Central Column – the important bit – too thin. Please help.

Hello
Any thoughts on this?
About half way down there’s a bit that goes a proper width (picture of a table, then the menu) – if only the rest could be like that.
Any help making the blog a decent width would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Tony

As far as the column being too thin, I believe its due to this bit of css code:

.site-content .entry-header, .site-content .entry-content, .site-content .entry-summary, .site-content .entry-meta, .page-content {
margin: 0 auto;
max-width: 474px;}

This sets the maximum width for the content header and entry to 474 pixels. That creates one skinny center column. I created a child theme and changed it to

.site-content .entry-header, .site-content .entry-content, .site-content .entry-summary, .site-content .entry-meta, .page-content {
margin: 0 auto;
max-width: 960px;}

and now my content takes up the entire screen. It doesn’t seem to affect the responsiveness of the design either.

Hope it helps,

Kateva

There are several issues on your site:
The first is the MetOffice embed in your left sidebar. On desktop and tablet, it is too wide at 250px, where that sidebar content area maxes out at 122px.

The second is the Tide Times widget which is also too wide at 162px. You need to fix these before going on to your main question.

Here are two common ways to fix the above issues 1. get rid of those widgets if they aren’t important (or try putting them in your footer widget area if they are marginally important). 2. If you must keep them, adjust your child theme css for a wider left sidebar. This is easier said than done because the Twenty Fourteen theme has several css breakpoints to account for.

The other issue on your site is how you’re using those floated images. If you’re using the default “insert media” option and clicking align left, you should be seeing those line up with the left margin of the text and images in the post, but I’m not seeing that. They are sticking way out and if you resize the viewport those images wind up going under the black sidebar and becoming obscured. You need to correct all of these as well.

Once all this is corrected then you can look into widening the primary site content area to cut down on whitespace. Hope this helps.

Wow – thanks Metaprinter.
You’re right those widgets are the sort of thing that look nice on a desktop view (how I tend to do it), but clutter things up on tablets & phones (how Google tells me most people view it)
So I will kill them, and see how that helps.

Thank you also to Kateva – I shall have a play with your suggestions once I have implemented Mr Printer’s suggestion

Thank you – and best wishes – to you both

Tony