@Jess I love how the 1 you commented on was one that she "made" as a request. XD

@Amour omg that's hilarious! She's so fucking lazy that she doesn't even upload the pictures onto her own account?!?!!? XD And wants to say that she did all this work?! XD This girl is srsly making me giggle. For one, I have a hard time believing she's 22 (along w/ all of her HP diaries, while I did that as well when I was younger, I sure as hell wouldn't do it now, at 24, or then, at 22. HP diaries were definitely something I did when I was an emo angst loving teen xD) and her title of her diary drives me nuts: "currently, taking requests". I keep hearing that in my head and hearing how WRONG it is. XD It makes me think of that books "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" w/ the pandas on the cover.

OD has changed since I was last there, I'm finding it hard to navigate. I must say, I prefer bloop :D

@ Amour De Bebe ;

He he -- I love both Bloop + OD; I don't find OD at all hard to navigate around.

I guess it just takes some time to get used to it all.

Like, some people that join Bloop for the first time find it a bit hard to navigate around at first =P

I didn't even try to read her FP/Entries, way too hard fr me t read. I can totally see why she needs to take other peoples layouts too, lol ;D

for me too*
My O key isn't working very well.

@ Amour De Bebe ;

LOL. And I thought *my* FP + entries were hard to read =P

I'm quite positive I know who this person is on bloop. And honestly I'm very disappointed that people still do this kind of thing.

@ Jess ;

Same here -- Some people have no respect for other peoples' stuff =/

If i had a service diary i wouldn't really care so much about the coding.. but if the image that I created was taken with it.. and they claimed it as their own and even altered it so the copyright on the image was theirs.. I'd be pretty damn pissed off..

I learned a long time ago that HTML is just that.. so i can't get mad that i learned from doing what everyone else does.. view source.. however again i create my own images and i wouldn't be happy if they were taken and credited as someone elses since most of the images i create take FOREVER to create.

thank you for telling us :D

@ Absinthe ;

I know what you mean. When you take so long working on something and are very proud of the result then some idiot comes along, steals it, claims it as their own and take the credit off, that's just not right. It's absurd.

And like Jess had said in her reply, I can't believe that there are still people who do this sort of thing ; It's disappointing =/

is the person still here on bloop or has she deleted since she was outed?

@ Mistress Snape ;

I have no idea what her diary name is on Bloop =P

@ Lady Bellatrix; I found her.

This is crap. I am so sorry to all the HTML and layout diaries. Did you guys figure out who it was? And can't something be done to her?

@ queenbutterfly ;

I did leave a note on that person's 'layout' diary at OD but, alas, no reply.

And I'm not sure what their Bloop diary name is. . .Might have to look into that. Ha.

Of course when she's caught red handed she won't reply! lol. She's around here some where and we shall get her!

STONE I SAY! Stoning! tee hee ;D

i see she got some of my layouts from my layout diary (Layouts!). and the layouts look HORRIBLE on OD, another reason why they should STAY on bloop since they were coded FOR bloop. :/ thanks for letting us know!

@ eringetic™ ;

Yeah, she snagged layouts from quite a few diaries on here =/

Ta!

I can understand both sides here because I (shamefully) used to steal layouts and artwork when I first started out (7 years ago). Of course all of my layouts are 100% original (minus photography 99% of the time), but it takes sooooo much time and energy to learn coding. Creating the actual artwork? Even longer.

I used to have a complete breakdown on my diary explaining why it upsets service diaries so much (before all content of my diary got deleted). I'm going to try my best to do a watered down version of it ;D

Coding
1.) Learning to code is endless. It took me months (literally MONTHS) to 100% figure out and understand how coding works. The reason I say learning coding is endless is because websites constantly change which means once a site has changed, you must change your coding to work with the new "system" of the site. All service diaries will have to adapt our coding when Bloop v3 launches.
2.) Tweaking code can take anywhere from a few minutes/30 mins. (for a simple color layout) to several hours (for more complex layouts including artwork, 2+ text boxes, types of border, matching colors, double checking the layout shows up properly on ALL web browsers).
3.) Troubleshooting any problems with your code can take anywhere to a couple minutes or an hour or so trying to figure out why your code is making your box look orange or why the artwork is on the top left hand corner of the page when it's supposed to be off centered. It could be something simple or it could be something completely new to you that you want to try. Point being is troubleshooting is the biggest pain in the ass for an artist. It just SUCKS.

Artwork
Artwork sounds so simple, but it's the most time consuming part of the whole layout. All the tweaking, adjusting, placing an accent color or brush just perfect can take you a minute to half an hour. Everything has it's place, but you have to find it's place. Unfortunately, if you're like me, you might've taken 30 minutes finding your perfect stock photo and then realized 2 hours into making your artwork that it's all wrong and then you completely start over. For me, it can take up to 12 hours to complete on piece of artwork. That's not including "coding time".



Hopefully this helps non-service diarist understand why service diaries get so pissy with people stealing our shiznit. It's not because it's just code or it's just a pretty picture... it's because of the time, the effort, and the pride we put into making ONE layout.

But you are creating it from your own choice, and presumably because you enjoy it. It's not, surely, a chore that you're obliged to do, but something that you love doing for a hobby. So why does the time you spent doing it matter or need to be admired or acknowledged, when you were loving every minute of it? Or do you hate doing artwork?

My perspective is quite different from yours, I think.

Regarding coding, I create my own layouts (which I learnt to do the same way as Teresa did - by clicking 'view source' on layouts I liked, observing the coding, and experimenting with it). It can take a long time, because I like to experiment. I do it for enjoyment, and for myself. If someone were to do 'view source' on a layout of mine and take it, I wouldn't mind in the slightest. If they didn't change it at all, I'd think they were rather uncreative, because to me, the point of a layout is to personalise it. But I wouldn't feel cheated or robbed that they'd taken my layout. If they were then posting it on a layout diary, claiming they'd created it, I think I'd feel more amused than anything - I'd comment 'Gosh, this looks familiar! ;D'

But then I don't use my own artwork on layouts. Well, actually, I did once, on a most delightful poo layout - and gosh, if someone had stolen that and I found it being used all around OD, I would have cracked up laughing and posted an entry about it!

Personally, if I took my artwork incredibly seriously, I wouldn't be posting it on a small diary site, for anyone to use with the condition that they give me credit.

For one thing, you can't possibly trust everyone to give you credit. The internet is vast, and anyone can find and take your work - even if your layout diary is FO, a friend with a public diary might take a layout and then anyone could take it.

And for another thing, credit doesn't mean anything. If I wanted payment, that would be different, and I'd be acquiring copyright and selling my artwork, but personally, I do my art as a hobby. It's fun and I love it. I have some artwork posted on the internet, and I'm well aware that anyone could steal it, and this doesn't bother me in the slightest. I'm happy for anyone to take it, if it makes them happy. It does take me several hours to complete, but I love every minute of it - I'm not doing it as a chore which I expect people to acknowledge. I do it for me. If it was a personal pic that I wanted to keep to myself, I wouldn't post it, and if I wanted to share it, I'd post it and be happy for it to be taken.

I guess it's the point of 'credit' that I don't really get. If it were about payment, I'd get it - if you were posting it to be sold. But simply to have someone say 'Estella created this' whenever they use it doesn't really mean anything to me. Once I've created something to share, then it exists in its own right. I don't need people to pat me on the back whenever they use it. The fact that they are using it means they like it - and that's great.

lol, you made a poo layout? xD That is awesome.

Some of my really really early layouts were like 5 minute Microsoft Paint jobs, and so I probably wouldn't mind if someone took them. xD But my newer layouts each took me hours to do - from taking the photo, editing it, and then designing the code around it and making it look all pretty. And it's quite personal to me too, since it's something I've created from scratch, and want to share it with others. The main annoyance is when they take it and claim it as their own. Also hilarious is when you notice that someone is using the layout without your link on it, and it's hilarious because it means they actually went to efforts to find and delete the code that constitutes my link!

I used to care a lot more about it, but now I don't so much, partly because I have stopped posting layouts, partly because I don't have the time to hunt them down, and partly because I have no leg to stand on because it's the internet and whatever you post is fair game, regardless of the precautions you might take.

I did indeed - a proper work of art created on my bamboo tablet thingy! ;D It was a bottom with a poo dangling out of it (some people thought it was a willy, but it was clearly a brown colour while the bottom was pink and shiny! ;D). Gosh, I might even have created a layout diary called Poo Layouts, and posted it there. I think I had a gossip diary back then where I used it too.

Actually, gosh, I'll totally tell you how you can find the poo pic - I just remembered I found it recently. Go to your switch, search 'secret estella' and add her - then you'll see the pic. The diary's been deleted for years and years, but for some reason you can add deleted diaries to your switch (you can then delete it from your switch again, of course).

And yes, I do think it's daft when people claim someone's layout as their own - I guess I find it more amusing and weird than annoying. I mean, why do that?? What actual gain is there?

I can understand people wanting to remove the link from the bottom of a layout though. It makes the layout messy, and it's confusing to have the name of another diarist at the bottom of your layout, because it looks like that person wrote the entry. It can be useful when it's a layout you want to use yourself, but often you go to the layout diary and it takes forever to find that particular layout. It'd be better if it linked to the exact entry with that layout on.

Also, I would post a "credit" link on my layouts so that if another person they wanted to get that layout too, or browse other layouts by the same layout-maker, they could do so with a quick click of the link. It wasn't merely to state that I "created" it, but also to show people where the layout came from.

if another person wanted* (not 'they wanted')