FREEBIE #1 Magazine Style CSS Template for Ning Pages

I've been working on a project for a client which you'll all be most interested to see when I'm finished- basically a magazine-style build out on a Ning. One of my tasks this week was to create various magazine style templates that are compatible with pages on Ning. Today I am going to give you all one of these templates for two reasons.

1) I want to show those of you who are unaware how powerful CSS can be and how it can be used on your Ning network.

2) I hope to raise the bar on the types of pages which can be produced using the ning platform and give you all a chance to build on a few examples and hopefully teach me something I haven't thought of yet.

Below it a template for you to download and edit in your own text editor. If you do not have a text editor or are new to CSS/HTML, i suggest (KOMPOZER). The following template contains these features:

***Pure CSS layout with columns (2 images for place holders which you'll need to swtich out or substitute as you wish)

***Layout will work for BOTH Full Page Width Pages and Pages which retain the sidebar because the template is FLUID. If you would like to make this template a set width, you simply need to go into the first lines of code and look for "100%" and change that to say "600px" for example.

The entire layout is heavily commented so you know what you are working with...simply view source and you'll see what I mean.

ATEAM-MAGAZINE.html

Play around with this and see what types of possibilities you can come up with. I suggest downloading it, open it with your text editor, customize it and copy the entire contents of the template from this section of the template

<!-- **************************************************************
DIV FOR TOP

to this section:

alt="placeholder image is 150 x 350"></p>

into your page, into the HTML view. When copy/pasting into your page, leave out everything above the <body> tag and everything below </body> tag. You might also be adventurous and deck this baby out into a magazine style splash page. As you can see, i got a little stupid with the A-Team Theme, but it just goes to show, the possibilities are endless. Enjoy!

If you are looking for some ninjas to customize your Ning for you...look no further than JUSTNINJAS

Tags: CSS, HTML, Magazine, download, freebie, how-to, pages, template, theme, tips

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ATEAM-MAGAZINE.html, 5 KB

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NC for HirePermalink Reply by JFarrow on July 16, 2011 at 4:24pm

What? Did I make this Tutorial Too confusing?

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Permalink Reply by Denis on July 16, 2011 at 5:55pm

I wish I could understand it.

I am at kindergarten level with css

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Permalink Reply by James Hawkins on July 16, 2011 at 6:25pm

Hi JFarrow,

This is another great piece of work by you. However, through no fault of yours, the text editor makes all of this torture. You can copy in html to the html editor and make changes, check in the visual editor as to how it looks and then when you update the page, things get all messed up. Back you must go to find the odd breaks and spaces added and you slowly lose your mind and give up 'til another day. I know, I know-I should make all the changes in my external editor (Kompozer) but then what is the use of Ning's editor? ...and it still will make changes when you update page. Madness.

One thing else - Your html links to the code (mid-page and attachment) do not download it. They just open the the larger screen shot you posted of the finished page. You can use view page source to get code, but it probably confuses people when the link doesn't download.

James

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NC for HirePermalink Reply by JFarrow on July 16, 2011 at 7:43pm

hmmm...thanks for the feedback...i'll make a few changes.... one tip i will pass on though is this: Jen has an excellent Online Editor on her network here: http://jensocial.com/page/wysiwyg-html-editor

this editor has been designed to reformat HTML to work on Ning sites..so if you pass it through her editor before taking it to your network, should eliminate some of your headache..
thanks for the heads up...i was starting to think i was just crazy for adding it...