| Basic
Customization: Changing Fonts
Setting
Font Sizes for Specific Text
Setting Font Attributes Globally Using
Style Sheets
Setting Font Attributes Globally Using
Font Tags
Troubleshooting
Resources
Changing
Font Sizes for Specific Text
You
can change the font size of certain displayed text within Web
Crossing. In the Control Panel, go to Customizing
> User Pictures and Font Sizes.
Here,
you can choose the font size for the UserName display,
the second line of text, and the size for the body text.
If you leave the squares blank, the users' browsers will display
the default size (3). Fill in a number from 1 (small) to 6 (big)
if you wish to choose a specific size. Click Update Settings
to make your changes.
To change
the size of the title of the folder or discussion displayed
on each page, go in the Control Panel to Customizing
> Title, Toolbar, Backpath, and Edit Help Settings.
At the
top of the page you'll see the Title settings with the default
text filled in already. To change the HTML display of the page
title, simply edit the HTML there in the text field and click
Update Settings at the very bottom of the page.
| Note:
If you are using stylesheets for font formatting, you may
lose the ability to change these sizes, depending on how your
styles are defined. |
Changing
Fonts for the Whole Site with Stylesheets
There
are a couple of different strategies to changing the font on your
whole Web Crossing site, if you don't like the generic one. You
can place font tags in the Banner and Footer of your control panel,
or you can use style sheets.
Like
all style sheets, this will only work on 4.0 + browsers, which
support style sheets, and you may end up placing <div>
or <span>
tags in the Control Panel or in templates
in order to reach all the text.
You'll
need (at least!) two elements to your stylesheet, a body text
style definition and a modified TD tag with the same style definitions.
For example:
<STYLE>
<!--
TD { color: #006666; font-family:
Verdana; font-size: small; }
.bodytext { color: #006666; font-family:
Verdana; font-size: small; }
//-->
</STYLE>
<SPAN class=bodytext>
Paste
your style sheet into the HEAD field in the Sysop
Control Panel. Follow it immediately by a span tag
defining everything that follows as body text. Into the Footer,
the very last thing, paste your closing </SPAN>
tag. This strategy will change all fonts within the reaches of
the SPAN
tag as well as fonts within table cells, which are defined by
the TD
tag. You can alternatively use a <DIV>
tag for the same purpose.
Changing
Fonts for the Whole Site Using Font
Tags
In terms
of supporting the widest selection of browsers, the most reliable
way to change the font globally is to simply put the opening font
tag into your Banner, and the closing font tag into your Footer.
Since the Banner and Footer displayed on every Web Crossing page,
it's an easy way to open your font tag at the top, and close your
font tag in the footer. The hard part is reaching text contained
within table cells, which we'll discuss below.
Here's
how to do it:
In
your Control Panel, find Customizing ->
Banner, footer, background and top-level page appearance.
About
halfway down the page, there's a section for HTML for Server Banner.
At the beginning of the text box, type in your opening font tag.
For example, for a greenish-blue blue sans-serif typeface:
<FONT FACE="Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Sans-Serif" SIZE="2"
COLOR="#003333">
If
you're using tables for formatting,
be sure that you also put one of these font tags into the table
cell where the Web Crossing content will go.
Then,
right below the Banner field, you'll see a section for customizing
the Footer on each page. Type your closing font tag in there,
at the very end:
Scroll
down to the bottom of the page and click Update Top-Level Settings,
and the page will reload and display a sample page with your new
Banner and Footer settings, including your new font tags. If you
like what you see, click OK at the bottom of that page. If you
want to make further changes, use the Back button in your browser
to go back to the Edit page.
Figure
1 - Screenshot of default code in Sysop Control Panel area, with
added font tags.
Other
places to put font tags: You'll also want to put font tags
in the various "before" and "after" fields
in the Control Panel:
- Customizing
> Folders
> HTML to insert before all folder headings (opening FONT
tag)
- Customizing
> Folders
> HTML to insert after all folder headings (closing FONT
tag)
- Customizing
> Discussions
> HTML to insert before all discussion headings (opening
FONT tag)
- Customizing
> Discussions
> HTML to insert after all discussion headings (closing FONT
tag)
Tables:
These methods above will change most of the text on the site,
but not all. There are a few places (The Preferences page and
some others) where the pages are divided into tables. Since the
global font change won't affect the text within those table cells,
you'll need to go in and add the font tags to the table cells
of the macros for those pages. Save your altered macros in a text
file named webx.tpl, place it in the webx directory on
your server, and reset your file cache. See the WCTL section for
more information on making changes to Templates and Macros.
Troubleshooting
My new
font isn't showing up.
- Check
the page source on one of your Web-Crossing-generated pages
to see if the font tags or style sheets and definitions are
getting put into the HTML, in the proper locations.
- Is
the text within a table cell, and thus not affected by your
global changes?
- Is
your font tag or style sheet in the proper section on the Sysop
Control Panel page?
- Is
your font tag or style sheet properly constructed? No typos?
- Are
the fonts you specified installed on the computer you're viewing
the page with?
Resources
See
Folder Customization Chart.
Web Crossing
FAQ:
Sysop
Control Panel
- Customizing
- Banner,
Footer, Background, and Top-Level Page Appearance
- Title,
Toolbar, Backpath, and Edit Help Settings
- User
Pictures and Font Sizes
Sysop
Documentation
|
