The first thing you have to do is select which user icon you want to use. If you look at the top of the screen, you'll see that they're divided into categories ("LJ Users", "LJ Communities/Syndications", etc.), with "ALL Icons" as the final choice. When you open this page – http://DammitJa.net/lj/asmt – the default tab is "LJ Users" (because it takes a long time to open the "ALL Icons" tab, which used to be the only option before I split them up). Anyway, select the category you want to use, and then scroll down and select the icon you want by clicking the radio button next to it. In the example below, I have selected the "Harry Potter (Ravenclaw)" icon, in which the standard LJ user icon is holding a wand and wearing a scarf in the Ravenclaw colors:

After you have selected the icon you want to use, scroll down to the bottom of the page to enter the journal information. First, you can select which journal site you want your links to point to – livejournal.com is the default. You must enter the exact name of the journal or community you want to link to (in the example below, I used my own journal, "allah_sulu"). Note that if you're creating a link to a community, you should make sure that you use underscore characters (_) rather than hyphens (-) in the name, and also to check the "Community" checkbox, since communities sometimes require the URLs to be constructed differently than user journals. The code that this would generate is: allah_sulu. However, you can optionally enter a different name to be displayed rather than the user/community name (for clarity, humor, or whatever). In the example below, I put in my real first name, "Arthur". This will generate the following code: Arthur. Note that even though the user tag says "Arthur", it still links to "allah_sulu". Either way, once you are satisfied with your icon selection and the name(s) you've entered, press the "Generate HTML" button:

Once you have done all of that, the text box at the bottom of the page will be filled with the HTML code necessary to create the link you requested. Simply select the code and copy it (click and CTRL-C, or right-click and select "Copy" if you're running Windows) and then paste it (CTRL-V in most Windows applications) into your journal post … or anywhere else you want to use it. This code will let you place LJ-style links into your blogs and other web pages (just as I've placed working LJ-style links on this page). Enjoy!