How do I customize my journal using S1?

Visual Options: Titles, Layout and Theme

This area is where you set the various titles for your journal pages. Here you can also choose a layout for each of the four views. The list of layouts includes all LiveJournal system styles; users of accounts with Professional or Permanent package of service will also see any custom styles they have created here. It is possible to select different styles for each of the views, although most system styles are available for all four view types.

If you are using any style-specific overrides, such as overrides changing the text of your comment links or overrides changing your journal's width or position, you will need to make sure that you change those overrides as necessary when you change to a different style.

You can also select a color theme for your journal. A few styles (Notepad, Webley Boxes on White, and Refried Paper) use colors that cannot be changed through this interface.

LiveJournal offers a number of pre-set color themes, but you can also enter a custom set of colors by choosing the Custom colors option and then entering the hexadecimal codes for the colors you want. You can use this chart of hexadecimal color codes, although this is not a complete list. The howto journal also has a color usage area guide, which explains how the color variables apply to different areas of your journal in different styles.

Other Visual Options and Overrides

Among other options, the Journal Display page lets you choose your journal's mood theme or create your own. There's a section for navigation strip settings, and another to let you show community userpics on your friends page. If you turn off the community userpics option, community userpics will show up for entries on your S1 Friends page when the author of the post has no default userpic and did not select a specific userpic when posting the entry.

The last section of Visual Options deals with overrides. This is where you can enter overrides to change your journal's appearance. Tutorials on overrides and how to use them, along with some commonly-requested overrides, can be found on the howto journal.

Advanced

The Advanced Journal Display page is the starting point for advanced customization in S1. Owners of accounts with Professional or Permanent package of service can change the entire layout of their journal and customize all of the HTML by making their own S1 styles. If you make a new style, you must select its name from the dropdown list in the Layout section on the Journal Display page to use it on your journal. Alternatively, you may wish to embed your LiveJournal into your web site.