Help/FAQ
How do I use one of your templates?Can I use your templates on a different place than Diaryland (e.g. Diary-X, Blogger, my own site)?
Can I change something when I use your template?
My older entries aren't changing to the new template!
How do I add a link to my (cast/pictures/etc) page?
How do I change the font in a template?
I use a language other than English (for example Chinese) and I can't make the characters show up on the page, how do I fix this?
How do I use one of your templates?
To use one of the templates, you have to copy three different codes into three different places.The first one will go to your change my template page. Next you need to put the second code into your change my archives page. After that you will need to paste the third code into the change how individual entries on my archives look page.
Finally, you will need to go through the code and look for anywhere that says USERNAME and replace it with your username, for example when you get to a bit of code that says:
<a href="http://members.diaryland.com/edit/profile.phtml?user=USERNAME">profile</a>
you would need to change it to look like this (if your username was pink-design):
<a href="http://members.diaryland.com/edit/profile.phtml?user=pink-design">profile</a>
You'll need to do that for the first two codes.
You will also need to go through and change the %%PREV%% and %%NEXT%% bits to lowercase - you will only need to do that for the first code.
Can I use your templates on a different place than Diaryland (e.g. Diary-X, Blogger, my own site)?
Yes, indeedy. BUT, I do not know how to code the layouts for any other site than Diaryland, so you will have to know how to alter the code yourself. Sorry! If you need a bit of help, there is a handy table showing what you need to change from Diaryland to Diary-X on Not that Ugly.
Can I change something when I use your template?
Yes, feel free to. If you are planning to totally change it so that it no longer resembles what I made, I suggest you be brave and try and make the whole thing yourself - you will end up feeling much prouder (and start to wonder how you could have ever not known how to do this). Email me if you want some help writing your page, and visit some HTML help sites like Lissa Explains.
My older entries aren't changing to the new template!
This is a diaryland thing, all you have to do is be patient - they will change within a day or two. If you really can't wait, you can change them manually - but this takes a lot of time. You can do this by editing every entry - you don't actually have to change anything, but going to the page makes it update it.
How do I add a link to my (cast/pictures/etc) page?
If the links in the template are organised one on top of the other (like in the Roo template) you can add this code in between two of the existing links:<br /> <a href="page.html">page</a> <br />
Make sure that there is only one
<br /> between each link.
If the links are organised in a line (like in the Orlando template) you can add this code in between two of the existing links:
<a href="page.html">page</a>
Replace "page.html" with the URL of your page, and "page" with the name of it.
How do I change the font in a template?
Go through the code and find all the bits where it says:font:12px 'Trebuchet MS';
or:
font:11px 'Verdana';
or:
font:11px 'Arial';
etc, etc...
and change either "Trebuchet MS", "Arial" or "Verdana" to the font that you would like to use, for example "Times New Roman". Beware, if you use a font (e.g. "Papyrus") that you've downloaded, when other people read your diary they will see a default font like "Arial".
I use a language other than English (for example Chinese) and I can't make the characters show up on the page, how do I fix this?
The charset in my templates is set to an English one, the way to change it is quite easy.In the 3rd line down of the coding, it should look like this:
<head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
and what you need to do is change the charset value to the one for your language (this page and this page are helpful in showing all the different codes for them). If you use Chinese, the charset is "big5" so you would need to change it to look like this:
<head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=big5">
and that should fix it.