07 December 2018 @ 12:05 pm
I’ve seen a lot of “how do I do x” or “what’s x for” from my friends, so as someone who existed on an LJ-based platform like this for twelve years, here is a guide!

Number one, before we even get started - if you don’t like the dropdown menus in the main configuration area, go to Organize > Manage Account > Display. Scroll to the bottom and change Site Skin to Celerity. It pulls everything from the dropdown menus out into a nested sidebar so it’s easier to find things.

Want to see just one of the sections below? Click on the little arrow on the left of it to expand only that section (click it again to collapse it). Clicking on the words will take you to that particular section within the post, and also show you the entire post. (These are cuts, and we'll talk about them in the "tags and blacklisting" and "commonly-used code" sections).

PRIVACY & SECURITY

Probably one of the most attractive features of Dreamwidth compared to Tumblr is the ability to lock your content down. You can share some things with friends, some things with the world. You can even share things with a specific subset of friends (more on that in the "Access and Subscription Filters" section).

If you want everything locked to just your access list, go to Manage Account > Privacy (link) and select that from “Minimum New Entry Security.” This will set that default for all future entries.

(If you want to make an entry public with a different default minimum security setting, post the entry first and then edit it to change the security.)

There are other security options available here. You can control:
  • Who can see your contact information
  • Who can send you messages
  • Who can comment
  • Default comment screening (more on that in a moment)
  • IP address logging (more on that also in a moment)
A very nifty control is being able to specify what kind of Captcha people view as an anti-spam measure (text or picture).

You can allow your public content to appear in search results on Dreamwidth. This setting is turned on by default. You can also allow users in your access list to search your journal. This setting is also turned on by default.

Comment Screening

Comment screening makes certain comments only visible to you. This setting allows you to set a default across all future entries. I have mine set to auto-screen anonymous comments and comments from people not on my access list. This lets me control whether or not I want to display a comment left by someone I don’t know (kind of like choosing to publish an ask or respond to it privately).

Replying to a comment does unscreen it, but you can rescreen it afterward (you cannot screen your reply, so everyone will see your reply but the original comment will remain screened; here's what that looks like). Other people cannot reply to a screened comment, even if you have (though they can reply to yours). This lets you have a conversation with someone without showing who they are or what they’re saying - nice if you want to have a civilized discussion about something, but don’t want other people to be able to pile on to the argument or person.

IP Address Logging

This setting automatically displays to you (only you) the IP address of a comment. You can now easily tell if someone is the same person under a different account, or if the same anonymous person is harassing you again.

You can toggle this on an entry basis, so if you’re running a kink meme or a ficathon or something else that could have a lot of anonymous responders, you might want to consider turning it off for that entry. IP address logging can make people uncomfortable for that (“am I submitting too many?” “I really want to read this fic but I don’t want you to know I’m into that kink”)

ACCESS AND SUBSCRIPTION FILTERS

Access Filters

Say your access list contains both close friends and fandom acquaintances. Maybe you don't want to share selfies with those fandom acquaintances and you just want to share it with your close friends. Access filters give you even further control over who can see your entry. Set them up here, and then select the relevant filter when posting your entry. You can only have one filter per entry.

Keep in mind that the "last updated" detail on your profile will display the date/time of your last journal entry whether the user looking at your profile has access to that entry or not.

Subscription Filters

These help you control your Reading page. Like access filters where you can display an entry only to a specific subset of people, you can choose a subscription filter so you only see entries from a specific subset of people. Go here to set them up and view them.

If you only want to filter down between users and communities (and feeds, if you're using those), you can do that without creating a subscription filter. Add ?show=P to the end of your reading page to show users, ?show=C to show only communities, and ?show=F to show only feeds. (here's the FAQ entry on that)


TAGS AND BLACKLISTING

Tags are for your blog’s organization. That’s all.

There is no tag search function, and tags have a severe character limit and automatically alphabetize themselves upon posting. Sorry. That’s how Dreamwidth works.

To find people and communities who are interested in the same stuff as you, you can search interests (either by clicking on the relevant interest in your profile, or searching by Interest in the top right search bar). There is also a site-wide content search, but functions more like Tumblr's search feature (though...better) than tags.

Hierarchy

You do not have to set your tags up in a hierarchical format ("fandom:xyz" versus "xyz"; "fandom:character:abc" versus "abc"). But if you do, there is a way to get your tags page to automatically sort and display hierarchically for you (screenshot 1, 2, 3). It takes a little bit of planning, and if you want to set things up that way, let me know. I'll find you the code and give you some direction.

Blacklisting

Tags also have no blacklisting functionality. There are browser extensions that will screen words, but I don’t know if they will just block out the word (which doesn’t do you any good) or will block the whole entry.

You can, however, ask people to put things behind a cut with a warning (you know how us Olds on tumblr refer to a “read more” as a cut? This is where that comes from.)

The code is <cut text=“warning for xyz”>content of thing</cut>

Tangentially, yes, the /cut tag means you can have visible text after the cut text. And, like I’m doing in this post, have multiple cuts per post. It’s rad.



BLOCKING AND BANNING


Dreamwidth’s block feature is called banning. There’s not a button to just ban someone right then and there, you have to go to the Ban Users page (can also be found under Manage Account > Privacy).

Banning someone just bans them from commenting on your journal; I believe a recent update also banned them from responding to you on another user’s journal. It does not ban them from reading your journal or commenting anonymously - but this is what access locking and IP address logging is for.

COMMENTS

Comments are threaded on Dreamwidth, meaning that you can actually follow a conversation. You can (but by no means have to) give a subject line to your comment. Like email, replies to a comment with a subject line will say "RE: Subject".

Comments can also be edited. The user you reply to will get a notification that you commented, and that you edited the comment. Once someone has replied to your comment, you cannot edit it anymore.

(Quick note: if you're commenting in an environment like RP or a ficathon and don't want people to reply immediately because you want to be able to review it and fix things first, put a note in the subject line or at the top of the comment like "don't reply until I remove this, I want to check my commas". It's been my experience that most people respect that.)

You can delete your own comment (this does not remove the notification that was sent to the entry's author with your original comment text). You can delete other people's comments on your own journal.

If you are logged in and your comment has been screened (either by default or the author of the post manually screened the comment), you will be able to see your comment and that it is screened. If you post anonymously and it is screened, you will not be able to see your screened comment.

COMMUNITIES

Communities are spaces where people who like the same stuff can post and talk about the same stuff.

You can subscribe to a community to just watch its entries (and, depending on the community settings, comment), or you can join a community to make your own posts. Or both. You can join without subscribing (handy if it's an active community that moves quite a bit).

If you’re posting fic or meta or other content (versus “Hi, I’m Sara and I like these things!”), it’s up to you whether you post the full text in the community, or the full text in a public post on your journal and just link it in the community, or post it in full in both places. I personally prefer posting the thing on my journal and linking it, because that gives me easier access to comments, but it’s up to you.

If you are running a community and someone is a problem, you can ban them from the community. You can also set up community moderation, where posts have to be approved prior to being posted and visible in the community.

CURRENTS AND ICONS

Currents

Currents are those “current mood/music/location” fields on the post. They’re just there to give a little flavor to the post. You can type whatever you want in any of those fields - keep in mind that there is a character limit. But sometimes it's important to share that your mood is "three siamese cats in a trenchcoat."

Icons

Every free user can have 15 icons to use when posting or commenting. Tumblr allowed you one, Dreamwidth lets you change your icon per post and per comment. Icons are 100x100 images (yes, they can be gifs, though there is a file size limit).

Keywords will help you figure out which icon is which in the selection box. If you use commas in your keywords, each word/phrase will show up independently in the selection list. This is great for describing an icon as “happy, joyful, excited” (displays separately in the list as "happy", "joyful", "excited") not so much for “and if i get burned, at least we were electrified” (displays separately in the list as "and if i get burned","at least we were electrified")

If someone else made the icon, credit is an important thing to give, and you can use the Comment field for that. The user linking code mentioned in the next section works in the Comment field (here's my icon page to show what the Comment fields look like with that code for credit).

COMMONLY-USED CODE

Cuts

As mentioned above in the "Tags" section, cuts are a way to, well, cut part of your entry so it doesn't appear on reading pages or on your journal. A user has to click on it to see the content below. This is grand for long entries of any sort, and also for hiding content you want to put a warning in front of.

<cut text="what you want the link to say">what text you want in the cut</cut>

You can have multiple cuts in a single entry (like this one), and display text both before and after the cut (also like this one).

Users and Accounts

Using Dreamwidth’s built in account referencing, you don’t have to enter the whole address, and it gives a little icon showing what type of site it is.

<user name=name site=site> (I'm not demoing this in here because my current layout replaces all the favicons with the same custom userhead)

Here’s a good list of what other sites Dreamwidth supports with this method; you can use any of the “also works with” to make it shorter. If you're referencing someone on Dreamwidth, you can drop the "site=" part of that and just do <user name=openended> to get [personal profile] openended

Unlike Tumblr's (and other sites) @ mentioning system, Dreamwidth does not have a mentions feature; linking a user with this method is only a quick and easy way of putting them in your entry; they do not get a notification that you did so.

MEMORIES AND FINDING THINGS AGAIN

"Memories" are Dreamwidth's way of allowing you to bookmark things without having to, well, bookmark them (handy if you're mobile, or use multiple browsers, or multiple devices, etc.). Add a memory by clicking the "memory" link on the particular entry. You can add your own title to it and give it keywords (kind of like tags, but...not tags). You can add your own posts as your own memories, but you can also add another user's post to your memories.

You have the same control over each memory you add as you do your entries: public, access list only, private. The user does not get notified that you added their entry as a memory.

EXTENSIONS AND SUCH

LJ Account Juggler: Chrome extension for switching between accounts (handy for RPers)

Semagic: desktop client that requires a little bit of configuration for Dreamwidth, allows account switching and community posting

I'm sure I missed things, so if there's anything else you'd like more information about, ask away!
 
 
mood: bite me onenote c/p
music: unbearably hot holy heck
 
 
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