Common Mistakes

[ You edited yourself out of your profile / cult / journal ] [ A particular HTML / CSS tag isn't doing anything ] [ Something has disappeared ] [ Something has moved / is aligned wrong ] [ Half your profile has turned into a link ] [ Your code is showing on your profile ] [ You're having problems applying the same css styles to a bunch of stuff ]

First make sure you're logged in on VF. Then click:

[ Here For Your Edit Profile Page ]     [ Or Here For Your Edit Journal Page ]

To get into your edit cult page, go to: http://vampirefreaks.com/group_edit.php?c=YOURCULTNAME

First check you spelled it right. Seriously.
If you're having trouble with a color, make sure you're spelling it COLOR (the American way). HTML can't spell. ;)

Next check that it actually exists.

Actually submit the changes, rather than just looking on the profile preview page- the preview page doesn't have all the classes the proper profile page does- some of your changes won't show up on it.

Check that you're allowed to use it. Some words and tags are banned on VF, and the filters will remove them from your code.

Also check for duplication: for instance, if you use your style sheet to put a red border around a certain table, and then later try to put a blue border around the same one, the commands might cancel each other out and then neither will work, or else just the latter one will work.

If half your code disappeared from the edit profile page, it was probably because you left a tag open, like this <font and the VF filter mistaken the rest of your profile for one giant disallowed tag. That's just bad luck, and you can't get it back. If you're smart you will have saved your profile code on a notepad file on your computer before making any major changes.

If your code is still there but something disappeared from your profile, first check the style sheet for { display: none; } and look what it is that you're hiding. For instance, if the line is .leftnav { display: none; } and your lefthand navigation table has disappeared, you need to erase .leftnav { display: none; } from your code to make it come back.

Secondly, make sure you haven't left a style sheet tag open. Remember how all your style attributes go between <style type="text/css"> and </style> tags? Well text and images do not. Text and images that are enclosed between these tags wont show up at all, and worse still, if you have a <style type="text/css"> tag, without ending it with a </style> at all, everything below it will disappear! Make sure you have included ending tags for every style tag that you have.

Check in your style sheet for { align: right } (or center, or left) or { float: right; } and look what it is that you're aligning. For instance, if the line is .profile_title { float: right; } and your profile title is aligned to the right, this is why.

If that doesn't work look for HTML tags to do with alignment. If your entire profile below a certain point is aligned to the right for example, look for a tag like <div align="right"> that is not followed soon after by an ending tag: </div> Almost all HTML tags have these ending tags, and if you forget one the effect (in this case aligning everything to the right) will continue to be applied for the rest of the page.

Nb. There are just a few HTML tags that don't have end tags- The image tag <img src="mypic.gif"> and break tag <br> are two of these. However even these must be complete in themselves, for instance even though <br> on its own is correct, <br is not.

You've forgotten to close a link tag. Look for a tag that begins <a href="http://www.somesite.com/somewhere"> without an </a> tag to end it soon after.

Most likely to happen with style sheet commands, if you haven't placed them between <style type="text/css"> and </style> tags. All style sheet commands- the ones that look like: page-element { thing-to-change: way-to-change-it; } MUST go between <style type="text/css"> and </style> tags.

If you have a style sheet something like this: .likes_title, .dislikes_title, .journal_entry { display: none; } And you added or removed something from the list which made the code stop working, make sure there's no comma after the last element in the list. For instance while the above code works, this: .likes_title, .dislikes_title, .journal_entry, { display: none; } will not.