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People who know Livejournal: is there any way to get an S2 style that looks exactly like my current layout? I haven't changed it since 2001, and I like it just fine the way it is, but since viewing comment pages in site style is suddenly horrible, I need some way to make it not horrible. I am probably excessively bitter about this, but site style was always so incredibly readable. No one's custom style, no matter how well-designed, was ever quite as good for just reading large blocks of text or long comment threads. I don't want design, I just want content. And my current journal style is as close as I can get. Even my Dreamwidth style is more ~designed~ than I want, but it was the best of a bad lot.

This is all reminding me how much I fail at fandom and journaling. I haven't added anyone to my flist/rlist in...over a year, I am pretty sure? Maybe one person I'm forgetting about in there, but basically my list is frozen where it was a couple years ago. And I can't seem to find a fandom that I can get deep into and stay with. It's either weeklong flings or long but casual affairs without much reading or obsessing. XMFC was good for about three months but I used to fall in love for six months at a time or more, and really passionately too, always thinking about the characters and coming up with ideas and I always had stories to tell myself in bed at night or while waiting in line somewhere. Now I feel like I rarely connect that way with stories, and when I do there's never a fandom, at least not one that has what I want, and pretty soon my enthusiasm fades. IDK, maybe my brain is just changing and that part of my life is gone, but if so I will really miss it.

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Punquin Elegant (your current layout) is an S2 style as well as an S1 style, and since you're a paid user on LJ you'll have access to custom comment pages as soon as you switch to S2 and select it. It's pretty readable for comments.

The one I REALLY like is Punquin Minimalist, as customized by someone at

xmen_firstkink -- see this thread for some screenshots (it's the style that is now active on

xmen_firstkink, too). I'm trying to decide if it's worth upgrading to a Plus account to use it.

ETA: Wait wait no, that's not actually the style they're using. But it's CLOSE. I'm hoping the mods will tell us what style that is, and soon.

Edited 2011-12-21 19:17 (UTC)

Oooooh, the custom comment pages are a paid only feature? No wonder I couldn't get them to work!

YEAH, ARGH. :((((((( Paid/Plus/Permanent only -- even early adopters don't get them.

And you know, all this time, I thought, God, custom comment pages, SCOURGE UPON THE EARTH. Now they're pretty much the only thing that makes LJ usable, and for how long, who knows.

I have hated custom comment pages for SO LONG, and also hated most people's fancy styles for their own journals, although that was slightly less rational. It always seemed to be a bad "improvement" on something that was basically perfect. Oh, the twists fate leads us on :(

That modified layout you linked looks almost perfect, thank you! I think I'll go with that, until my paid account lapses anyway.

Remember when the default LJ style was the cleanest and easiest to read? //cries

I HAVE HATED custom comment pages for SO LONG and now I am dying for them. Argh.

YEAH, I found that out the hard way. Whoops. I went from Basic to Plus, but that only gives me custom comment pages on my LJ.

I want to say that so long as you have "Disable customized comment pages for your journal" set to "No" under Customize Journal Style/Customize Your Theme/Display/Presentation/Basic Options; your comment pages should come up right. I can't say for sure that your theme is s2 however.

No, it's definitely not S2 right now--that's my problem. And I have all entry pages set to display in site style, which used to be the best and is now a horror.

When you clock Customize Journal Style, on the left hand side bar, toward the bottom, there should be a switch to s2 option.
Or try this link? http://www.livejournal.com/customize/switch_system.bml

Right, but after doing that, I want to make sure my journal style will continue to look as much as possible like the one I have. The layout

helens78 linked to looks pretty good for these purposes.