Technical Advice Plea

[amythest_n_ice]

Hey guys, I'm fairly sure I've seen posts on my flist, some of you have done your own layouts. Is there anyone who can give me some seriously 'for dummies' help with making my own layout? I've found a couple of comms and sites, but all the coding makes me gibber and makes NO sense what so ever. I can handle most things if they're explained to me step by step, but everything I've found assumes that you have a clue to start with.

Comments

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

What are you trying to do with your layout? Are you starting from complete scratch or modding one of the LJ layouts, or what?

[amythest-n-ice.livejournal.com]

Thats one of the problems, I know what I want, but I have no idea what would be the best way to acheive it. What I want is a layout very much like this journal, with the strips at the side a different color, and my own header in place of the bats at the top.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I have to monkey about with it first. What header would you like to use? That way I can fiddle with the layout to make sure it fits.

[amythest-n-ice.livejournal.com]

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u285/absinthe34/random/YuePhotobanner.jpg
That's what I'm looking for as a header, I can resize the original easily enough, but to increase the width, I would also have to increase the height.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

Something like this?



There's still a little bat next to the entry headers, and the background is that color red because its an easy "insert correct color here" hexadecimal to remember. If you want something else tweaked, just let me know.

body {
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
color:#FFFFFF;
background: url(body.gif) center top repeat-y #990000; /* background behind main box*/

}

#header-inner {
background-image: url("http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u285/absinthe34/random/YuePhotobanner.jpg");
height: 200px;
background-position: center right;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}


#header {
background-image: none;
background-color:#000000;
}

[amythest-n-ice.livejournal.com]

Something like that yes :) only with one of the blues from the 'photograph' at the side, not red. I also have no idea what so ever what I'm meant to do with the coding, where I'm meant to insert it to make the changes. (When I said for dummies, I meant it, lol)

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

You want to go to "Customize Journal."

Then, on that page there will be a blue sidebar, and one of the options will be "Custom CSS"

Click that, and paste the code below in the text entry form at the bottom.

Click "Save Changes" and your journal should have a slightly diffrent layout. = )

body {
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
color:#FFFFFF;
background: url(body.gif) center top repeat-y #2fb3fd; /* background behind main box*/

}

#header-inner {
background-image: url("http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u285/absinthe34/random/YuePhotobanner.jpg");
height: 200px;
background-position: center right;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}


#header {
background-image: none;
background-color:#000000;
}

[amythest-n-ice.livejournal.com]

YAY! Thank you! That is so brilliant.