ninetydegrees: Text: admin (admin)
ninetydegrees (90d)☕ ([personal profile] ninetydegrees) wrote in [site community profile] dreamscapes2014-02-24 03:05 pm
Entry tags:

Dreamscapes Entry Guidelines

(Version 5 or so! :)

What kinds of entries belong in [site community profile] dreamscapes?


  • S2 or CSS layers/stylesheets, finished or unfinished, that you'd like to be turned into official styles and themes. BTW color themes do count as submissions and we're always happy to have more! See The Quick and Dirty Guide to Creating Color Themes if you don't know how to create one already.

  • Entries related to making official styles and themes (requests for help with a layer, calls for collaboration, sharing resources, tutorials, or sharing common issues/useful tips,...)

Posting is open to everyone; you do not need to be a member of the community to submit an entry.

If you've made something but don't want to have it turned official [community profile] dreamwidthlayouts is the place you want to post it to. Requests for help with an official style should go to Support or [community profile] style_system.


What do I need to do when submitting a style or theme?


1) First step is to read and send your Contributor License Agreement by email to [email protected] or by mail to Dreamwidth Studios, LCC, PO Box 39608, Baltimore MD, 21212. This is very important. The CLA basically says that you give us permission to use and redistribute your code and your images. It does not give us exclusive rights to any of them. Please remember that no submission from you can be patched or loaded to the site until your CLA is on file!

2) Second step is to post an entry with your submission, using this template:



  • Make sure your code source is publicly accessible. In particular, add these two lines to your S2 layer if you're linking to it:
    layerinfo is_public = 1;
    layerinfo source_viewable = 1;

  • If you can include or link to a preview, please do! See Quick/Easy Preview given a theme ID if you're using layers.

  • If your submission has any images, we absolutely need to know how they were made. If you've made them all entirely from scratch please say so. Otherwise, provide exact links to their sources so that we can double-check the licensing terms and make sure commercial use is allowed. If you can also link to the license itself, even better!

  • Finally, add any information which could be useful: whether your submission is finished, has been thoroughly tested, functions better in one column or two columns, with module so and so disabled, requires the original stylesheet to be disabled, etc.

3) There are some tags you can add such as "-draft", "-needs testing" or "-needs conversion" which will clarify what your post is about but tagging is handled by admins so don't worry about it.

Are there any guidelines themes and styles should follow?


Yes, there are. If your style or theme doesn't follow them, the developer(s) who'll patch it will make necessary changes so don't worry if your submission doesn't meet them. Here are some of our main requirements:

Styles and themes should be compatible with the latest two versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE. Compatibility with the latest Opera is also highly desirable.

For accessibility and general readability, all styles and themes must be fluid and be able to accommodate both large and small font sizes, in small and larger screens (this means using proportional units such as ems or percentages for non-graphic elements). Icons should be the standard icons, though exceptions are possible; if the icon accompanies text, the text should be the standard text.

What happens after I posted my submission?


Well, you'll probably wait. You can keep an eye on your submission tags to see when the "-not filed" tag is removed and "-claimed" is added. This means a developer plans on patching your submission. Once it is patched and put in line for the next code push, the entry will be tagged "-committed".

Any work that has to be done to ready your submission will add to the time, of course. Conversion to S2, in particular, tends to take longer than taking an already-S2 submission and doing the final bits to make it an official style. Any modifications of the submission, for example, if it needs a bit of polishing to make it fluid width and otherwise fit our guidelines, that may take longer still.

Can my submission be rejected?


This usually happens when there are license issues: the submission includes images Dreamwidth may not use or is based off another design Dreamwidth may not use.

However, if some images can't be used, we'd be happy to accept variants of the original submission with other images or without images. Some good places to look for stock images are listed on the Wiki.

Where do I get started?


This is by no means a comprehensive list, but: