Customization Issue/Error?

[erotis]

I have been meaning to customize my layout and succeeded the first few times. I accidentally put in the Smooth Sailing system layer from LJ, when I wanted Flexible Squares. A whole mess came up with that. After trying to "import" my own layout from Live Journal several times and failing, I could no longer customize. I am not sure if this is a maintenance issue or maybe something I did with trying to fix my messes several times. XD

I keep getting an error message whenever I try to Customize my journal. It continuously keeps giving me this:

Customize Journal Style
Sorry, there was a problem.

Is it a maintenance issue? Or is it because I've been customizing too much - kind of like, locking myself out? It has been like this since the wee hours of yesterday morning. Just in need of some clarification or to see if I can somehow fix it "if" it is my own doing. Hmm.

I apologize if this is not allowed here for some reason.

Several styles questions

[cesy]

I just got a very un-pretty error from http://www.dreamwidth.org/doc/s2/core1.class.FriendsPage.html which I found by going to the advanced customisation/developer area, and I looked at a Zesty layer and it had "FriendsPage" in, which I clicked on. Actually, I get a 404 for anything I click on, like http://www.dreamwidth.org/doc/s2/core1.class.EntryPage.html

I am totally new to styles, so I may be missing something obvious. Is there a very easy guide to styles somewhere?

Also, from http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/advanced/ I went to "S2 Documentation" and got the rather unfriendly-looking http://www.dreamwidth.org/doc/s2/ with only one CSS file in it.

On http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/advanced/layerbrowse.bml?id=zesty/layout it looks like the author's email address has been cut off.

I love the collapsed version of the reading page in Zesty. Is it possible to add this feature to other styles?

Presumably changing the colours of things is going to be added to the ordinary customisation wizard at some point. Do we have an estimated date for this, or not yet?

Creating and using custom layers

[matgb]

Hallelujah. I've been trying to figure this out for years. I have never read a how-to that explained how, or why, you could or would create a custom layer.

I've been hacking the complete source code for Expressive on LJ the whole time, as it was the only thing I could figure out to do. Somehow, none of the how-tos made any sense. So, on the assumption that I'm not the only one that needs it explained with a different logic, and because I might need a reference point when I've forgotten, here's how (and why) it's done:
( Many people reading this already know how to suck eggs, but, y'know, for the rest of us )

That's it, job done. It really is that simple. Once you've got your head around it. The taskflow is unintuitve, there's nothing telling you what to do (or, perhaps more importantly, why), and the pages don't link to each other well.

It's no wonder I could never figure it out. Still, now that I have, I can A) add a few extra bits to my sidebar (like some text linking all the awards &c I've won) and b) maybe tidy this ramble up into something the dw_docs team can use.

But now now—gotta go get miss_s_b from work. If you know what you're doing, can you check for errors and/or answer my minor questions. If you don't know what you're doing, or bits make no sense, ask, as if I can't help someone else might, etc. And I'd like to figure it out.