Side Bar not aligned at top of page

Looks to me like the closing div on line 23 is not needed.

I would also try running your site through the W3C validator and make sure that all your divs are all right.

Thanks for the response Christine,

When I remove the div that you pointed out, it puts my footer in line with the post – exactly where I want the side bar to be. But the side bar shows up below the last post instead of next to it, like it’s just a continuation of the same section of the site. Does that help at all? Or should I give more info?

Yeah, you’re right, that div on line 23 is the one that closes the content. The error might be in your css then. Have you tried putting background colours or borders on your #content and #sidebar?

It might just be that the content is wider and thus pushing the sidebar lower.

If that doesn’t work, can you provide a link to your site, so we can see it in action?

The site is https://www.iownthepackers.com/indextest.php

You can see the issue I’m having, and I don’t think it would be content pushing it lower… It looks to me like the loop is somehow resetting the part of the page that the side bar should start on and moving it lower and lower with each post. There are only 2 posts now and it’s in line with the 2nd, but when I added a 3rd test post it was bumped down to be in line with the 3rd.

I ran the w3c validator and it found a few errors. I’m still going through them but it’s difficult because the line numbers don’t match up (it shows the site with the blog text in, not the WP code)

Thanks again for the help here, I’m a little confused by all the coding at this point.

Ok, I can see in your site, that there are two instances of <div id=”content”>

Your loop should start inside that div and end before the closing div.

If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get this code?

<?php
require('blog/wp-blog-header.php');
?>

Can simply be <?php get_header(); ?>

And what the heck is start_wp();?

The default WordPress loop should look something like this:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

		Do stuff here

<?php endwhile; ?>

I got the code on a website that was showing how to incorporate wordpress into existing pages. It may be outdated, or even wrong, I don’t know. But it did work for the most part, though obviously not the way I want. Since this is my first experience ever using wordpress or advanced coding, I’m starting to grasp it, but I don’t have the expertise to make it do everything I want in a custom way.

I decided to just revamp an existing wordpress theme (twentyten) and make it into what I’m trying to do. Building the site through WordPress seems much easier and should fix the bulk of my advanced problems. You can see it at the regular index site now, and since I’m currently in the process of migrating to a WordPress-built site, we can probably close this topic unless you see errors in the new one.

Thanks again here

Do not edit the Twenty Eleven theme. It is the default WordPress 3.2 theme and having access to an unedited version of the theme is vital when dealing with a range of site issues. Create a child theme for your changes. Once your child theme is active, we should be able to help with the customisation.

Ok that makes sense. I’ll make a child theme then re-upload the files to make twentyten back to normal. Thanks

Ok I copied over the entire twentyten edited theme and gave it a new title. Then I deleted twentyten and reinstalled it from the website. (did both delete and reinstall through the WP dashboard but also checked FTP to make sure the folder was deleted). After reinstalling it, when I preview I see some modifications still show… Mainly stuff I changed in the header area with my own banner, etc. Any idea what files got changed that I’d need to fix to make twentyten original again? It probably isn’t anything in the twentyten folder since that was completely wiped out and restored.