Personally I feel that the river takes up a lot of space on the page, and I want to utilize that space more by providing some other content.

The left-side "SideBoxes" are not enough for me and so I'm going to teach you how to add some boxes above the river.

First, backup your whole riverdashboard plugin folder and make a new copy of it. This is the one we will play with.

-------------------------

Open the root/mod/riverdashboard/views/default/riverdashboard/welcome.php

it should look like this:

<?php

 

/**

* Elgg thewire view page

* 

* @package ElggTheWire

* @license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html GNU Public License version 2

* @author Curverider <info@elgg.com>

* @copyright Curverider Ltd 2008-2010

* @link http://elgg.com/

* 

*/

 

?>

<div id="content_area_user_title">

<h2><?php echo sprintf(elgg_echo('welcome:user'), $_SESSION['user']->name); ?></h2>

</div>

Now add the following code beneath the last "</div>"

<div id="topsection">

 

<div class="dashbox">

Dashbox 1

</div>

<div class="dashbox">

Dashbox 2

</div>

</div>

Now open your root/mod/riverdashboard/views/default/riverdashboard/css.php

Add the following code:

#learningdashbox {

margin: 0;

padding: 0;

}

.dashbox {

width: 350px;

float: left;

border: none;

background: none;

margin: 0 5px 10px 0;

padding: 0;

min-height: 120px;

}

Now go and check out your new riverdashboard and you should see 2 boxes appear side by side above the river. Changing the design of them is simply done in the CSS file. Play around with it until you get the desired style you want. Remember when editing CSS, turn simplecache "off". 

If you find that the river stream is a little out of place, or that your spotlight is acting weird add the following code to the welcome.php at the bottom:

<div class="clearfloat"></div>

That should solve the problem, and eventually your dashboard could look something like mine below: