Run Wordpress short code before embedding forum on wordpress page

JanHoos

Hi Guys!

I run an airsoft community on a wordpress page. Vanilla forums embedded perfectly on a full width page, so theres no wordpress sidebar to confuse our visitors.

One thing I miss right now tho, is the upcoming 3 events widget that was in the sidebar. I'd like to put the 3 upcoming events on top of the page, but whenever I place the correct short code above the forum embed code, it just disappears.

It seems the forum pushes itself as the top element and it negates all the wordpress short codes I put in there. Even when I just add a paragraph of text, the text goes missing and theres just the embedded forum.

Am I missing something? I guess its not possible to get a wordpress widget to display within the vanilla sidebar?

This is a result I had in mind, to illustrate. The 3 upcoming events are displayed left to right at the top of the page and after that, the forum embed renders.

peregrine

you could probably change the "wordpress template" page for the forums and add the widgets there specifically for the forum page.

that would be the clean way if it could be done.

probably not a good idea to muck with the embed code itself - since it will probably throw page height off as well during calculations.

peregrine

I don't believe you can put wordpress widgets in the side panel unless you re-write them in the form that vanilla uses.

you could write a plugin or modify a vanilla plugin...

e.g. forum donate and manually add the events and links statically.

or you could add code that reads the sql from wordpress database and adds it dynamically.

or you could change the format of your wordpress so the events widgets are in the wordpress page at the top. (not the embedded code).

JanHoos

Thanks for your answer Peregrine. I've thought about doing a custom SQL.

I tried adding the code in the top of the page before the embed code from Vanilla, but it seems like Vanilla just squishes the code out of the way...

Like I said, even when I add a paragraph of text in front of the embed code, the paragraph just disappears.

vrijvlinder

You can't add code to an iframe.... You need to add those to the vanilla forum not the iframe of the forum in your embed.

The embed is not the forum it is a clone. It appears inside an iframe container and you can't edit or add stuff inside it. It needs to be in your theme template or a plugin for vanilla.

You can add code to a page where the iframe is embedded, but you need to do it using a div to make room.

Put your embed inside div and see if that works

JanHoos

Sadly its not working as well. I'll just have to see if I can add a sidebar somewhere in the theme and make it horizontal. That will have the same effect.

I know its an iframe, but the strangest thing to me is, iframes from youtube work like I need. You can add text before the iframe code and it will display before the youtube video on the page.

But the iframe from Vanilla is like the mean kid on the block. Pushing everything away to be the only one in the spotlight!

vrijvlinder

You can use the message module to add some code in the template. Also there are several plugins you can try, one is VSlider this one goes above the content, check it out. Also Widgets you can see how to add modules and content , There is Marquee, Pockets
many plugins that can work

peregrine

you could probably change the "wordpress template" page for the forums and add the widgets there specifically for the forum page.

that would be the clean way if it could be done.

probably not a good idea to muck with the embed code itself - since it will probably throw page height off as well during calculations.

JanHoos

Thanks for all the replies and helpful tips!

JanHoos

Fixed it by adding a widget area before the forum. My theme runs on a framework so it turned out to be really easy.