Using Dreamwidth
Jul. 14th, 2019 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silvercat17If you haven't used a platform like Dreamwidth before, it can be confusing. Here's a bunch of pointers. Note: anyone can feel free to link to this! But if you find it helpful, please consider buying me a ko-fi or two.
If you're just doing basic posts or just replying to things, a lot of this may be irrelevant to you.
Overview
After you've made your dreamwidth account, everything you need is available from the front page. The most important stuff (in my opinion) is in the upper right hand corner.
1. Clicking your username will take you to your journal.
2. The reading page is where you can read everything you're subscribed to, both personal journals and communities, all in nice chronological order, in the same style as your journal.
3. Your inbox will have your private messages (pm's) and notifications of comments to your posts and comments.
4. Clicking on your icon will take you to all of your icons. (If you click on someone else's icon, you can see all of theirs)
Let's look at a couple of journals.
Here's my personal journal.
1. The location of the sidebar depends on the theme of the journal. Clicking on the profile link will bring up the user's or community's profile, which has their about, bio, and connections.
The link below goes to my Wordpress blog. It was added through my profile. The icons below let me do stuff and have hovertext. From left to right, they're "subscribe", "post" (only available on journals you have posting privileges), "send a private message", and "email a friend". if you're on somebody else's journal there will be an additional icon in front to modify their access to your entries.
2. You can have sticky entries that stay at the top of the journal. You can find out how to do that in the Dreamwidth Help.
You can also see the page navigation link above there. The number of entries on a page can be set in journal style.
3. This is the most current post.
4. Memories are a way to save posts, whether yours, off a community, or from another personal journal. (If their filters change, you can lose access.)
Here's the![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
justcreate community. You can see that this theme has the sidebar on the left and some of the other menus rearranged.
The action icons are "leave" (or join if you haven't), "modify subscription", "post", "get notifications of updates", and "email a friend". I find using that post button is the safest way to post to a community. You can post in a couple of ways, but you have to be careful to select the correct journal.
Posting
You can post either by clicking on post in the upper right hand corner, or by using the quick update form in the middle of the page. Let's look at the quick update first. It gives you fewer options. You can use some html and site-specific tags in the entry, but not in the subject, but the key stuff is below.
Post to: you can post to your journal and any community you're subscribed to. It defaults to your journal.
Security: you can restrict access if you want only friends (access list) or yourself to see it. If you've set up specific filters, they'll be in there too.
Icon: pick whatever icon fits your mood!
Tags: tags are used for organizing and finding stuff, just like on most blogs.
The post page has more options, so let's go over that.
1. You can change what date you want it to show. This DOESN'T change when it posts. You can't schedule posts. It'll just change when it shows up in your journal - if you change the date to the 2010, it'll show with your 2010 posts; if you change the date to 2030, it'll always be first until 2030 comes.
2. You can post in rich text (what you see is what you get) or control the HTML. If you keep "disable auto-formatting" unchecked, it'll automatically add linebreaks when you hit enter without you having to add the html tag.
Once you written your entry, you'll scroll to the bottom where you see this:
Most of these are optional, but let's go over them real quick. Most of them are social stuff.
Tags: these are your tags (duh)
Mood: you can select your mood if you want and there are little icons for each. There are ways to have custom icons. Nice if you're ranting or whatever.
Location: You can write in your location if you want
Music: What are you listening to right now?
The other column is screening.
Comments: Can people comment or no?
Comment screening: Do you want to have to approve comments?
Age restriction: are you talking about adult stuff and don't want kids to be able to see? And you can add a reason below ("taxes", "age required medical bs")
Crosspost: with a free account you can crosspost to one livejournal clone, if you're on those. I used to crosspost to livejournal, but I don't bother anymore.
And just like with quick update, you can restrict who sees it to your friends or a specific access list.
Cut Tags
It's polite to add a cut tag for long entries or those that have content people may not want to see. You can have multiple cuts, which is useful if it's a long post that you want people to be able to jump to specific parts of. Let's look at that in the rich text editor and then the html editor. I've circled the cut button. Highlight the text you want behind a cut tag, then hit that button.
You can customize what the cut link text says. Let's call this one George.
It's now in a cut tag and the link preview entry will just say George. Let's add one more and then see how it looks in HTML. You can see that the cut button sometimes removes any text formatting, which is one reason you might want to add the cut tags using HTML.
I've added that text formatting back in, so let's see how it looks when posted. The cut links will hide the cut text until you click on the entry title or one of the cut links. I've marked what the cut text was.
Images
One downside of Dreamwidth (and similar platforms) is that adding images is a bit of a pain. You have a small amount of storage for images on Dreamwidth, but you have to upload them separately from creating an entry, using the menu on the Dreamwidth home page.
Your other options are to use something like Flickr, Google Photos, or another image hosting site. (I'm using my Wordpress site, since most of my entries are crossposts from there anyway)
In either case, then copy the image url and go to your started post. You can either paste in the url and it'll automatically create a link, or insert it as an image. I'll go over how to do it from the Rich Text editor. The button that looks like a postcard is insert image.
Paste in the url and you'll get a rough preview of how it'll lay in the post. You can adjust the size (hitting the "refresh" circle arrow next to the dimensions will put in the original dimensions) and other properties. You can also do it in HTML if that's easier for you.
Editing a Post
Below each post is a set of icons.
From left to right these are "edit post", "edit tags", "add to memories", "email to a friend", and "track this." On journals that you don't have posting privileges for, the first two icons will not be there.
Track this lets you get notifications of comments to that post or when the journal gets new posts.
Edit post will take you to a form just like the main posting one, where you can make whatever changes you need to, or delete the entry entirely.
Edit tags takes you to a form where you can select from the tags you've used before or write in new ones.
Dreamwidth has a pretty good help section, so head there for any more questions.
Some links to more help both basic and advanced:
Dreamwidth 101
how to dreamwidth: a primer
A Tumblr User’s Guide to Dreamwidth
A note about DW's hierarchical tags
A guide to Dreamwidth moods and customization
If you're just doing basic posts or just replying to things, a lot of this may be irrelevant to you.
Overview
After you've made your dreamwidth account, everything you need is available from the front page. The most important stuff (in my opinion) is in the upper right hand corner.
1. Clicking your username will take you to your journal.
2. The reading page is where you can read everything you're subscribed to, both personal journals and communities, all in nice chronological order, in the same style as your journal.
3. Your inbox will have your private messages (pm's) and notifications of comments to your posts and comments.
4. Clicking on your icon will take you to all of your icons. (If you click on someone else's icon, you can see all of theirs)
Let's look at a couple of journals.
Here's my personal journal.
1. The location of the sidebar depends on the theme of the journal. Clicking on the profile link will bring up the user's or community's profile, which has their about, bio, and connections.
The link below goes to my Wordpress blog. It was added through my profile. The icons below let me do stuff and have hovertext. From left to right, they're "subscribe", "post" (only available on journals you have posting privileges), "send a private message", and "email a friend". if you're on somebody else's journal there will be an additional icon in front to modify their access to your entries.
2. You can have sticky entries that stay at the top of the journal. You can find out how to do that in the Dreamwidth Help.
You can also see the page navigation link above there. The number of entries on a page can be set in journal style.
3. This is the most current post.
4. Memories are a way to save posts, whether yours, off a community, or from another personal journal. (If their filters change, you can lose access.)
Here's the
justcreate community. You can see that this theme has the sidebar on the left and some of the other menus rearranged.The action icons are "leave" (or join if you haven't), "modify subscription", "post", "get notifications of updates", and "email a friend". I find using that post button is the safest way to post to a community. You can post in a couple of ways, but you have to be careful to select the correct journal.
Posting
You can post either by clicking on post in the upper right hand corner, or by using the quick update form in the middle of the page. Let's look at the quick update first. It gives you fewer options. You can use some html and site-specific tags in the entry, but not in the subject, but the key stuff is below.
Post to: you can post to your journal and any community you're subscribed to. It defaults to your journal.
Security: you can restrict access if you want only friends (access list) or yourself to see it. If you've set up specific filters, they'll be in there too.
Icon: pick whatever icon fits your mood!
Tags: tags are used for organizing and finding stuff, just like on most blogs.
The post page has more options, so let's go over that.
1. You can change what date you want it to show. This DOESN'T change when it posts. You can't schedule posts. It'll just change when it shows up in your journal - if you change the date to the 2010, it'll show with your 2010 posts; if you change the date to 2030, it'll always be first until 2030 comes.
2. You can post in rich text (what you see is what you get) or control the HTML. If you keep "disable auto-formatting" unchecked, it'll automatically add linebreaks when you hit enter without you having to add the html tag.
Once you written your entry, you'll scroll to the bottom where you see this:
Most of these are optional, but let's go over them real quick. Most of them are social stuff.
Tags: these are your tags (duh)
Mood: you can select your mood if you want and there are little icons for each. There are ways to have custom icons. Nice if you're ranting or whatever.
Location: You can write in your location if you want
Music: What are you listening to right now?
The other column is screening.
Comments: Can people comment or no?
Comment screening: Do you want to have to approve comments?
Age restriction: are you talking about adult stuff and don't want kids to be able to see? And you can add a reason below ("taxes", "age required medical bs")
Crosspost: with a free account you can crosspost to one livejournal clone, if you're on those. I used to crosspost to livejournal, but I don't bother anymore.
And just like with quick update, you can restrict who sees it to your friends or a specific access list.
Cut Tags
It's polite to add a cut tag for long entries or those that have content people may not want to see. You can have multiple cuts, which is useful if it's a long post that you want people to be able to jump to specific parts of. Let's look at that in the rich text editor and then the html editor. I've circled the cut button. Highlight the text you want behind a cut tag, then hit that button.
You can customize what the cut link text says. Let's call this one George.
It's now in a cut tag and the link preview entry will just say George. Let's add one more and then see how it looks in HTML. You can see that the cut button sometimes removes any text formatting, which is one reason you might want to add the cut tags using HTML.
I've added that text formatting back in, so let's see how it looks when posted. The cut links will hide the cut text until you click on the entry title or one of the cut links. I've marked what the cut text was.
Images
One downside of Dreamwidth (and similar platforms) is that adding images is a bit of a pain. You have a small amount of storage for images on Dreamwidth, but you have to upload them separately from creating an entry, using the menu on the Dreamwidth home page.
Your other options are to use something like Flickr, Google Photos, or another image hosting site. (I'm using my Wordpress site, since most of my entries are crossposts from there anyway)
In either case, then copy the image url and go to your started post. You can either paste in the url and it'll automatically create a link, or insert it as an image. I'll go over how to do it from the Rich Text editor. The button that looks like a postcard is insert image.
Paste in the url and you'll get a rough preview of how it'll lay in the post. You can adjust the size (hitting the "refresh" circle arrow next to the dimensions will put in the original dimensions) and other properties. You can also do it in HTML if that's easier for you.
Editing a Post
Below each post is a set of icons.
From left to right these are "edit post", "edit tags", "add to memories", "email to a friend", and "track this." On journals that you don't have posting privileges for, the first two icons will not be there.
Track this lets you get notifications of comments to that post or when the journal gets new posts.
Edit post will take you to a form just like the main posting one, where you can make whatever changes you need to, or delete the entry entirely.
Edit tags takes you to a form where you can select from the tags you've used before or write in new ones.
Dreamwidth has a pretty good help section, so head there for any more questions.
Some links to more help both basic and advanced:
Dreamwidth 101
how to dreamwidth: a primer
A Tumblr User’s Guide to Dreamwidth
A note about DW's hierarchical tags
A guide to Dreamwidth moods and customization
no subject
Date: 2019-07-14 04:38 am (UTC)I'm not complaining! I just think it's funny.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-14 04:44 am (UTC)Tumblr is a hell of a thing and extremely overwhelming and a major time vacuum.
I had had someone say they couldn't figure out DW, which is why I did this. And for people coming from tumblr (which a lot of these are aimed towards) or other social platforms, the blogginess of DW is weird.