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Fine Tuning Your Big Themes Maximum Page Width

The Big Themes’ customizer offers a number of tools for managing page width. However, it also possible to use Additional CSS to fine tune your maximum page width even further. In particular, you may find it preferable to have a narrower foreground body on wider screens. You can try adding the code below into the Additional CSS section of the customizer to see if you like the update.

You should note that this snippet was performed with the BIg Chill theme. So you will not be able to use it with the earliest Big Themes like Big Scene or Big Bob.

@media screen and (min-width: 1100px) {
	.bb-theSqueeze, #site-navigation {
               width: 95% !important;
        }
	.bb-aligncenterstyle {
		width: 98%
	}
	#bb-scroll-down,
	#bb-back-to-top{
		right: 4%;
	}
}

You may want to play around with the min width value at the top of the code snippet. Pay particular attention to what happens to your navbar as your screen narrows. You want to make sure that you have enough room for all of your content, especially if you have your title floated left and your menu floated right. If the content starts to stack on top of itself as the screen narrows, then you may want to increase the min width value.

You also don’t want to lower the min width value below 1065. That content width range has been reserved for mobile environments.

Questions About Maximum Page Width

If you have any questions, then please post them in the comments section.

How to Remove the Sticky Navbar from the Big Themes

When you are first building a website, you may find that it is only one page in size and rather short, and using a navbar doesn’t really serve any intuitive purpose. Fortunately, you can easily remove your site’s navbar until you wish to use it later with the Big Themes.

All you have to do to remove the navbar and the menu button is add the following code to the Additional CSS section:

#site-navigation {
	display: none;
}

Once you have done this, you can adjust the body of the page to the top of the screen in the Layout section of the customizer. If at any point in the future you decide to make your site larger, you can add the navbar back by removing the above code from the navbar. You also have the option of adding a navigation block directly into the body of your page.

This technique should work with any of the Big Themes.

Create a Website for a Bar with the Big Chill Theme

This is a demonstration of how you can modify my Big Chill WordPress theme so that it can be used to create a website for a bar. You can use my instructions and my blog to build this yourself. Or you can contact me about custom services through my homepage.

Click on the image to open a video demo in YouTube

Version 2

Click on the image to open a video demo in YouTube

The bb-fv class has Been Phased Out

For most of my users, this post will be irrelevant. The bb-fv class is deprecated and probably won’t work with the latest version of WordPress. Unless you deliberately added it, then there is nothing for you to do.

The bb-fv class is one of the original features of the Big Themes. It seemed like a great idea when I built it. But it has proven itself to be unpopular and difficult to maintain. WordPress has improved a lot, and the features of the bb-fv class can be reproduced with the WordPress core block features and the background video style option.

The bb-fv class was only available in the earliest versions of the Big Themes. I did try to maintain this class through several WordPress versions, but it seemed as though nobody was using it, and it’s features could be reproduced in a more sustainable manner.

If you are using an older version of WordPress, then the bb-fv class should still work. But you will likely have problems if you update. If you are one of the few people that ever tried using this feature, then you should update your videos using Method 1. You can use the WordPress default controls to auto play your videos in excerpts.

It is also worth noting that the page level background video feature was dropped completely starting with the Big Patterns theme. The layout options made it unnecessary. However, site level and homepage background videos are still available in the latest themes. You can set these features using the customizer.

Please contact me with any questions. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

The New Big Lights Theme is in Development

The new Big Lights theme is in development. It adds new lighting design options, and new block patterns, and it adds a number of new controls for designing the main navbar. The primary purpose of the new controls is to improve the layout when the menu is floated to the right, so users have more options when building smaller menus. This site and my blog are currently running on early versions of Big Lights. You can see a screenshot of some of the new customizer controls below.

Screenshot of some of the new customizer menu controls.

Big Patterns is Live

Introducing Big Patterns

Big Patterns is live. The new Big Patterns theme is designed to make block patterns more accessible to users by combining their settings with the customizer. It also gives builders a lot more control over layout, especially with respect to setting the body’s distance from the navbar. You can see demos of some of the new patterns by viewing this site’s homepage. You can download Big Patterns by going into to your WordPress admin center, then select Appearance > Themes > Add New, then type “Big Patterns” into the search box.