WordPress (CSS & PHP) Need help with changing a section of colour in the sheet.

Hi there wise wordpress users! (I hope)

I've come to a road block (resulting from lack of css & php knowledge) in the design of my website. I'm trying to change a section of colour in the sheet (the area of grey below my header). I want the left 2 thirds lightened to a greyish white. I know the basics of how to change all of the colour through the stylesheet.css, however after allot of trial and error, i still can't figure out how to do this.

Here is my website www.Filmhammer.com

and here is what i want it to look (quick mockup on photoshop)...



For now just ignore the stripe behind the header and the border on the left of the sidebar as i haven't looked into them and i might be able to figure those out myself.

I used artisteer to create the design and i have begun to edit this design through the wordpress editor. If your need any more information (like the stylesheet etc...) then ask and i'll put it up.

Anyway, thanks for your time and if you know how to do this, or have any idea of how to possibly do this then your answers are welcome!

(Apologies for posting this in the wrong thread first time around)

 

Got no time now to go into detail, but
first change the complete content background color.

at a first look it could be either

.art-contentLayout

Code (markup):

or

.art-content

Code (markup):

and add a background color to it.

alternative just search your css for "background-color" and change step by step until you found the one


After that is done, find your sidebar div in the css and add a grey background to there.

 

Wow, that was easy, can't help but feel slightly dumb now

That works great, and looks how i wanted it too, however if the sidebar falls short of the page length i get a nasty white area towards the bottom, between the sidebar and the footer.

Is there anyway of stopping the white area from appearing? or would i just have to deal with it, or perhaps try to fill it with something? Reply when you can.

Thanks for the help!

 

adding a
height: 100%; to the sidebar div might solve it, but i think not.

have to think fast -.- been a while since i last saw that error

 

Nah, it didn't work. Unless, i might be typing it wrong.

Here's the code i have for the sidebar at the moment, I'm not sure it will (but oh well )

.art-contentLayout .art-sidebar1
{
	position: relative;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0;
	float: left;
	overflow: hidden;
	width: 244px;
        background-color: #D4D4D4;
        height: 100%;
}
/* end LayoutCell */

Code (markup):

I'm off now, so i'll look more into this tomorrow
Thanks for your help with this,

 

Ok here are 3 methods fast before i go off. I personally almost never face this problem, has been so long since i did, guess i throw in all the tags by default.

1. you added the height 100 % to the sidebar, keep it there, now add the same on the "body" part in your css


2.
throw this into the sidebar div, changing both number to something that its reach the end

  min-height: 500px;
  height: auto !important;
  height: 500px;

Code (markup):

3. find this in your file

<div class="art-sidebar1">

Code (markup):

before that add

<div class="stretch"></div>

Code (markup):

in your css, put on the body part

height:100%; 

Code (markup):

to your sidebar div add these tags

position: absolute;
height: auto; background-color: your color;

Code (markup):

new code

.stretch { 
position:absolute; 
height:100%; 
background-color: your color;
}

Code (markup):

One should work, heres another thing lol.
Make a small 1px image in height and width the same as your div

put this on your sidebar div

background: url(images/1px.jpg) repeat-y;

Code (markup):

Never used this image method myself though

Let me know how it goes

 

I tried out all the methods and couldn't get any to work D:
I could give you all the code if you want, however i googled the problem and this thread popped up. I haven't got time to look at it now but later i will test it out... Thanks a lot for all your help so far.

Anyway, i got the border up for the side bar and i have the background for the post header, however how would i go about stretching the background for the header so there are no white gaps at each left and right end? (as it appears in the image in the first post).

Thankyou.

 

Has anyone else got any ideas on how to stretch the side bar background colour to the footer? Mine is that to give the sheet a background image. I will try that method out over the weekend, however i would prefer for this issue to be resolved with the use of css.

Thanks for your time