LJ layout help

[melissae]

I'm at a total loss when it comes to adjusting my Lj. Any suggestions for people or communities that can help?
I think that I found the header that I want.. I just have a custom layout and dont know how to make it do anything else.

Help?

Comments

[littlespank.livejournal.com]

I just kinda stumbled my way through it. but if you can even kinda understand some HTML you should be alright. (and you don't have to have a full understanding of it, just be able to ignore all the weird quote and equal sign placement and actually try and suss out what it's talking about) Somewhere in the custom CSS code, there is the URL for the header (like the one you have now) you just change that to the URL you want, and change the dimensions if they are different than your current one. The Header URL tends to be one of the only urls in the custom CSS code so it's pretty easy to find.

If you have photoshop or some kinda paint program, you can use that to help you change the colors around. the part of the code that is something like (color="000000" or "de7fe1") those are just colors. I open up photo shop and type in the code I see, and see what color it is...then I have my layout opened in another tab..and I try and figure out what I'm changing based on the weird little CSS labels (I"m not always right and I don't always see the change) but what I did with my lay out was changed all the Light grey colors to red,(so I figure out that light grey is EEEEEE and I change it to FFFFFF or whatever red is) and I just keep doing that until I get the colors I want.

So I kinda customized my layout that way. It's really more trial and error than anything. What you should do is save the code you have now in a word document, and in case you do something that just...blows up your layout, you have backup chillin there waiting.

Other things you can do is if you see a font like "ariel" or "comic sans" You can change that also. I'm not sure which fonts are internet ready, but you can probably figure that out by doing to a forum and seeing the different font option they give you (comic sans, arial, courier new, impact...the basics) you can change those around. You can also change around the font size. if you see like, under the font name it might say something like "12" or "10" you can change that to smaller or larger depending.

You'll also see stuff like "borders" and it might be like "5" you can reduce that way down to "1" (So like that white border around the light blue border around your avi, it's probably set as the white border around that is at 1, while the light blue around your avi is at a 5. Same with the header part of that post. That dark maroon border and be thickened, or you can change the color to match the background so it looks like it's not there at all.

If you want some interesting colors just let me know. I can give you the number code for pastels or anything of the sort. I just have to wait until I get home and open up PS to get them. I mainly stuck with black white and red, and my comments are a light blue and grey thing going on. it was pretty simple to mess with it.


OH! and there is also a number somewhere in there something like "content=800" or it might be 600 or 700...I tend to make that the same width as my banner, and it makes the end of my banner line up with the content of my journal. (that's not always the case, but the more you try and decode the CSS and play around, just be sure to keep the tab of your journal open and refresh it each time you hit "save changes" and do that often so you can really see the changes you've made.)

[girlfmkitty.livejournal.com]

You can try thefulcrum or mentahelada to look for layouts. sherry_g also makes some.

If you want to keep your custom layout, all you have to do is replace the header's url. Let me know and I'll tell you how.