These are my rote instructions when sidebar nosedives happen, which mostly occur in the Internet Explorer browser. I don't know that it happens very much in Firefox, but it can happen there!
[More below...]
But, on to our problem! Sometimes it's simple, sometimes not.
|
- Your sidebar may be going to the bottom because your server is crazy due to being worked on by Blogger. (This occurs less often than when I began and it would sometimes cause your sidebar not to begin at the top like it's supposed to.)
- Wrong code or missing pieces of code sometimes cause this kind of jump or aberration.
- It is probable you'll have to get out of Compose mode and enter Html mode in order to see wrong code in the posts.
- It is possible you have posted too large a photo. If so, use a photo program to create a smaller version of it or simply eliminate (delete) it as a temporary measure.
- It is possible you have too long a link somewhere. (In this regard, I'm referring only to the naked link such as "http:..etc." If you have placed the url in an anchor tag formula so that only the blog title is visible, that is NOT the kind of link meant here because the long part doesn't show or have any effect on the screen!) Change the link and the sidebar might go back to the top of the page.
- Also, look for a misstated IMG code. They can cause more trouble than just the image not showing!
- Possibly your main column width and sidebar exceed allowable Content width or header width.
- Sometimes one of the "floats" in the template will get changed for some reason and be wrong. Investigate. Options are "left", "right", and "none".
- If you suspect it may be caused by something in a particular post, you could Save as Draft to remove it temporarily and see if it was the cause. Then you can Publish it again later to put it back in place.
- Also, sometimes I've found it to be caused by just getting some wrong or missing code in the template or in a recent post. You might have one tag or symbol too many or too few. If you've deleted some things, maybe you left one little piece of nonsense code behind that's confusing the template.
- Once it was caused in a friend's site by a -->, the closing tag for hiding a comment; it had no start tag, was just wrongly there!
- Even if you remember something pretty clearly, always be willing to go back and examine codes or settings because Blogger is not completely stable--a glitch can occur!
|
Play Sherlock Holmes and test some changes without saving them until you use Preview and see that the change works and does no harm. It's hard, but I don't know any easy way. Think about the last 2 or 3 things you did. One oddity of the "low sidebar" is that there is sometimes a "delayed reaction" before the visible bad effect occurs, so that the post, image, or link that's the culprit may SEEM to have been innocent (caused no immediate problem) at first.
To test posts one at a time, use the Permalink feature; if you click on the Post Title, your site will show only that one post. When you keep doing the blog like that, you MAY find a single post that pushes the sidebar down and that post will be the cause of your trouble. In other cases, of course, the trouble is coming from the sidebar and you just have to figure it out.
To hear all this put another way, go to Peter's post about it or Chuck's post.
