June Stats

[ninetydegrees]

☆ Layouts: progress! 36 layouts have been submitted. 23 are live, 4 have been claimed (and one should go live soon-ish), 9 are unclaimed.
☆ Themes: 288 themes have been submitted. 211 are live, 19 have been claimed, 3 should become live soon and 55 are unclaimed, which means only 19% of all submitted themes are unclaimed. This is the lowest percentage we've ever gotten so far. How wonderful is that!
☆ Styles which could really use a few more themes are ColorSide, Drifting, Nouveau Oleanders, Skittlish Dreams and Tabula Rasa, and even Bases, Boxes and Borders and Modish.

Special thanks to busaikko and egedraven for your submissions for Brittle and Negatives (now up to 11 and 16 themes respectively) and to dancing_serpent, edgeraven, and liv for enthusiastically delving into the scary world of style dev and making their first patches. You're amazing.

Comments

[ex_rising236]

<3 Your encouragement is wonderful, danke.

[dancing_serpent]

Thank you for all the encouragement, help and patience with me and my questions. ♥

[sarken]

Question! Color themes are limited to what we can do with the "customize your theme" options, right?

[ninetydegrees]

Yes and no. Extra CSS is allowed but colors should always be customizable via the Customize interface: either you use existing properties but apply them to another element or you create new properties to fine-tune coloring. In all cases, users can submit more complexed themes and they can be converted.

[sarken]

I want to make sure I understand what you just said. If I did

set color_entry_title_background = "#ffffff";
set color_header_background = "#000000";

I could then apply the header color to alternate entry titles by doing

.entry-wrapper-even .entry .entry-title { background-color: $*color_header_background; }

in the CSS, because that would be customizable via the Customize interface?

[ninetydegrees]

Exactly. If someone suggests that this be made a separate color setting, we'll edit the code to create a new property. Otherwise, it's all good to use existing properties.

[sarken]

Oh, that's awesome! I'll definitely make another color theme or two, then, just so I can play with that. And then maybe I'll take a shot at patching a theme, because I was looking, and they seem pretty straight forward.

[timeasmymeasure]

Will make a note of the styles needing more themes.
Thanks for all the help you've given so far!

Hi! This is probably a bit of a n00bish question, but...

[jaythenerdkid]

I'd love to contribute towards creating new styles, but while I'm all right with CSS, I don't know S2 and don't really have the time to learn it. I was wondering if there's still a way in which I can contribute? I can do graphic design (e.g. headers for people's journals) and colour schemes and things, and if there's extra stuff that I can do using CSS alone, I'd love to help out.

[ninetydegrees]

We love n00bish questions!

We accept all and everything:
- You can post a CSS layout and someone with time and s2 knowledge will convert it (at some point; this can take a very long time) to s2. See the entries tagged with 'conversion' tag if you want to reassure yourself that it's perfectly fine.

- You can make a post where you offer your services for graphic design;

- You can post some graphics to be used by other designers either in a new theme or in existing themes if you have one in mind.

- You can answer requests for collabs such as http://dreamscapes.dreamwidth.org/28213.html.

- You can post color schemes. Zvi has even written a guide to help you with it.

- And, of course, you can take part in style testing because we never have enough people for that! :)

[jaythenerdkid]

Brilliant, thank you! :) I look forward to helping out some time in the near future.

[pinesandmaples]

So I have a question, and this is an open post so I'm going to stick it here. It probably doesn't belong here, but it's about styles so.

I feel like the styles on the main customize page are not organized well for customizers like myself. Namely, I cycled through three different styles before I found one that accepts a header image. Is there a way to add a tab on the left side for styles that have space for a header image? It would be nice to know my options instead of needing to memorize details about the specifics of each layout.

[ninetydegrees]

There are always ways to do things but I believe that if you want to see this implemented, you need to make it a suggestion. :)

[pinesandmaples]

Rated A+, very helpful. Will suggest.

Thanks!

[timeasmymeasure]

BTW, and I do hope it's okay to ask on this entry, is there something like a "Newbie Guide To Patching" for those of us who've never even looked at S2 coding or any sort of developing past CSS?

[ninetydegrees]

Patching isn't really related to S2 coding actually but here's a guide I wrote: http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Newbie_Guide_for_People_Patching_Styles
However, this supposes you already know how to get a Dreamhack, make a patch, test your patch, etc. If you're on Windows, you may want to read http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Newbie_Guide_for_Windows_People_Working_on_Minor_Bugs first.

[timeasmymeasure]

Oh wow, ha, if you couldn't tell I was a newbie before :)
Thanks for the links, they really will help!

[ninetydegrees]

Oh wow, ha, if you couldn't tell I was a newbie before :)

You know, I was a newbie 9 months ago. I had no idea what patching was about either. And before I got a LiveJournal, all I knew was basic HTML. :)

[timeasmymeasure]

If I could figure out basic CSS I can do this too :)
I do love that it's easy to self-teach.

[sarken]

Did you get your Dreamhack yet and, if so, how long did it take? I applied a week or so ago, but still haven't gotten anything.

[timeasmymeasure]

I haven't applied yet, so I wouldn't know about the waiting time. Maybe ask ninetydegrees above?

[ninetydegrees]

Oh I know Sophie's got problems with her e-mail provider and has now just realized it so this could be related. I'll send her a PM right now.

[sarken]

Ah, thank you. I was just worried I did something wrong.