Layout help for the utterly clueless?

[blackmare]

I know there are plenty of custom layouts available for DW, but it's like pressing my nose against the candy shop window and knowing I can't have any, while the other kids are in there getting toffee and chocolates.

You see, none of the instructions I have found even make sense to me.  I'm not literate with coding and I don't even know what most of the references are to layers, etc., so I seem to be stuck. I need someone to actually walk me through this. I tried once on my own and the results were awful.

Please, is there a Guide for The First-Timer? Preferably with visuals, so that "Enter X code in Y layer" translates to "Type this code into this field right here on this page, see?" 

If there is, it'll help drive a lot more users here, IMO. The two biggest obstacles I'm seeing at LJ are "none of my friends are moving" and "I would move but I hate DW's styles."

For what it's worth, I've already moved, and paid, because my privacy is more important than my layout, but I feel the frustration all the same. 

Comments

[blackmare]

I feel like I run into way too much orange on white or purple on mauve, so yeah, pretty much the opposite of blackmare's issue. :)

Actually, black text/white background is not a problem for me. On this community it wasn't the text/background thing that hurt my eyeballs, but the stark black/white stripes, or double borders around everything, that made me go OUCH.

I'm not terribly fond of the orange text/white ground or purple/purple myself. You can see on LJ what I've been using -- I'm blackmare_9 over there (sorry, don't have the hang of the off-site username thing yet).

One thing that annoys me with many of DW's standard layouts is all the freaking multicolored text on one page! Orange headers and blue subject titles! Wheeee! Or, you know, not. :-P

And when the newbie user wonders about changing such things, we get the message that if we aren't coding experts we should leave it alone. It begins to feel, if you poke around the comms where everyone and their dog is talking about how they customized their layout, that this place is full of People Who Know What They Are Doing, and then there's you.

Well, at least that's how I've been feeling. And I do like it here so much. It's just ... y'all established, journal-customizing types need to understand that for many of us, this is really intimidating. And there doesn't, at present, seem to be a specific place we can go to learn what we need to know. The information is all here, but it's really scattered around a bunch of different comms. Just gathering it into one place would be amazingly helpful.

Anyway -- I am off today to prepare for an art show and don't know when I'll be back, so if I'm not answering anyone for a while, that's why.

Editing quickly to add: I've just realized that my layout text at LJ is green in some spots, orange in others, and I need to clarify that on this layout it doesn't bug me because the green and the orange are rather subdued, not bright, and because the background is more a cream/ivory than stark white. It's softer and doesn't yell at me. I really, really like warm, not-quite-white backgrounds. Still lets me read very easily but softens the glare, and is also very nice for posting images, which I do a lot of. Or will do a lot of once we have a photo uploading function here.

[sophinisba]

Ha, your LJ actually has really similar colors to mine (sophinisba) - a white or almost-white background, black text, and subdued green and orange links.

I am finding customizing my journal to be easier on Dreamwidth than on LJ, but on the other hand I never found it necessary on LJ because there are so many off-the-shelf ones to choose from. So "don't try if you're not a coder" doesn't bother me as much as "If you don't like our styles just make your own" or "anyone can code this" because, eh, no, I've tried to code it and it's a mess. :) ETA: I get how it would be frustrating though if you're trying to break into it and people tell you not to bother! It does seem like something where putting together some basic information in one place would go a long way./ETA

There's been a lot of helpful discussion and suggestions in this post though (and also at this post by a layout maker.) Thanks a lot for making it, and I hope the art show goes well for you!