Site integration question

[AshG]

Hello,

I recently purchased vBulletin and downloaded vBAdvanced. I've been looking for a new news system for my site (http://www.envynews.com) for a while, and after seeing one of my good friends using it for his site, I decided to give it a try.

I seem to be having a problem, as right now site integration appears to be all-or-nothing. I would like to preserve the top and sides of my current main page, but add the center column items to the, well, center column of the main page.

I have included a screenshot of my site with a black border around where we'd like the news to go. I think there should be a way where, if the sidebars are turned off in the control panel, everything should be able to display nicely in the center area without messing up the side items.

Is there a way to accomplish what we're looking for? Please let me know if there's any more information I need to provide. Thanks for your help.

[Brian]

Why not just add the stuff in your current side bars as new modules?

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[AshG]

I discussed that option with the rest of my site staff, and going with modules isn't in the cards right now. Our sidebars have a specific look and custom coding that we want to keep at this point; we're just not into the whole "portal look" idea at this time.

I think there must be a way to do what we're looking for, keeping the current sidenav bars and using vBA's center column. I'd appreciate knowing how to do that. If that's not a possibility, then I'm up for recommendations on what can do what we're looking for.

[Brian]

There's no reason you couldn't add what you currently have in your side bars as modules and have it look exactly the same as it does now.

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[AshG]

Let me talk it over with the staff again and see what I can do.

[AshG]

Well Brian, I sat down and thought it through with some of the staff, and we're going to give the module idea a go. I just spent some time trying to better learn the system, and it looks like it should be easy enough. Major kudos on the backend.

I still do have some questions, and hope that you can help with them.

1. How would we go about separately skinning the sidebars and the center column, so that it matches the current look?

2. We'd like to have a news title list up top, a'la this site (http://www.driverheaven.net), so the headlines are clickable to take you to the appropriate news post. What would we need to do in order to do that? Is there code already available and I'm just not seeing it?

I think that's it for now. Please pardon my tone in earlier posts, I really do appreciate the help here and will definitely give this place it's due once my site's redo is up.

[Brian]

1). If you're just adding the current sidebars then you should just be able to add them as two separate modules (one on the left, one on the right) and just use the same code you currently have. Then you could just change the classes in the center columns to match whatever colors you would like.

2). That wouldn't be too hard to do. If they haven't released the code in the hacks forum here let me know and I can probably throw something together for you. :)

[AshG]

I'm afraid I may have to take you up on your offer, as I can't seem to find anything anywhere like what the site I linked is using. Let me know what I can do to help out, as I appreciate your help greatly.