Some basic changes to the Joomla CSS
Let’s first make the text a little more readable, two quick changes to the joomla CSS.
font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica,
sans-serif;
font-size: 76%; /* don’t go smaller than this */
}
Note we dropped the style being applied to “html,body” as we didn’t want the
percentage font size being applied twice!
This makes the font a more reasonable size. Remember, we talked about how we
were sizing our fonts in one of our previous articles, A
Blank Template CSS file for Joomla. I have also chosen a sans-serif font:
verdana. Web pages have the opposite readbility of paper pages. On paper, serif
(like Times New Roman) are more readable, on the web its the opposite.
Next, let’s center the page.
text-align:center; /* for IE */
}
#wrapper
{
position:relative;
width:85%;
margin:0 auto;
}
OK, so here we have centered the page and made it a little wider. This is a fluid joomla CSS layout, the main part
of the page will always be 85% of the browser window. It re-seizes depending on
the screen resolution.
Now, we have to do a little changing of the column sizes. This is important,
if columns overlap, it can break a layout in a browser.
width:175px;
}
#centercontent {
margin-left: 190px; /*tweaked a little to get a slight gap*/
margin-right:165px; /*tweaked a little to get a slight
gap*/
}
#rightcontent {
width:150px;
}
I have reduced the width of both side columns and increased the margins. Note
I have made a small gap between them and the center column.
Let’s make a splash of color, C00 is a shade of red and fff is white:
background-color: #C00;
……}
#wrapper
{
background-color:#fff;
}
Joomla SEO
OK, so here is the really good bit. It’s to do with joomla search
engine optimization or joomla SEO. The closer
something is to the beginning in the xhtml code of your page, the more weight it
carries for yoursearch engine ranking . Unfortunately, a joomla
website outputs alot of xhtml. This means that your important
content (the middle column) gets pushed down. But, CSS to the rescue, remember
that we absolutely positioned our side columns. This means that they can appear
anywhere in the source, as long as they are in their container, the “wrapper”.
So let’s put them after the main content! Heck, if you wanted and had alot of
non-vital content in it, you could even make a header container and put that
after the main content too.
Overview of a Joomla Design
<body
<div id=”wrapper”
<div id=”centercontent”
<div
class=”insidecenter”
<?php mosMainBody();
?
</div
<div id=”header”
<?php mospathway() ?
<?php
mosLoadModules(‘top’);?
</div
<div id=”leftcontent”
<?php
mosLoadModules(‘left’);?
</div
<div id=”rightcontent”
<?php
mosLoadModules(‘right’);?
</div
</div
<?php mosLoadModules(‘bottom’);?
<p
uri=http://livesite.compassdesigns.net”
target=”_blank” title=”W3C Joomla Design”
</body
</html
We had to add this rule (you can see it in the xhtml above) to push the
center column down.
padding: 100px 0 0 0;
}
Last but not least we move the footer below the end of the wrapper div,
putting it into the colored page background.
Now we add some titles for the site.
<h1
<h2
<?php mospathway()
?
<?php mosLoadModules(‘top’);?
</div
Notice how the name of the site and its url are in header tags. This does two
things, first it is good practive for semantic layout, so increases the
accessibility of the site, second, it helps your joomla SEO as anything in a
header tag is given slightly more weight as a keyword.
So, there you have it, a source ordered joomla template, this week with a
little kick for your joomla SEO needs.
Is it still a W3C valid joomla template?? Well, what do you think?
The result was an
