Right Hand Column in Showthread

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I'm in the middle of upgrading from 2.2.9 to 3.6.8 - so far everything is going very well, but I've run into a snag I'm hoping someone can help with.

Using the ideas behind a very old template mod (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=85424&highlight=sidemenu) I was able able to create side columns in forumhome and forumdisplay pretty easily, and they're integrated nicely into the rest of the page. The template changes in essence are within forumhome and forumdisplay, I just added a table that wraps around the main body (but not the header or footer) and makes that one cell, and the side column the next cell.



That is except for showthread. I am all over the map on that one.

Here are the things I've done/altered to try to make a similar side column work:


Created a replacement variable for $spacer_open, then modified the postbit_wrapper template so that each time the postbit_wrapper template calls for the outertablewidth, it only gets the width I want that column to be.
Double-checked padding and margin issues - those don't seem to be it.


Any ideas of how I might edit Showthread or other templates to get myself a nice, clean looking side column?

The Ultimate Side Column hack is nice in it's simplicity to install, but it is called from the header, which for contextual advertising purposes (like Adsense), it's difficult to get relevant ads when the ad is generated before the content of the thread. Also, it reduces my ability to wrap ads snugly around the content like they are in Forumhome and Forumdisplay.

Sorry for the length of the post. Ask any questions for clarification.

Thanks in advance for your help.

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Here's a screen shot of the problem -

Notice the posts are the full width of the header, where they should only be about 3/4. Also, the footer has gone AWOL, as has the two adsense ads at the bottom, which are supposed to be just below the nav/breadcrumb.

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After running the page through W3C validation, I may have caught something - it looks like the table I created is spilling over the closure of some <div>s.

I'll continue to peck away at this, but would love any input you might provide.

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For anyone else looking into this, the problem seems to lie in the spacer_open template, specifically the conditional for old IE browsers. While it shouldn't affect non IE or current (6+) IE browsing, it does, and there isn't a closing conditional in spacer_close (but it wouldn't matter, because when I added one in, it still didn't work). Remove the conditional and you'll be a long way toward making this template mod work.