Everything Booklikes & Leafmarks discussion

I'm finally catching on and I'm so proud of myself for being patient. Yesssss!

I wouldn't say I have it down, but I did customize my pages a bit:

http://charming2020.booklikes.com

You did a good job. I gave up...

I would say I managed pretty well with some patience and trial and errors. And there are some pretty amazing guides over there.
I'm done customizing my pages and I'm quite happy with the result.

Charming, what did you do to add the white background behind the section on the left where you have "shelf," "blog," "timeline," etc.? I've been wanting to do that because my background image makes them hard to read.

Mirkat wrote: "Charming, what did you do to add the white background behind the section on the left where you have "shelf," "blog," "timeline," etc.? I've been wanting to do that because my background image make..."

This helped me change sidebar color - http://silverthistle.booklikes.com/po...-

If you have trouble scrolling to css box to follow those directions - http://silverthistle.booklikes.com/po...-

Petra smells something fishy round here wrote: "You did a good job. I gave up..."

Petra, your post on making a shelf exclusive is even better than customizing. ;)

Debbie - barely here - wrote: "This helped me change sidebar color."

Thanks! That did the trick. :)

I went a little crazy with the customization, hahah.

www.thaliasbooks.booklikes.com

Jill wrote: "Petra smells something fishy round here wrote: "You did a good job. I gave up..."

Petra, your post on making a shelf exclusive is even better than customizing. ;)"

I didn't write that, I must have reblogged it. I can't even change the font back to what it was. I want someone to give my password to and then get them to make my site beeeeoooootiful. Or at least really plain and with curves.

Petra smells something fishy round here wrote: "I want someone to give my password to and then get them to make my site beeeeoooootiful. Or at least really plain and with curves. "

Me too.

Thalia wrote: "I went a little crazy with the customization, hahah.

www.thaliasbooks.booklikes.com"

WOW! Just, WOW. I'm beyond impressed.

Jamais deux sans trois. Me too.

Jill wrote: "Thalia wrote: "I went a little crazy with the customization, hahah.

www.thaliasbooks.booklikes.com"

WOW! Just, WOW. I'm beyond impressed."

So Nice!

I've got it down. My page is how I want it for the most part, though I still tweak things here and there when I notice something I don't like. http://narcisse.booklikes.com/

I don't know if I'll ever have it all down, but I got my page to a place where I like it last night after finally figuring out how to fix my star ratings banner. http://stacia.booklikes.com/

Still working on trying to fix my widget text though. I screwed something up with the coding :(

Maybe someday if I'm not lazy, I'll photoshop a custom header.

How DOES one change the colour of the star rating?

I want stars that twinkle.

Jenny, how do you get the star-rating list on your sidebar?

Jennifer (Goodreads lies, cheats and steals) wrote: "How DOES one change the colour of the star rating?"

You have to replace the default image. To make mine match my page, I downloaded their stars image, recolored it in an image editing program, and then replaced the url in the code for their orange one with the url for my blue one.

If you are using the DEFAULT template, the star rating image is here: http://booklikes.com/theme/default/im...
If you're using a different template, you'll need to download the image specific to yours because they're different and won't fit right otherwise. The background-positions will also be different on different templates.

Recolor it in Photoshop or whatever you have, upload it someplace, and then paste this into the custom CSS box, putting the url for your newly recolored image inside the parentheses:

div.post-review {
top: 0px;
right: 0px;
height: 96px;
width: 96px;
background: url(your url here) 0 0 no-repeat; }
div.post-review-10 { background-position: -96px 0; }
div.post-review-20 { background-position: -192px 0; }
div.post-review-30 { background-position: -288px 0; }
div.post-review-40 { background-position: -384px 0; }
div.post-review-50 { background-position: -480px 0; }
div.post-review-05 { background-position: -576px 0; }
div.post-review-15 { background-position: -672px 0; }
div.post-review-25 { background-position: -768px 0; }
div.post-review-35 { background-position: -864px 0; }
div.post-review-45 { background-position: -960px 0; }

It is very important that you keep the transparency of the image background when you edit it (programs like Paint will change the transparent layer to white, and the jpeg format will not keep transparency so you'll need to save it as a .png file instead). And it is important that you do not resize the image at all. The colored bits must stay in the same spots. If you don't have Photoshop or something like it, GIMP is a similar program that you can download for free. It is easy to adjust the color of the star banners using the "Colorize" option.


If you wanted to replace it with totally different images, that'd be more involved.



Mirkat wrote: "Jenny, how do you get the star-rating list on your sidebar?"

I wrote it into the widget box.


Edited to fix messed up code.

I feel so inadequate! I'm using one of the basic themes provided and I hate it. I need to read the tutorial from Silver Thist and figure this out.

Thanks, Jenny, but I think I'm leaving mine the same now ;)

There are some really amazing customization there. I'm doing a little bit at a time as I learn...and change my mind on what I last did. The one thing I really like is that it's like rearranging your furniture...you can do it whenever the mood strikes.

Mikela wrote: "The one thing I really like is that it's like rearranging your furniture ... you can do it whenever the mood strikes."

Hah -- exactly! That's what I like about it, too. Well, it really IS like creating an online home for our reviews, isn't it?

I am overwhelmed by the all creativity on display. I'm sticking with the simple stuff. I work from a tablet and wonder if that doesn't change things or decrease options. Either that or I'm a hopeless Luddite who lacks the necessary skills. In any case I like the way the blog/reviews look. Just a reminder, if your post is long-say more than 2-3 paragraphs- it's considered polite to use the page breaks option. Nothing is lost and people can click on the "read more" button which directs them to the entire thing.

It's too overwhelming for me. I wish people would do some nice new themes and get Dawid to post them. He has already asked for them. It would be nice for the creators as they could have their signature on the themes.

Garmct wrote: "Just a reminder, if your post is long-say more than 2-3 paragraphs- it's considered polite to use the page breaks option. Nothing is lost and people can click on the "read more" button which directs them to the entire thing..."

I'm not a Luddite, I'm a yahoo and therefore exempt from manners, Gary. :-)

Petra smells something fishy round here wrote: "Garmct wrote: "Just a reminder, if your post is long-say more than 2-3 paragraphs- it's considered polite to use the page breaks option. Nothing is lost and people can click on the "read more" butt..."

Yahoos have their own code of behavior, whereas Luddites can't be held to any standard because we can't figure out how to do anything. (Because we're hopeless.)

Yahoos have no code of behaviour at all, which is the point of being one. Luddites are just hopeless. You said it!

But they are hopeless deliberately. That is passive-aggressive. Yahoos are just aggressive. When they need to be.

Mirkat wrote: "Charming, what did you do to add the white background behind the section on the left where you have "shelf," "blog," "timeline," etc.? I've been wanting to do that because my background image make..."

Yep, it was Silver Thistle's tutorials that got me though it.

Thalia wrote: "I went a little crazy with the customization, hahah.

www.thaliasbooks.booklikes.com"

I like it! Makes me want to have a picnic.

Petra smells something fishy round here wrote: "It's too overwhelming for me. I wish people would do some nice new themes and get Dawid to post them. He has already asked for them. It would be nice for the creators as they could have their signa..."

I would like that a lot. Three default ones is not much to choose from, from those of us who don't want to fool with programming languages.

I'd love more options. My hand is still hanging all the way down. Admittedly, I haven't explored much yet, but I'm definitely not used to the place. I'll post again if my hand is ever able to be raised.

Aww, thanks you guys! I suck at HTML, so I've been just following every tutorial I find like crazy. I don't know how to link to it here specifically, but I reblogged all the ones I used--if you search "tutorial" on my BL page, you'll find everything. (:

And now I'm off to change the color of my stars! :D

Jenny wrote: "Jennifer (Goodreads lies, cheats and steals) wrote: "How DOES one change the colour of the star rating?"

You have to replace the default image. To make mine match my page, I downloaded their stars..."

Jenny, when I do what you say, my stars stop showing up entirely--it's the color I want, but it makes everything look like it's rated no stars. :( I recolored in Photoshop and uploaded the image to tinypic--any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I think you can now safely remove me from the Luddite or Yahoo list...I've just spent several hours putting in page breaks and tags. Wasn't meaning to be rude...just didn't know how. Phew...it's so good to get off the stinker list!!! Having real fun trying to be creative over on Booklikes, slowly but surely I'm getting there.

And I can't even get it to display my name with a space!!! This thread makes me sooo jealous!!!

I read this thread often. And I think about it and what I should attempt. And then I have a chocolate and forget about it.

There are so many great reader tutorials that show you step by step how to do almost everything so that even a total novice like myself can edit the html for the desired results. The best thing is that if you make a mistake all you have to do is hit a button and it gives you the default settings again. Most important thing to do if you make changes and like them, then SAVE THE CODING to a notebook file so you can put it back again. Really liking the site.

It isn't the best thing though. That default button screws everything up. For someone who doesn't know anything like me and then attempts a bit of html from a tutorial and it goes right, yay! Then the next bit goes right too, yay again! We're going good, so then I do a third bit and it's all effed up. I have to hit 'default' and lose the first two bits. I struggled with this for ages, never getting to do the things I wanted and gave up and three good things.

Petra smells something fishy round here wrote: "...For someone who doesn't know anything like me and then attempts a bit of html from a tutorial and it goes right, yay! Then the next bit goes right too, yay again! We're going good, so then I do a third bit and it's all effed up. I have to hit 'default' and lose the first two bits. ..."

Petra, I was you. So for my second go-round w/ BL, I did one thing at a time and if it worked, C&P entire HTML onto Notepad (as Mikela suggested in #40). Then tried second thing... wash/rinse/repeat. Seems tedious but it enabled me to save what worked along the way for those moments when I goofed and screwed something up.

Of course, now that I'm nearly done, I'm starting to realise that my preference for having links on right side (n/a for default theme #1) is overcoming my dislike for the notebook look in another default theme. :/

Petra smells something fishy round here wrote: "I read this thread often. And I think about it and what I should attempt. And then I have a chocolate and forget about it."

Chocolate and raw fish sounds icky. I guess you are a yahoo.:)

I'm managing quite well, I think. Was able to customize my blog, figured out how to find reviews I've previously posted and edit them, and I really like it over there.

And yeah, I've exported my customized HTML into notepad so I have a copy of it when needed.

Karma♥Bites wrote: "Petra, I was you. So for my second go-round w/ BL, I did one thing at a time and if it worked, C&P entire HTML onto Notepad (as Mikela suggested in #40). Then tried second thing... wash/rinse/repeat. Seems tedious but it enabled me to save what worked along the way for those moments when I goofed and screwed something up..."

I did that this morning. The notebook thing. I did one thing at a time on Stylebot, saved it, copied it to notepad and when everything looked good, put it in the css thing on BookLikes. Background colour wrong, font size wrong. Luckily I had the old and semi-adequate html on another notepad so it's back to that.

I can see that the solution is to do one element at a time but that would take days. Font on this header, select, change colour, change size, save. Copy on to Booklikes, save, go to blog, see how it looks, great. Go back to Stylebot, next header... I don't have that much time!

Are the tutorials not working for you? I'm not using CSS, so maybe that's the difference?

Petra smells something fishy round here wrote: "...I can see that the solution is to do one element at a time but that would take days. ..."

Yes, definitely time-consuming but after my initial feck-up, I decided that I'd fix or tweak 1 or 2 related things every time I log on. Earlier this morning, drank java & played around w/ some Custom CSS stuff. Actually managed to get a couple of things to work so guess my hand is halfway raised. :)

ETA: Oh, some of the Custom CSS may work for you b/c it address headers, font sizes & colour (e.g., sidebar links).

Thalia wrote: "Jenny, when I do what you say, my stars stop showing up entirely--it's the color I want, but it makes everything look like it's rated no stars. :( I recolored in Photoshop and uploaded the image to tinypic--any idea what I'm doing wrong?
"

Meh, okay. I was hoping you could just replace the image part of the code, but you're going to have to replace the whole code. Do this instead:

div.post-review {
top: 0px;
right: 0px;
height: 96px;
width: 96px;
background: url(your url here) 0 0 no-repeat; }
div.post-review-10 { background-position: -96px 0; }
div.post-review-20 { background-position: -192px 0; }
div.post-review-30 { background-position: -288px 0; }
div.post-review-40 { background-position: -384px 0; }
div.post-review-50 { background-position: -480px 0; }
div.post-review-05 { background-position: -576px 0; }
div.post-review-15 { background-position: -672px 0; }
div.post-review-25 { background-position: -768px 0; }
div.post-review-35 { background-position: -864px 0; }
div.post-review-45 { background-position: -960px 0; }

Petra smells something fishy round here wrote: "I read this thread often. And I think about it and what I should attempt. And then I have a chocolate and forget about it."

MMM, chocolate.

I think CSS is much easier. The only time I have ventured into the actual HTML was to change Following/Followers to Advisors/Minions