I have some questions about the appearance of the Armadillo navigation menu (using the navigation stack).
I placed the navigation stack to the side using a 2-column approach. It appears where it should, but the tags, archives, etc., are listed all on one line, respectively, instead of in a bullet list as I see on some blogs. For example:
Archive:
January, February, March…
instead of…
Archive
January
February
…
And to make matters worse, the lines don’t wrap, so they just disappear into the margin.
How can I fix that?
How can I place a link at the top of the page of individual blog posts to go back to the main page? If I just place a link at the top of the RW page, it will also appear on the main page itself. I want it so that if a user clicks the “read more” link for example or on the title of a post and is taken there, he can then go back to the main page by clicking this afore-mentioned link.
I don’t think I can answer all your questions but here’s a little bit:
It would be useful if you provided a URL. I’ve never had any problem creating a list of archives. Should be easily fixable, but a link useful to see what’s happening.
I have done the same thing (re: link back to main page only on perma-linked pages). The way I did this is by using the Private Eyes stack which nicely handles if-then situations. There might be other stacks, or code, that does this as well. You can see an example here: http://usfcte.net/blog/
click on a post and you’ll see a blue button link back to main page at the top. BTW I don’t know who officially owns/sells PrivateEyes right now. It used to be SeyDesign, then NimbleHost, and now I think it will be Stacks4Stacks. And there may be other tools that do this. At any rate I’d contact Will Woodgate at Stacks4Stacks about availability of PrivateEyes.
On a vaguely related note, at the blog page I’ve linked to above you will find the archives and more in a Glider stack (see ToC green button at left side).
I completely understand that showing you the actual URL is the best approach, but unfortunately I can’t disclose it as it is a site/product launch, so “secret” for the time being. I’ll try to set up a test site replicating the same issue and then post that URL. In the meantime, just to understand: when you place the Armadillo Blog Navigation stack on the RW page, is there any configuration that needs to be done? There doesn’t appear to be, right?
All I did was add the stack to the RW page and enter the correct Blog ID. On the admin site I then just created the categories. I also chose the “display categories/archives” setting, but that’s related to displaying the categories/archives on the actual blog entries and not the navigation stack. Am I missing something else? I don’t see anywhere the option to change the display settings of the blog navigation stack. Or are you doing that through the CSS area on the admin site?
I took a look at your site (actually, I had seen it previously through another forum post as I was researching) and it’s exactly what I want to accomplish. I hate paying for a different stack every time I need to do something, because it adds up (I’ve spent hundreds so far), but I suppose that the time I spend researching how to do it through code will be worth the $15! And, FYI, it’s at SeyDesign now. Thanks for that tip!
Armadillo uses the blog styling of the theme. It looks like @Mathew is using the Volcano(Will Woodgate) theme on his blog page. You can override CSS at the admin screen in Armadillo, or at the page or site level within rapidWeaver.
Since you have to publish to see changes in Armadillo, I have found it easier to use the admin area.
I’m using Endeavor by Michael David Design – I don’t think it’s the theme, although it’s a helpful suggestion. You see, the design elements (color, font, size) are showing up fine. It’s just that I can’t get the dates (under Archive) or the tag cloud (under Tags) to become a list. They appear as one single line, separated by commas. I don’t think that’s affected by the theme. I can see some sort of CSS customization being the workaround solution, but it can’t be that hard! I’ve seen a few blogs where the data is shown as a list and their owners swear they didn’t customize anything. Strange!
So I went the CSS route after all. I’m not a developer, so this was quite unintuitive for me, but I figured it out by using the inspector tool on a few sites. I’m VERY proud of myself! Anyway, here is the code that I added onto the CSS field of the admin site.
ul.blog-tag-cloud li a:after {
content: “\a”; white-space: pre;
}
Tip of the hat to all those who suggested CSS. In honesty, I figured this was one way to go, but I don’t know if it’s the only way, because people have actively told me that it just worked out of the box. Not sure how they got it to look this way without CSS, but there you have it.
This reason, I think, that this problem occurs with the archive dates appearing on one line is due to the theme having the following CSS:
#blog-archives br {display: none;}
It does this in the Nimblehost Mirage theme also. To change this add the CSS below to the custom styles in Admin->Settings->General Settings->Custom Styles:
@TetleyK, the code I mentioned in the post directly before yours seemed to do the trick, but I’ll check all browsers and if it’s acting up I’ll make the change you mentioned – thanks!
By the way, anyone know what the language (localization) setting is supposed to do? I changed the language to Portuguese (the language of the blog I’m creating), but nothing appears to have changed. Using the latest version: 2.8.0.
Thanks to everyone here for all the useful information.
I would have to agree with @yabdabs The information on the Armadillo site is excellent, but quite limited for such a complex product. I too had a heap of detailed config questions that I wanted to ask, but did not feel I could comfortably ask for the limited cost of the software. Some of these have been answered here and I will try PrivateEyes for navigation because that is currently the biggest issue.
Ref the CSS: @yabdabs, great job, it made a big difference to my tags. Taking out the ‘white space pre’ section made the dates tighten up into a more manageable list length. Ideally I’d like to take out the dates and just show Categories and Tags. @TetleyK 's solution gave a slightly better result, but the tags were all crowded into a few lines and many were truncated, something I had seen with the original implementation. No amount of column percentage jugging would solve it.
One urgent problem for me to solve is implementing some form of gallery or improved image sizing. The one thing that ‘Typed’ did better than Armadillo was image display and as a photographer and film-maker, good presentation is key. So any thoughts in ways of implementing a gallery would be sincerely appreciated
@NickWB I think there are some more efficient ways to use the Gallery feature, though I admit I never use it. I upload images to a folder (i.e. I warehouse them outside of Armadillo). I do this for several reasons, but one major reason is I often double-dip with images: meaning I also often use outside the blog. So it simply makes things easier for me to have all my images (used on blog or on other pages) in one location.
I then use the following HMTL code to insert images. I don’t remember HTML at all so I’ve set up a TextExpander snippet to insert the code: all I need to do is remember the shortcut. TextExpander per se is not needed, there are other alternatives like aText.
This HTML will make the image take up the full 100% of the space available. Note that this code is responsive: so when on a phone (e.g.) the image won’t be super big but it will still take up 100% of the available space. And, of course, you can always specify something smaller than 100% if you wish.
Going the warehousing route may not be for you, but I find it simple and it works very nicely with Armadillo.
On an extra note Will Woodgate makes a great free stack called LiteBox. You can put it on your Armadillo page and any images, on any blog post, will be auto-lightboxed when clicked. Sweet sweet stack. Check it out here: https://stacks4stacks.com/litebox/
The consequence is if the image has a width of 1280, but the available space defined by the theme (or a stack like UsefulStack) is 800 pox, then the lightbox will nicely show the image in its full glory on computers and most tablets.
@Mathew thanks for all the suggestions - I have it up and running, but its not quite there yet - Litebox is working, but only displaying one image at a time. I have checked the stack hud ‘Lightbox External Images’, but still no joy.
@NickWB: Yes, in the end you probably are being too ambitious. Litebox will only lightbox one image at a time. I think setting up a proper photo gallery within a blog post is going to be very difficult or almost impossible to do.
Photo galleries: there are a ton of them available. But not within a blog. I’m sure it can be done, and has been done, but it’s not typical to have photo gallery (per se) abilities in a blog and having one would make the resulting product much more difficult to make and maintain.
Ah, OK. That is good to know, thanks Matthew. I had something similar working a few years back in Wordpress with full gallery capabilities, but the platform itself was a nightmare of underdeveloped products. I’ll keep digging. Jonathan has galleries on his ToDo list for a future version.
Thanks again for the help. A quick update for all:
I have a very urgent need for galleries, so I have resorted to creating a hidden page with InStack’s Gallery 3 and linking to it from the blog. For anyone that has not tried it Gallery 3 has some very interesting options for adding folders of remote images ‘Photostream web directory’ that is working beautifully. Something I have not previously noticed is Pulse CMS Gallery and Pulse CMS Blog gallery - checking out Pulse, and Jannis’s new Pulse CMS for RW, this may be a more capable way forward for the future?
@NickWB Looks like you came upon a great solution (at least for the short term). I’ve heard many good things about Gallery 3 and may need to give it a whirl! I’ve used ProGallery and am quite happy with it.
But your solution would work with any gallery type stack. The key was providing one photo and a link to a gallery hidden page. Seems to work nicely.
And, FYI, it’s at SeyDesign now. Thanks for that tip!
Anyway, here is the code that I added onto the CSS field of the admin site.