css and templates

[stuff]

A place II used to work has asked me to design their new website, as their old one is crap. No really, check it out here.

So the design I came up with, according to what they wanted, looks something like this.

Which all worked perfectly yesterday. Then I discovered the world of templates, so I used the above page as my template. If you click any of the links on that page, you will see pages that are affected by a template.

For some reason the template, or at least the way I set it up, makes things move when they shouldn't, and they didn't move before I made the template, for example the navigation bar on the left.

I am really new to css and templates, so if anyone could shed some light on what could be causing the issues, I would love to know!

They want this site by the weekend for a promotional launch.. if i can't iron it out by tomorrow I guess I'll just have to give them the non-template version and fix this issue later.

cheers,
-stuff

[tommylogic]

What are you using to publish your templates? Sounds like a Dreamweaver template or library issue... maybe?

[stuff]

i haven't used the library feature at all.. should i?

and yes, it is dreamweaver

[tommylogic]

If you create an item and intend to reuse it over and over.. you can make it a library item and the changes you make in the main library file will be reflected on all the pages that use it sitewide.

As for the site.. I can't really tell cause I don't know what it was supposed to look like originally just given a description. IF it was set up right and all your css proper, then transferring it to a template wouldn't change anything. The only thing you want to look out for is you just need to be sure you set editable regions in the template.

[stuff]

It seems that the editable regions I have made are the things that are affecting the layout of the template.

For example, the title table cell on the original layout would stretch vertically according to how many lines of text i put in there. When i changed it to a template and added an editable region to the title table cell, if i type more than one lines worth of text, it stretches horizontally, ignoring the "maximum table width", and stretches vertically, taking the side bar and surrounding cells with it, away from where they should be.

How can I tell the editable region to follow the rules of the table?

[tommylogic]

maximum table width

I take it then you are designing in tables... try it with div's (no tables) and style it with line-height accordingly.

[stuff]

is there an easy way to convert it to divs?

i spent like 5 hours going back and forth with tables tonight, they are driving me mad! every time i fix one problem, 10 more problems arise! why is it so difficult to make a cell stay put? my biggest issue at the moment is getting the sidebar to stay at the top. if the text on the right stretches its cell vertically, it takes the sidebar with it. is there any way of locking them in place?