Because apparently I can have angst about ANYTHING.

[randomling]

Not cross-posting this, as it's Dreamwidth-specific.

I am having angst about journal styles. Which is ridiculous because there are only three to choose from. My current feeling is this:

1. Negative black is nice, but a bit... yeah, black. It tends to be what I use.
2. Zesty white is also nice, and feels a lot more spacious, but it's a bit... white!
3. Transmogrified - I quite like the layout but it won't display my subtitle and I hate-hate-hate the colour scheme. (Orange. Ugh!) And I look at the colour customization page and go, OMG FLAIL. It's so hard!

I know it should not be hard to change a few damn colours... but I have to choose what they should BE and I can't find any combinations that I like! Have tried focusing more on pinks and purples and blues but nothing works. It just feels like too much work!

I am not really looking for anything here, just - meep! I realize this is me whining about unimportant stuff, I do. But. Oh, I dunno. The style I use on LJ is not open source. Sigh!

Comments

[chrismm]

These are cool thing to play with, to pick colors:

http://www.colourlovers.com/
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/index.php
http://www.colorhunter.com/

There was another site like that I used to use all the time, and now I can't find it--but these are pretty close.

Also, I kept mine really simple--I'm using Transmogrified, but I just picked three colors: One for all backgrounds and borders (the boxes bug me), one for text and headers, and one for links. If you like the boxes, you can add the borders back in, but then you have only four colors to find.

Also, also--if you choose All Styles, there's one called Core2 that's the base style or something--that one may meet what you want better, though you'll still have to pick colors.

[randomling]

I'm still getting used to the thing where it goes straight to the comments when you hit reply! I keep scrolling down and missing the first comment entirely.

Those links were really helpful, because after having NO IDEA it took me about half an hour to pick a palette and decide what to do with it. And now I have a colour scheme that I quite like! I may mess around with Core2 and maybe try out different palettes but those links were SO USEFUL for the visual-arts-challenged like myself.

Thank you! :D

[hatman]

Yeah, I went through the same thing. Spent a couple hours tweaking. Still not sure I'm entirely happy, but I'm thinking it's good enough.

What's nice is that there's the popup color palette. That makes things a lot easier.

What you can try is setting your favorite color as the background, and then building up from there.

[randomling]

Yeah, that's where I am right now - not 100% happy but this is good enough, at least for now!

Once I found a palette I liked (and OMG, I keep being reminded that the internet is full of resources you hadn't even thought of) it was quite quick and easy!

[quiara]

I had an imported style from LJ which got broken with the last code push, so I kind of feel your pain. There's only so much we can do with the three bases, yah? But I've got mine in greens with hints of blue right now. The sheer number of options on the transmogrified layout always gives me pause. I like the colors of mine now, I think, but I still wish it were a bit more original. ^_^

So, erm, yeah. I think most people feel at least a twinge of this. I think it's part of wanting to make the space yours. Blogs are typically suburban sub-divisions. DW-style journal sites tend to be more like apartments or communes or something, where there's a social level of interaction between all residents, but all the "units" start out looking pretty similar. It's human nature to want to paint the walls, so to speak. ^_^

[randomling]

Ooh, I like your green/blue journal! I found a palette I really liked from on of the links in chrismm's comment above, and went from there, and it was much quicker and easier than looking at all the colours and going, OMG.

[revolutions]

Argh, I have layout angst too. But... a friend of mine has apparentlygot Flexible Squares working. I'll ask her how she did it in the morning and report back, if you like (it's like 1am here, so).

[randomling]

Ooh, if you have Flexible Squares instructions, I would be most interested - thank you!

(I think from your time stamp, it was 1am for me, too - are you in the UK?)

[revolutions]

Yep, I'm in Manchester! :)

I managed to get it set up as follows:

1. Go to the "Developer Area" in the Customize Journal Style section.

2. Click on "Your Layers" and create a new top-level layout layer using "Core 1".

3. Copy-paste the text here into it.

4. Go back to the "customize journal style" section, click on "select a new theme", click "your custom layers" in the style-selector thing, and select the "Flexible Squares" one that appears. You can then customize colours etc in the normal way, using the wizard.

... It worked ok for me, but I seem to have an odd glitch: on my friends page, I see the icons of people who've posted but not their usernames - I have to hover over the icon to see the username. Not sure what that's about.

[revolutions]

Never mind, a friend helped me out with the username glitch - the code that's up at linked above should work now, I changed it. :)

[turlough]

I snagged the FS code, I hope you don't mind? I was thinking of porting my FS layout to DW and now I don't have to hunt for the base layer before I do, thank you!

[hillarygayle]

I feel you. I'm rocking transmogrified, and I like it. Once you start looking at what each color does, it's not that hard to click through, picking colors for each element. I keep my journal open in another window, start clicking colors, and every so often I save, then reload my journal. That lets me see where I'm going with it.

[randomling]

Yeah, one thing that really helped me was chrismm saying "you only have to pick three or four colours. Of course, then I found a palette I loved that had FIVE! So I had to find a fifth colour. Think I did pretty well in the end! :)

[raynedanser]

There are customizations available already (see my layout? *g*) It just takes a bit of patience to fiddle with the layers and such to do so.