Unable to change some elements of menu items in the options area

[maryw164]

Basically it would seem that some settings were forgotten when the options area was created.

I don’t see anywhere to change the "current" menu item in CBOX options (default seems to be a black image). It only has the option to change the background color, however doing this has no effect. Neither does changing the background overlay. The ability to change the hover color is missing as well.

*If these options were added and the ability to disable the background image (like on the sidebar), then maybe the new settings would actually display properly. I don't know if this is the case in this instance, but it would appear that maybe it's a similar thing.

The sub-item menu settings are also missing. There is no way to change it's: font color, font weight, or background image. Plus the background color setting which is listed has no effect when changed, just like in the main menu background settings I mentioned above.

It seems odd that there is a way to set all other colors & other options within the menu area, but not these areas. These things are important to be able to customize like the other areas already listed under the options tab. Most people looking to customize the other areas would want those types of areas added as well to customize in the options. It's like it just wasn't completed thoroughly enough to include all areas that site owners would need to effectively customize it using the options area to do so. After all that is the purpose of having the "options" settings, so newbies or those who aren't as comfortable with attempting to change the code manually can do so via the options. :)

I hope I have described this in a way that makes sense. I first discussed these issues in the CBOX forum ( http://commonsinabox.org/groups/help-support/forum/topic/top-menu-background-change-not-working ) & Ray sent me here to report the issues.

[christianwach]

@maryw164 In defence of the devs, it's not that the options have been overlooked, but that there are some technical hurdles related to them. You'll probably want to look at #161 (comment) and PressCrew/infinity#83 for discussion about this issue. The only solution at present is to roll your own CSS overrides in a sub-theme.

[maryw164]

Ok, thank you @christianwach as I stated I am a newbie to all of this, therefore I didn't realize it was a technical problem. I meant no disrespect to the dev's. They have done an excellent job 👍 I of course realize that there are bugs and issues with any software. Hopefully, they can apply what @MrMaz suggested for part of it:

"Since background images can be opaque, technically you can have an opaque image on top of the background color at the same time.

This is a weird issue that we have already solved but its not very intuitive. You have to go to the background image option and check the box to disable the background image, which also kills any hardcoded into the stylesheet by setting background-image: none; "

I will be watching for the other improvements & keeping my fingers crossed. As much as I want to use CBOX for my new site, at the present time I will probably have to find another alternative. The lack of these settings for someone like me who isn't proficient at coding, makes this a deal breaker.

Best of luck!

[christianwach]

@maryw164 I didn't intend to suggest disrespect on your part, I was just framing my response :-)

If you're prepared to delve into child theming (it's not that difficult if you have patience) then the CBOX docs are really good on this:
http://commonsinabox.org/documentation/themes/developer-guide

It's well worth the effort, since improvements to the parent theme automatically get inherited by your child theme when there's an update and none of your changes are overwritten. Indeed, it's a good strategy whichever theme you happen to decide on in the end.

[maryw164]

Yes, that is good advice, to create a child theme. I will look into it. Thank you.

[BoweFrankema]

When we started development we really wanted to give novice users a lot of CSS options. In hindsight this was a mistake, and we should have kept things simple and easy to modify through style.css of your Child Theme. Doing these things through an option panel is just not the ideal way to do it. Christian's suggestion to make some changes through style.css of your CBOX child theme is the way to go!

Closing this issue for now guys :-)

[amorphous]

Thanks @christianwach. reference to PressCrew/infinity#83 was really helpful. this PressCrew/infinity#83 (comment) comment saved me delving into the css and gave the required results