View and select old LJ site schemes (e.g. Dystopia, XColibur, Vertigo)

[estelle]

Update: This does not work if you switched over to the new design by clicking on "Switch to the up-to-date version" in the top right of the screen. Please contact LJ support and ask them to switch you back to the old design first.

LiveJournal nostalgia recently made me yearn for the old site schemes so I went to investigate.
you can view LiveJournal pages in a scheme you are not currently using by appending /?usescheme=[schemename] to the URL e.g. https://www.livejournal.com/portal/index.bml/?usescheme=dystopia

You can not usually see the old styles as an option when you visit https://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display to save and use as your preselected style. But it is given as an option if you view the setting page in the old site scheme. So the trick is to view the settings page where you select your scheme in the scheme you ultimately want and click save at the bottom.

Horizon should always be available to select because it's the site default but just in case it is not:
https://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display&usescheme=horizon

Lanzelot is only available if you opt into Cyrillic Services beforehand:
https://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display&usescheme=lanzelot

The other older site schemes are:
https://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display&usescheme=vertigo
https://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display&usescheme=lynx
https://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display&usescheme=xcolibur
https://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display&usescheme=dystopia