[Support request] What is changed by Content>Layout> One or Seperate conainers?

[John]

I do not understand what happens when I change between “One Container” and “Separate Containers” in:
Customize>Layout>Container>CONTENT Layout>One Container OR Separate Containers.
The explanation given is “When you choose between the two options, you’ll see immediately what the difference is.” I do not see it? What is it? Could you show me a sketch with boxes indicating the advantages and disadvantages of one container verses separate containers?
Q:
1) What is the difference?
2) What is considered “CONTENT?” for a container? Is content text only (as in Page Headers)? Are images content in this case?
3) What happens to things that are not content?
I would be grateful for help in understanding this.
Also, if possible, please tell me what things are “content.”
Thanks very much.

[Tom]

Hi John,

The best way to see the difference is to set your body background color to something vibrant in Customize > Colors > Body.

Once that’s done, switch between Separate Containers and One Container. You’ll see one container removes the gaps between content and widget containers, making it so there’s on big content box.

Separate Containers have empty space between each block.

Let me know if this helps or not 🙂

[John]

Thank you for your help and advice. I did not see the spaces. That is OK. I do not want to take up more of your time.
What I did:
I used customizer > widgets to place an image widget (and different image) in the top bar, header, footer widget 1, and footer-bar.
I used customizer > colors to assign different background colors to the body, top bar, header, primary navigation, primary sub-navigation, content, sidebar widgets, footer widgets, and footer.
I refreshed the pages. I moved around to different pages using the primary navigation menu, went back and forth between separate containers and one container. No spacing or other changes.
It seems to me that somewhere I set something that reduced widget padding to zero. I do not remember where that setting is. I cannot afford to spend more time looking for it. If the setting exists then sometime I will see the widget padding setting again.
I did something wrong.

[Tom]

Here’s an example of the option in action on this page: https://www.screencast.com/t/Epwdu8eJ

Let me know if it clears stuff up or not 🙂

[John]

Thank you for your patient help. The video link was helpful.
Elementor was the problem.
If a page is ever opened in the Elementor editor, then Elementor inactivates the “one container” verse “separate containers” change.
What I did:
I realized all the pages on my GeneratePress experimental site had been opened in the Elementor editor, whether or not I made any changes while open in the Elementor editor.
As a test:
I created a new page and did not open the new page in the Elementor editor.
The new page behaved as expected. Components were separated by the body background color with “separate containers.” Components were not separated by the body background color with “one container.”
Next I opened the new page in the Elementor Pro editor, made no changes, and then saved the page.
After that the components were always separated by the background color whether the container setting was “one container” or “separate containers.”
I very much appreciated your help.

[Tom]

Typically it shouldn’t matter if Elementor is activated, unless you’ve set one of the Page Builder Container options: https://docs.generatepress.com/article/page-builder-container/

In that case, all padding/spacing between items will be removed to make way for the page builder.

[Author]

Posts