
And I guess (really just a guess) this concept may be dropped for future in Gantry 4.
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