Sponsored+ Style Support Honeymoon Over

[foxfirefey]

Remember the Sponsored+ announcement in news: "A note about styles: If you've customized your layout using overrides, your journal might not display properly. This is because your overrides might no longer apply to the new style code. If this is happening to you, it's not because ads are broken -- you just need to correct your overrides. If you

Comments

[kunzite1]

post #100! woo!

>.>

i thought it was weird that they'd offer support for that in the first place but the idea was something like "well, it was our bad, so, we'll help with it."

[foxfirefey]

This must've been the reason the LJ clones I've seen haven't added ads to the journal pages themselves. It's too frickin' hard!

[mr_z]

The whole ads-on-LJ concept looks increasingly as if it were brought to you by the makers of Bad Idea Jeans.

[foxfirefey]

Well, okay, ads on application pages: easy, much more controllable. That includes user profiles, entries in the LJ site schema (turn off viewing the entries in the user's style), update pages, etc etc. That's how the clones do it.

Ads on journal pages: needed to be coded into the individual S2 styles and somehow into the S1 styles, made harder by years of calcified S1 override styles history that never took them into account, harder by trying to put skyscrapers in good view positions even when a given layout does not work well with them. Very ambitious, pulled off remarkably well given the constraints, but still very prone to quirks.

[donutgirl]

some of us are dirt poor and have no choice but to use sponsored+ for the extra icons

"Doctor, I fear the end is near! Is there any hope for me?"

"Only one, sir. You need extra LJ icons... and fast!"

[foxfirefey]

I'm starting to wonder whether they add addictive substances to LJ icons or something. We should have the FDA check it out.

"Hello? FDA? This is no_lj_ads. We have reason to suspect that LJ is adding heroin or nicotine or something to their LJ icons in order to help fuel their evil ad pushing empire, to which we are violently opposed and from which we are vigorously oppressed. Any way of having an inspection?"

[donutgirl]

Honestly, I don't understand it at all. I still yearn for Ye Olde Dayes of LJ when people had at *most* three icons.

It used to be that when I scanned my friends list quickly, I could see at a glance who had posted because I recognized their icons. Now I have no idea who is who -- and worst of all is when people share/steal icons so three people on my FL are using the same icon. Sometimes I'll be 2/3 of the way through a long entry before I realize I'm not reading the person I thought I was -- it has created some serious confusion on my part.

I know I'm the odd man out here, but I only ever use one icon. What can I say? I believe strongly in branding. ;)

[burr86]

Me too! I almost never use anything other than this icon. ;)

[tallblue]

I am just wondering, possibly if the ads and getting rid of S1 (in the future) are connected?

[kunzite1]

i highly doubt this. it's just more difficult to inject the adverts into custom s1 layouts and overrides.

[tallblue]

Ahh thanks I was just wondering. It would be great if there was an S2 101 book I would buy it. Or S2 for dummies.

[kunzite1]

there's this and s2_for_dummies.

[matgb]

paid users would see the layout messed up because of the lack of ads. (Fortunately, ?style=mine exists.)

And ?format=light which I actually prefer on someone else's journal for some reason. I have more than a few friends that are sponsored+, and they layouts on some of them are terrible. Ah well.

So many hidden things!

[zorkfox]

Where are these "features" documented? I know you can set a bit in your profile to display other journals in your style, and to force your mood set on your friends page, but what's the "?format=light" thing?

It doesn't seem to affect your journal, for example.

Re: So many hidden things!

[foxfirefey]

?format=light was designed for cell phone folks. Documented here.

You can find a plain friends page in the mobile site section.

Re: So many hidden things!

[foxfirefey]

Oh! And ?format=light is only something that applies to journal entry pages and calendar page views.

[ex_shattered767]

"LJ customization communities are now the place to receive style assistance for Sponsored+ issues."

*cough* Speaking as an everything_lj co-maintainer and overridehelp maintainer, we've been doing that all along and fielding complaints that Support didn't help any, anyhow (though that's not entirely their fault, due to the policies they have). But I'm disappointed, because LJ screwed it up, so why is it the job of everyday LJ users to fix it?

Coincidentally, today we've had a spike in the number of people asking for help. Unfortunately most people have the misconception that they can make their layouts work with S+Plus.

[foxfirefey]

Would you say that most layouts can't work with Plus?

[ex_shattered767]

If we disregard S2 for the moment, if it's got a class that starts with "table", you're gonna have problems. And the reality is that covers 95+ of the people using S1 overrides. So yes, I would say most layouts don't work.

We've got a way to build a sidebar layout with overrides that has no table stuff in it, so it works with everyone. But telling people that they have to recode their layout from scratch for it to work isn't so fun.

[burr86]

Open invitation: if you know of popular S1 customizations that aren't available as an option in the S2 counterpart, let me know and I'll see what I can do to get them added to S2.