Styles FAQ

We know that journal styles are important to lots of people, and so there will be a lot of questions about what styles on Dreamwidth will be like. We'll attempt to answer those questions here.

Will Dreamwidth have X layout?

There's a list of layouts under consideration for porting into Dreamwidth on Layout Portability. However, please know that we're not simply taking styles available on LiveJournal and putting them up. Each imported layout requires work to bring it up to our standards with regards to features and CSS classes. Additionally, not all of LiveJournal's layouts are available as open source, which affects what we'll be able to offer. If you have a favourite layout, you may wish to talk about it in Style_Pros_and_Cons.

What about S1 styles?

Dreamwidth has retired the S1 system; it won't be available. It's not currently supported on LiveJournal and is only kept for legacy reasons. We're starting from a clean slate and we feel that the time that would be spent supporting S1 could be better spent on other improvements.

We know there are some people who find the S1 system a lot easier to customize in, and we're moving forward with that in mind. There have been great strides to let you change things in any S2 style that used to be only available in S1 or required a paid account (and programming knowledge). Dreamwidth is committed to making styles easy to customize for people with any skillset. There are more standardized features across layouts that will reduce the need to tweak the style itself to get what you want--all you'll have to do is change the options in the wizard! All styles can be customized with CSS. Plus, for those who find S2 daunting, the documentation is getting an upgrade.

What extra customizations do paid accounts get?

Just like on LiveJournal, some features and styles will likely only be available to paid account holders. This may include the ability to expand all comments in a thread, or display your comment pages in a customized style. These specific decisions are still being made.

Paid account holders will have access to the Developer Area/Advanced Customization Area, which are used to tweak S2 code or develop S2 layers from scratch.

However, we're making sure all of our available styles are feature-rich, have easy to use wizards, and are very customizable using CSS. You'll be able to do a lot with your style even if you don't have a paid account.

Can I use my custom themes and styles from LiveJournal?

It depends. We'll have a lot of feature-rich styles designed to be very customizable with CSS, but your specific customizations may not translate over. Any customizations you've made may require modification, because we're doing a lot of standardization across our styles to try and make developing themes easier. The result will be a better system, but it will mean that some of the code from your favorite LiveJournal layout won't work right off the bat. Also, not all LiveJournal layouts can or will be ported, either--see Layout Portability for more information.

If you have an S2 style of your own, you'll need a paid account just like on LiveJournal to use it. It will probably work on Dreamwidth, but there's a chance changes we're making to the S2 core will require some tweaks on your part.

Can I do X with my style?

If you could do it on LiveJournal, we're making every effort to ensure it's easy to do on Dreamwidth. We're still working out which features will be standardized across all Dreamwidth layouts. See Style Features for current information about which features we've gathered from LiveJournal that are under consideration.