The DU Journals: "How-To's," "Tips & Tricks," "Do's & Don'ts"

The DU Journals have been in operation for just over two weeks, and hundreds of DUers have already created their own Journals. I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread to discuss some "how-to's", "tips & tricks" and "do's & don'ts." We plan to create a Journals FAQ so hopefully this thread will give us a good idea of what sort of questions people have about the Journals, and what sort of tips people have for making them work successfully.

I've laid out a few ideas below to get the ball rolling, and I'll update this post with your suggestions.

The Journals are still in an early stage at the moment and we have plenty of upgrades and features to add, so please don't request new features in this thread. Just post tips or questions about the existing features.

HOW TO CREATE A JOURNAL

If you've got a message board account, it's easy. Just go to this page and click the Create link at the top.

For more information on how the Journals work, see this page.

MODULE TIPS

Blogrolls

Brainshrub has a great Blogroll tutorial on his Journal here.

To list your Journals and blogs in alphabetical order, set everything in the "Order" column to "0" (zero).

CUSTOM SKIN TIPS

Has anyone been playing around with the Custom Skin editor? Yes, it requires a decent knowledge of CSS and HTML, but I think we can create a library of easy-to-understand tricks that people can use to enhance their Journals. For an idea of what you can do with the Custom Skin editor, see the following Journals:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/top10/238
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BlogBox
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/CrisisPapers
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/EarlG
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/AuntiePinko
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/liveoaktx

These were all created using the built-in Custom Skin editor.

Custom backgrounds

To add a background image, use the following code in the section where you want the background to display:

background-image: url(insert URL of image here);

When adding a background image, make sure that the text is legible against the background. - TahitiNut

DOs

Do add the Random Journal module! The Random Journal button will only take visitors to another Journal which contains the Random Journal module.

If you add images or make other custom changes to your layout, do check to make sure your Journal displays correctly in different browsers. - WesDem

DON'Ts

Don't add large images to the right-hand column of your Journal. In some of the pre-made skins this screws up the design, and in a worst case scenario your visitors may be forced to scroll sideways - not a good thing. To be on the safe side, use images that are 150 pixels wide or less. Similarly adding images which are more than 400 pixels wide to the center column may cause a problem for people with smaller monitors.

xxxxx

journal (some fine day when I get around to it) at night when I'm tired, so I genuinely appreciate your post here...I bet it will make it a lot easier.

Redstone

and need all the help I can get.:hi:

:toast:

... 'skins' but works fairly well with a few of them. Viewing my Journal (http://journals.democraticunderground.com/TahitiNut) and then looking at the HTML source in your browser will disclose the approach I took. There were two considerations: (1) ensuring that the background image was limited to the Journal entries themselves and not the heading, footing, ads, and right column, and (2) ensuring that the foreground text was legible against the background.

Happy Journaling!

Nice.

I enjoyed the notion of the 'sandbox' metaphor so much that it made it worth doing. (I don't call myself 'Nut' fer nothin'.) :dunce: :silly:

Just when you think this place can't be any cooler...:thumbsup:

I rarely use PMs (roughly 10 a year for the past half decade) is there a way to sub out the inbox on the My DU page for say, my Bookmarks? that would be fabulous!

(it's pretty pathetic to be looking at my inbox and realizing I've gotten two PMs since Halloween)

Thanx EarlG

Ask them to tell you what browsers they are using, if on a mac or a pc, and how everything looks. EarlG's point about image size is well taken. I had a somewhat larger image in my right column. It looked swell to me, really gorgeous, and I checked it on six different browsers, but my pc laptop is broken, so I couldn't check it from a pc standpoint. Then incapsulated tipped me that my entire layout was broken out of its borders and everything was all over the place. I did realize right away what it was, resized the image, and everything snapped back into place from incapsulated's view. Since she's on a pc and I'm on a mac, more viewers would have seen it her way, which would have been very unfortunate. So don't think everyone sees it as you do on your own machine. Ask for feedback.

:kick:

1) If you play with your theme: KEEP IT SIMPLE! People make a judgment call on a site within 3 seconds. If your theme is to hard to read, or people have to guess how to navigate, they won't come back.

2) Use Del.icio.us to categorize posts. This is going to be important as your journal grows so others can find relevant material. (This will be a topic for a tutorial soon.)

3) Don't be scared to experiment!

If you want to list the Journals and blogs in alphabetical order, set everything in the order column to "0".

Re-number the module order like this:

10
20
30
40
ect

In this way if you decide to add a something in between already existing modules - you won't have to re-number everything.