Merged My Joomla site template makes a mess of Kunena ... a collection of the many requests that we receive

We receive many requests asking us to fix the problems caused by other Joomla template developers or other issues that users have created because of the Joomla site template that they have chosen for their website.

Many of these questions originate in the support category . Yes, the support category is where we attend to matters relating to defects and major problems caused by the software design of Kunena. However, the support category is not the place to report every individual case arising from the choices that people have made in how things on their website should "look". Every person has their own idea what looks best for them - no problem there - but it's unfair to expect that each of us should necessarily have our specific tastes catered to for free, either.

While we would love to be able to solve every problem that people ask, most of the time people simply say "I have a problem, here's my website, go figure it out"; of course, that's not exactly what people write, but that's often the extent of it. Sometimes we're not even lucky enough to learn the specifics of a person's website. Many times the question asked is simply "I'm using 'Brand X' template and I'm having a problem with the format of the text/colours/menu/something else". We don't want to come across as too critical of these requests but, in honesty and fairness, most of us have no idea about the intricacies of the "Brand X" template. :S

This topic is a merge of several topics started by users in which the answer is nearly always the same: the answer is to read My Joomla site template makes a mess of Kunena . This is good advice. In every case after we've made this suggestion, people amazingly seem to resolve their problems.

Here is a quick summary of that article:

• Our job is not to fix up the problems, mistakes or errors made by other Joomla developers.


• Some people can fix their problems themselves and some people can't. It's not our job to provide a free service to fix the millions of problems created by other Joomla template developers. If you paid for a template then you should, in the first instance, ask for help from the template developer.


• If you don't want to pay the price there are three things that you can do:

  (1) Try different Joomla site templates until you find one that works for you.
  
  (2) Read the good help that is given on the FAQs page and, in particular, see the section about "Template and layout-related issues". Learn to use the web developer's tools that are included with (or that can be added on to) your web browsers (e.g see Firebug ).
  
  (3) While every problem is unique, the approach to asking questions should be the same. If you have a problem with your Joomla template then please give other people the details about where the problem occurs. A screenshot helps but the URL of your Kunena forum will help others find and help you faster. We respect your right to privacy. If you don't want to provide that information, that's OK. As we all know, every problem is unique and it's impossible to give general solutions without knowing what's causing the specific problem.

And now, the posts that follow this one represent only a sample of the many that relate to this topic.

Hi,
I have changed the template style in the Template Manager and also in the css files of the default theme, but the default blue still appears on the forum.

How can I change the colour theme/

The answer depends on a couple of things. Firstly, which file did you change? (see How do I change the colours of my template in Kunena? )

Secondly, you may be picking up a cached version of your CSS rules. Force a page reload (in Firefox, use CTRL+SHIFT+R - other browsers have use a different techniques). I hope this helps.

Thanks to sozzled, my colors problem has been solved. However, now I'm experiencing a different issue. The text within posts is being cut off by my template in Google Chrome. Here is an example...



As you can see, the text in the post seems to flow under the website template and the sections with options extends over the template. I am using the latest version of Joomla 1.6 and Kunena.

I've tested this in Internet Explorer 8 (64bit) and it works fine. I've also tested it in FireFox 5.0 and it looks fine there too. The only browser this seems to happen on is Google Chrome. Is this a known issue? How do I solve it?

Again, these kinds of issues are directly related to your Joomla site template CSS and they can be corrected there. As we've said in the frequently-asked question about How do I change the colours of my template in Kunena? it's a straightforward case of using standard web design tools (e.g. Firebug for Firefox) to pinpoint the cause of such issues, combined with a basic understanding of CSS, and then develop your own rules to counter-act the effects of the CSS imposed by the site template that you are now using.

There are other alternatives, too. One of those is to enquire of the people who developed your site template and ask why the area allocated to the component display is behaving the way that it is. Another way of tackling the issue is to pay a web design specialist to investigate and propose a solution for you.

In most cases, analysing these kinds of issues is not possible on the basis of looking at a screenshot. As I have just mentioned, using a web design tool like Firebug requires someone to actually see the issue as it appears on your site. You are in the best position to do that (unless you would like to share the details of your site with us). Google Chrome - ah, there's a horse of a different breed - issues can be resolved, too, using the built-in design tool that's incorporated into that browser.

It does make one wonder why different browser manufacturers have implemented the CSS recommendations in their own, individual and inconsistent manner, doesn't it?

Well, I just found out more information. It seems that Google Chrome isn't the only browser that has the problem. Upon looking at the site again in Google Chrome, it appeared to had fixed itself without me doing anything. It was then I realized that the problem only appears when a user is logged into the forum. Once logging into the forum, the problem occurred on Google Chrome, FireFox, and Internet Explorer. I'm not sure why this problem would show up when a person is logged into the forum yet work just fine when they aren't. Because it is behaving this way across all browsers, I'm not so sure it is my website's CSS more than it is Kunena's CSS...

Right now I'm playing with it using firebug and have noticed that many of Kunena's div tags extend way past the website template. I've found that changing to seems to solve the problem and it looks perfect, but it only solves the problem for that post. Any replies to the post are still going off the screen...

WebResearcher wrote: I'm not so sure it is my website's CSS more than it is Kunena's CSS...

I can't help you unless we know what we're specifically discussing. As I wrote earlier, each problem is largely resolved by seeing the issue as it occurs on the site in question. Without knowing more about how these issues manifest themselves on your particular site, I can only give general answers. As a general answer, in the absence of any other information, 99.9% of these issues are usually resolvable by working on the Joomla site CSS; I have encountered one or two exceptions to that general rule. I'm sorry, that's the only helpful advice I can give at this time.

Overzicht (dutch) Overview font is bold and too big for my forum. I am using the default template. Where in the css can I change it, if that is possible.
Newbie here..

karin

change line 87 components\com_kunena\template\default\css\kunena.default.css

to:
regards 810

I would suggest something a little different (see How do I change the colours of my template in Kunena? ).

Rather than edit the file ../components/com_kunena/template/default/css/kunena.default.css (and this won't work unless you enable Kunena debug mode) I would, instead, add to the end of my Joomla site template CSS file, the following lines

#Kunena .kheader h2 a {
color: #fff;
font-size:15px;
}