pamelajoy's opal tourial? help please! Options

[secondstereo]

Hey, I was wondering if anyone here had previously used pamelajoy's opal tutorial, found here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/pamelajoy/295461.html

Her website is down, and so I can't download the .zip file that I need to see the tutorial. Does anyone have it saved on their computer? Or another tutorial that is similar?

Thanks in advance!

[jordanriane]

Her domain is down for good. But I'll let her know that the file is down, and see if she'll replace it so it will work.

You can go to opal_help for future issues related to opal (or post a thread here.)

There is also another tutorial for Opal here.

[secondstereo]

I've been to opal_help, and no one has helped. And ignited's tutorial is fine, and I used that.. but I would like to use the overrides that are in pamelajoy's tutorial and I can't find them anywhere else.... I guess I give up.

[jordanriane]

It's honestly not that hard to customize it so that it looks like hers.

This is what pamelajoy has written in her tutorial:

The only customizations I made from ignited's tutorial was in the stylesheet and a few customizations in her actual code -- mainly to get rid of the header stuff, change the date format and few other slight changes.

[secondstereo]

Right, I read that.. but I'm new to this, and so I'm looking for help. If I knew how to do that, I wouldn't need her tutorial. I know how to read, I just can't find what I'm looking for to learn how to do it. I'm not a complete idiot. I've looked up all the tutorials I could find before I went parading around the internet looking for help.

[jordanriane]

I didn't say you were a complete idiot nor did I say you couldn't read--those comments are completely irrelevent and didn't need to be stated.

If you go to ignited's tutorial here, use her template. It will also walk you through on how to add the template to a theme on livejournal.

What you should just mess around with first, is the hexcodes (colors). By doing this, you'll be able to see what colors go where, which will make changing the colors much easier. After you get a hang of that, reply back to this, and i'll try to walk you through what some of the coding means/does.

[secondstereo]

I'm sorry, but I've just been completely frustrated with this today.. so I'm a little irritated and jumpy. Excuse that.

But anyway, I've already added the template, and fooled around with it for awhile on my own, just trying to figure out how it works. I understand the colors and everything, but what I'm trying to do is what pamelajoy said she does in her tutorial: get rid of the header stuff. And from there, I've found tutorials that will explain the rest of what I would like to do, but the problem is all of those tutorials refer to pamelajoy's codes, and so it's hard to figure out what to do with them if they aren't exactly the same, which is why I was looking for her tutorial. I know of a couple other people who are looking for the same thing, so I'm not completely alone in this problem.

I appreciate your help and your quick replies and everything. Sorry for coming off irritated, but I'm sure you can understand the frustration of trying to figure out this stuff at first....

I just saw that you sent me another private message, I'm going to check that out and then maybe I'll have something else to say.

[jordanriane]

As far as removing the header goes, you have to add this snippet of coding:

CODE

function Page::lay_print_header ()  {
    var string title = $this->title();
    """
   <div id="header">
       <div id="nav">
    """;

    foreach var string v ($.views_order) {
 println "<a href=\""+$.view_url{$v}+"\">"+lang_viewname($v)+"</a>";
    }

    var string website;
    if($.journal.website_url != "") {
 $website = """<a href="$.journal.website_url">$.journal.website_name</a>""";
    }

    """
     $website
       </div>
   </div>
    """;
}

I used this code, and it works fine. Essentially it can be placed anywhere it the coding, but generally I just try to keep all similar codes together, ie: it removes the header, so I keep it near where the other print_header codes are found.

[secondstereo]

i've seen that code in a tutorial, and it didn't work for me. it still didn't work for me. or maybe i'm not understand what the code is supposed to do:

http://livejournal.com/users/_secondstereo

I copied that code, put it where you said to put it (along with the other tutorial I read), there were no errors, and that's what it looks like. I still see where it says _secondstereo and has my icon and everything. I wonder if it's not the original code I'm using from ignited that's not working right.. or maybe it's my browser?

lol, I'm so ready to give up.

[jordanriane]

Nah, don't give up. It's been awhile since i originally started with opal, so I kind of forgot where/how/what I changed to remove my header and other various aspects.

What I'll do is just create a blank template for you to use, and just give explanations for it all within the template.

Try using this snippet:

<!-- begin code provided by createblog.com --><br /><br />function Page::print ()  {<br /><br /> var string title = $this->title();<br /><br /> """<br /> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><br /> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"><br /> <head><br /> <title>adhesive.livejournal.com</title><br /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="$.stylesheet_url" type="text/css"/><br /> """;<br /> <br /> $this->print_head();<br /> <br /> """<br /> </head><br /> <body><br /><br /> <a name="top"></a><br /><br /><br /><div align=center><br /><br /> """;<br /> <br /> $this->lay_print_header();<br /><br /> """<br /><br /><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="700"><br /> <tr><br /><td><br /> <div class="border3"><br />  <div class="border2"><br />   <div id="bodycontent" align=left width="225"><br /><br /><div id="content" align=left><br /> <table cellspacing="10" cellpadding="0" border="0"><br /> <tr><br /> <td valign="top" class="sidetd"><br /> <div id="sidecolumn"><br /> """;<br /> <br /> $this->lay_print_sidebar();<br /><br /> """<br /> </div><br /> </td><br />       <br /> <td valign="top" width="100%"><br /> """;<br /><br /> $this->lay_print_subnav();<br /> $this->print_body();<br /> $this->lay_print_subnav();<br /><br /> """<br /> </td><br /> </tr><br /> </table><br /> </div><br /> </div><br /> </div><br /> </div><br />  </td><br />  </tr><br /> </table><br /><div><br /> </body><br /> </html><br /> """;<br />}<br /><br />function Page::print_entry (Entry e)  {<br /><br /> print """<a name="item""" + $e.itemid + """\"></a>""";<br /> var string time = $e.time->time_format();<br /> var string date = $e.time->date_format();<br /> var string security;<br /> if ($e.security != "") {<br />  $security =  """<img src="$e.security_icon.url" align="right" """+<br />  """width="$e.security_icon.width" height="$e.security_icon.height" """+<br />  """alt="[$e.security]" />""";<br /> }<br /><br /> var UserLite name;<br /> var string pname;<br /><br /> var bool show_name = ($.view == "friends" or $e.poster.username != $.journal.username or $.view == "entry") ? true : false;<br /> var bool show_pic = (defined $e.userpic and ($.view == "friends" or $*show_entry_userpic or $e.poster.username != $e.journal.username or $.view == "entry")) ? true : false;<br /><br /><br /> """ <br />         <div class="entry"><br /> <div class="entrydivider"></div><br /> """;<br /> if($show_pic) {<br />  """<br />   <div class="userpic2"><br />    <a href="$*SITEROOT/allpics.bml?user=$e.poster.username"><img src="$e.userpic.url" width="$e.userpic.width" height="$e.userpic.height" alt="$e.poster.name [userpic]" title="$e.poster.name [userpic]" border="0" /></a><br />   </div><br />  """;<br /> }<br /><br /> if($show_name) {<br />  $this->lay_make_username($e);<br /> }<br /> """<br /><div class="entryinfo"><i>$security $date $time</i></div><br /><div class="entrydivider"></div><br /><div class="entrytext"><br /><div class="subject">$e.subject<br /><br></div><br /><div class="entry">$e.text</div><br /> """;<br /> $e->print_metadata();<br /> """<br /></div><br /> </div><br /><div class="entrydivider"></div><br /><div class="entrylinks"><br /> """;<br /><br /> $e.comments->print();<br /><br /> foreach var string key (["edit_entry","mem_add","tell_friend"]) {<br />  var Link link = $e->get_link($key);<br />  if ($link) {<br />   """<a href=\"$link.url\"> &nbsp; $link.caption &nbsp; </a>""";<br />  }<br /> }<br /> """<a href="$e.permalink_url"> &nbsp; $*text_permalink &nbsp; </a><br /></div><br /><div class="entrydivider"></div><br /><br /><br />         <br />         <br /> """;<br />}<br /><!-- end code provided by createblog.com -->

This will need to go RIGHT AFTER where your last column printbox is.
it'll look similar to this:

CODE

""";
print_box("Control Panel", $text);
}

[secondstereo]

Thanks. I appreciate it. In the mean time, I'll continue messing around with it, to see if I can teach myself something. Thanks again.

[jordanriane]

No problem. But I'll still create that template for you to use as well.

[secondstereo]

thanks, i will try that a little bit later. someone just sent me a copy of the other tutorial, so i finally got my hands on that. i have to get going now though, but if you still want to create the basic explanation for me, you can.. but i can probably figure out from the other tutorial what i wanted to do.. and if not, i'll be back.. lol. but really, i appreciate your help very much so! and maybe once i finish what i was doing, i'll post an update with the final result.

thank you again!

[jordanriane]

No problem whatsoever.

[secondstereo]

Okay, I think I've finally gotten down to the way I want it, for now anyway. I need to add some stuff on the sidebar and eventually I'll make a header and whatever, but it's basically done. I wanted to credit you as helping me with it, but I wanted to ask you first how you would like to be credited (i.e. do you want me to link to your livejournal?)

here's the link: http://livejournal.com/users/_secondstereo

I also wanted to ask you, I saw that you maintain a community called turntable, I think it was. Mind if i join?

Thanks again.

[jordanriane]

Yeah, feel free to join.

You don't really have to credit me, I didn't really do too much.