I mentioned this to jordanriane, the LJ staff, but this is something that had completely slipped my mind until now.

My suggestion is that something like "You must put a website in your user profile in order for this layout to work!" to the default formatting for all livejournal skins, kind of like how "Copy and paste the code into Style Overrides (S1)." automatically shows up for each layout.

Otherwise, I'll remember to include this in my instructions from now on when submitting a skin; I just felt bad because so many people were getting frustrated not being able to use the layouts.

Wait.. you mean.. they have to put a link to their website in CREATEBLOG'S user profile or LJ profile ?

In their LJ profile. Sorry for not being clear. :X

And it doesn't matter what they link to, because it won't show up on their journal. They could just link to Google or something, as long as something is in the box.

Hmm I'm not sure if Jusun knows about this.
So you have to have a link to your website in LJ's profile, and then paste the codes into whatever place, so THEN the layout will show ?

I always thought that the LJ previews just didn't plain work.

Yeah. I'm not sure if it will work for the preview (that actually might make the previews work), but I meant that when regular users come to get LJ skins from this site, a lot of them aren't working because they don't have a website specified, and this could be avoided if it was included in the download page for each layout.

Also, the livejournal skin preview does not work properly.

The original colors for the tables are still viewable (which misleads people into how the layout would actually look, if the preview image isn't really of the layout) and certain overrides do not work, leave just the table with the text the only thing viewable.

I'm not sure exactly what is causing this, as I believe Jusun added a script to automatically convert overrides for the previewer...

Just figured I'd bring it up..
At hoping I at least made some sense.

I know I started this topic a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure I know what the problem is with the previews.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/createblog/

This is the journal that you "see" when the skins are being previewed. Whoever has the password for that livejournal account just needs to go to the modify journal page (http://www.livejournal.com/modify.bml) and clear the hex codes. Then they need to go to their profile (http://www.livejournal.com/editinfo.bml) and put in a website (it can link to cb!). Then, when you preview the LJ skins, they should all work.

Sorry if I'm being a bother about the previews, it's really not a big deal; it just confuses people when they see the preview and it doesn't look like the screenshot. ^^;

hi there,
this issue has been solved. thanks for your input! =)