TIP: Give An Alternative Layout To All Groups

[JFarrow]

Group layouts are just plain wacky.  The middle column has always looked out of place, leaving a TON of white space surrounding other modules.  If you are of a similar mindset, you may like to give your groups an entirely different layout.  Look at these two groups for example.

United States Land Surveyors Group

Surveying How-To Group

What I am about to show you will move the middle column over to the left side of the left side module and move the left module to the middle.

Add the following to your advanced section of your CSS inside the dashboard:

.xg_widget_groups_group_show .xg_3col, .xg_span-16 {width: 938px;}

.xg_widget_groups_group_show .xg_span-12 {width: 745px;float: right;}

.xg_widget_groups_group_show .xj_classic_sidebar {display: none;}

.xg_widget_groups_group_show .xg_span-8 {width: 555px;margin-top: 32px;}

If you are interested in discussing my other experiments with Groups or are in need of some help with your own network, connect with me from my profile on creators and don't be shy.

[FedMedic]

Awesome tip JFarrow and it's exactly what I want for my network however, it now looks like this http://www.usfra.org/groups. So, unfortunately I won't be able to use it. :(

Uhm, sorry, I couldn't leave it for you to see because it changed the layout of my whole network. Sorry.

[JFarrow]

i still need to explore how this will effect different layouts, so thanks for replying to this.  Do you know which layout you use on your network FedMedic?  thanks for posting.

[FedMedic]

No problem J. glad to help. I'm using A3 layout. Oh, by the way, I would love to be your "network guinea pig". LOL!

[Char jack]

Wonderful tip cant wait to try it, will it work on a two column Layout? Also how did you change the background of the groups?

[JFarrow]

here is a tutorial i made a year or two back on how to style group forums.  hope it helps!

[Char jack]

Ok I saw the tip before, my groups had different background and headers before the change so I tried your tip and couldn't get it to work! Drove me crazy! lol

will work on it again though! Thanks!

[JFarrow]

Quick tip.  i do this a little different now.  I host my css files using a public dropbox folder with two folders inside it for CSS and IMAGES..  i host the background images inside the IMAGES folder and the css files inside the CSS folder..  This way if you choose to change the background image you can simply replace it with a image with same file name and you effectively be able to change the background image without having to change the CSS file, in other words, the background will change without having to go back to the group and changing the HTML in the text box.... make sense?

[Char jack]

wow makes sense but huh! lol Once I figure out how to use it then what you just said will hit me like a ton of bricks!

[JFarrow]

the tutorial for using Dropbox to host external files can be found here

[Trieu Thanh Tuan]

Thank you for sharing, but can you tell me how to remove the space in the attachment photo? Thanks.

[JFarrow]

which space do you mean?

[Trieu Thanh Tuan]

Hi, I mean the space right in the blue text "How to remove this space?". You can check it live here. It's also available in groups of your site. Hope you can fix it. Thanks.