this mess is a place

I know it's been over two years since I last posted here, but I'm going to keep holding on to this blog since it's becoming increasingly hostile out there on popular social media sites in terms of antis and fanpol and all those other wonderful things. Honestly, aside from AO3, DW is the best and safest place for fandom to thrive. I just wish more people would realize that and get their butts over here so we can establish a real fandom community once more. But it's hard to go back once you've had a taste of one-click posting, WYSWYG formatting, and onsite image hosting. The latter I think is the biggest hurdle to jump. I had hopes of importing content from my tumblr, but it's just... way way too much burden to put on my personal hosting server. And me.

Which is a shame because I've been making a lot of really awesome "problematic content" in the last few months. (I'm back on my bullshit, as they say.) It's times like these when I really really miss the old days (pre Twitter and Tumblr). You know. When you could post two cartoon characters nailing each other without getting crucified. Seems like the world was just a little bit friendlier to adult content creators back then.

If I sound old, it's because I am. 😪

Hello, former Tumblr users!

So you're new to Dreamwidth and everything looks different. You're not too crazy about the default journal layout and you're overwhelmed by all the display options, your images might be exploding out of your post boundaries, there are way too many modules, and things in general are just weird.

Well, I made something just for you to help you relax and focus on exploring this new platform instead of worrying about if people can read your blog. It's almost just like Tumblr's default blog layout. Here's how to install it. No knoweldge of CSS necessary, no heavy lifting required. Just copy-paste and you're all set.

1. Go to your Account Settings. Click the journal style link. The following page displays your current theme:



You've probably got the default theme (Neutral Good by timeasmymeasure for Practicality) installed. If you don't, switch back to that.

2. Click customize your theme in the pink box. Click on the Display link under Customize Your Theme. At the bottom under Page Setup, apply the 1 Column (modules at top and bottom; no sidebar) layout. It's the second choice from the left and looks like this:



3. Once that setup is selected, scroll up to the Custom CSS link under Customize Your Theme and click it. In the Use Embedded CSS box, paste this text (external link to a .txt file).

4. Click Save Changes. You're all done.

From this point, you can add a background image or header image in the Customize Your Theme section, change link colors, or play around with the CSS code, edit it, use it as a base for your own theme, whatever you like. 😊

If you have any questions, leave them here and I'll try to answer them. This is only a crutch to help Tumblr users familiarize themselves with Dreamwidth's format and take away some of the stress of learning a new platform. I hope it helps.

I've got this entry sticky posted. If I make updates to the code (let me know if you run into any problems with it, this was a hasty endeavor) I'll mention it here.

EDIT 12 Dec 18: Modified element to show userpic on front page (I always set mine to display none); did some light cleanup and optimization.
EDIT 14 Dec 18: Added CSS element so custom links will show up nice.
EDIT 16 Dec 18: Fixed some link colors that weren't showing up correctly.
EDIT 20 Dec 18: Now links in comments show up better.

Boyyyy this is giving me 2006 flashbacks.