Nick Cates Dashboard customization?

RapidWeaver Classic Themes
1

Hello,
The main problem I find every time I try to use a Rapidweaver Theme is the few options offered by the theme designer. After many attempts with other Themes now I am trying to create my new web site with Nick Cates Dashboard.
http://nickcatesdesign.com/preview/rapidweaver/dashboard/
I immediately found the same problems because It seems impossible to change the size of something or the position of something other. In this theme there are very few options.

Before throwing away also this project I try to ask to someone expert in CSS and other codes if there is a way to change some aspect of the page:

Screenshot of the menu

I would like to have the logo on top, the site title under the logo, in a smaller space. I also would like to change only the size of the page titles (Nav Text) not also the site title size at the same time, and also I would like to give a custom size to both the left columns (or at least to shrink the second to the same size of the first).
The most important are the positions of title and logo, and this is the main problem in EVERY Theme I tried.

In the Dashboard Manual there is nothing.
Can you help me?

A prayer to the Themes developers: ADD MORE OPTIONS, PLEASE!

2

If I were you, I would try Joe Workmans Foundation theme and stacks or 1LD’s Pure theme and stacks or Bootstrap theme and stacks. I prefer Foundation but it’s personal preference, any of these would enable you to put anything pretty much anywhere with any size font and any type of font. They are like a blank canvas. I have the Dashboard theme and have used it on a project, it is very limiting but quite a fun theme. Good luck.

3

Hello, I purchased Foundation, but I found difficult to learn it.
I also purchased FreeStack before, even more difficult.
I would like to use some Themes and in the manuals I expect more instructions on how to customize some aspects of the page with CSS snippets and so on.

4

Please provide a link to your published site where we can view exactly what you are suggesting in your screenshot. The screenshot is useful but if I were going to take a stab at helping I’d rather see exactly what you are looking at rather than assume that it’s a completely clean implementation of theme.

I have this theme and have used it very successfully on a couple of sites - the client absolutely loved it. Customising this particular theme is tricky though.

I believe, as is the case with a number of other developers work, that what you are supposed to do here is this: trust that the theme designer knew what he was doing there is a reason why Nick made that theme the way he did and it certainly wasn’t to make life difficult for his customers. The reason there are few options is, I believe, the aesthetic of the theme was very carefully crafted and messing with that aesthetic is very often a shortcut to a degraded site. Nick Cates, Will Woodgate, MDD, Elixir and others know a lot more than us about web design and aesthetics that really work… thats why they are theme designers… to get genuine value out of a theme we need to work with it not against it and, I think, try to stay close to the theme designers aims.

Open/Freeform themes are different of course.

This is just my opinion on how to get the most out of purchased themes.

2 Likes
5

@Trystero – The reason we have so many themes to choose from is that developers/designers have a specific vision of what and how they want to show to viewers. That’s why sometimes there is less customization possible within theme’s options than some of us would like.

Just choose the one that is closest to your own vision and then start customizing with CSS code that you can obtain from this forum and – very often – from developers themselves.

6

Thank you Kryten and Rovertek, I know that the Theme designer knew very well what he was doing. But there are some very simple customization that can make a Theme usable or not.
Here is another example of a simple customization that could help my project looking better:
Dashboard customization
In Photoshop I aligned the Site Logo space with the Sideboard Title.
It seems impossible with the Dashboard options, but it could be easily obtained with a simple “Title height” value.
I just wrote to the Nick Cates support to ask for help.

7

Are you able to provide a link or not?

I severely doubt that NCD will get into this with you.
He wouldn’t with me…

8

Here is a link to the “Dashboard Example” project:
http://www.sprezzatura.it/dashboard_example
The only thing I add to the original demo project is my labirinth logo.

9

Hi,
The page I get from that link doesn’t look much like the screenshots you have provided. Would it be possible to make the live page look as close as you can get to what you want? Then its easier to see what needs to be adjusted. Thanks.

10

The screenshots of “what I want” come from Photoshop, not Rapidweaver.
In Rapidweaver the Site Title is inside a fixed square, I want this space as a rectangle, with the same height of the Sideboard title:
Dashboard as is and as I would like
I searched all the CSS but I’m not expert, and I found only the codes for change the padding height of the Sideboard Title.
Here is the Dashboard demo page with changes in titles:
Dashboard example

Here is the folder: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1631025/TEST_Dashboard.zip

My previous messages were flagged as SPAM! Only because I wrote the link to the Theme page.

But after one hour I see that the messages are visible again. Thanx

11

Hi Trystero,

See how far this gets you:

body #wrapper nav.theme>div {
	height: 93px !important;
}

body #wrapper nav.theme>div h1#siteTitle {
	display: inherit !important;
}

body #wrapper nav.theme img {
	margin-bottom: 4px !important;
}
12

Hi Kryte,
THANK YOU! It’s perfect!

Dashboard aligned

Can you tell me where are the CSS files with those codes?
I would like to find also the one to move a little down the site Title.

But maybe it is better this way:
Only name

Thank you again!

13

Sweet baby Jesus!
Now I think I was wrong. You knew EXACTLY what was going to work, didn’t you?

That. Is. Beautiful.

You can use:

body #wrapper nav.theme>div h1#siteTitle {
    padding-top: 17px !important;
}

Increase or decrease the number of pixels in that style rule to move the site title down or up respectively.

Superb use of the theme. Congratulations.

1 Like
14

Thank you AGAIN!
In the next days I will work hard to realize my new web site. The old one is… very old not only for the style but also for the works shown. I chose Dashboard (purchased in a Theme Cloud offer) because it resemble a bit the Theme I used around 8 years ago, it was “Camilo” by Rapidideas: my old web site