Current mood:	listless
Current music:	Whiskeytown - Choked Up
Entry tags:	help

Instructions on how to upload your custom mood theme (for a free account)
Aug 2 2006: THIS TUTORIAL IS NO LONGER NECESSARY
Thanks to LJ's new Plus account type, you no longer need to manually add your mood images to each entry. You can change to a Plus account, install your mood theme, and then either keep the Plus account or go back to Basic. If you choose the latter, your theme will still be on your LJ when you change. Now all instructions are on the paid user tutorial page.

I am going to keep this page up incase LJ ever changes its account types and no longer offers the same features.


INSTRUCTIONS

Alright, due to the large amount of people commenting to tell me that you can use a mood theme with a free account, I've written up a tutorial on how to do so. Frankly, I think it would be a lot easier to just spend the $5 and get a paid account for 2 months, and then the mood theme would still be working when your paid account runs out. That way, if you wanted to change the theme, you'd just have to replace the images you have uploaded with the new ones, as the urls would still be the same.

Anyway, if you don't have the $5, or don't have any way to send it in, here's a tutorial on how to manually add each image to your entries for free accounts (if you have a paid account, go here).




1. Download the zip file for the mood theme you want, and unzip it in winzip or a similar program.

2. Then upload the 132 mood images to your domain, or an image hosting site like Photobucket. Do not change the file names. If the file names are changed, then this will not work.

3. Download this file, and open it.

4. Using the replace tool (Edit > Replace, or ctrl+h in most programs), replace "http://www.hosting.com/" with the url to the folder that stores the images on your domain, or the photobucket album. Make sure you select "replace all", and that it does it for every line. Also, make sure that there is a / between your url and the mood.

5. Now, save the file somewhere that's easily accesible, as you'll need to pull it up every time you make an LJ entry.

6. When you're ready to make an entry, open the file. Before you start typing the entry, figure out what mood you want to use for this entry, and then paste in the corresponding line into the top of your entry. If you want to specify music for this entry, then type that in between the | and ]. If not, delete the second line. Press your enter button a couple times, and then type in your entry. Do not fill in the "mood" or "music" text boxes. If you do, then it will look like you entered them in twice. To see a screencap of what your formatting should look like now, click here.

Your entry should look like this once it's posted:

"[mood| weird]
 [music|The Arcade Fire - No Cars Go]

Blah blah blah"

If not, go through the steps again. If you're still having problems, comment here and I'll try to help.

7. Please make sure to credit me in your info if you do use one of my mood themes.

That's all!

Before you comment with any problems with your mood theme upload, please READ THIS TROUBLESHOOTING POST.