Tips for new users coming from other platforms

[vriddy]

I was recently asking about Dreamwidth tips for new users on my journal, and this community was suggested to me in the replies! Here to my first post in a DW community. I am wondering, what little tips and tricks do you have that make for a more comfortable experience? The kind of tips that wouldn't be obvious for someone coming from another of the modern platforms.

For example, I only recently discovered the "Track this" option to keep an eye on post with thriving/interesting discussions in the comments without necessarily getting emails for it. Love how this lets me participate in conversations for longer, or get a notice if it was e.g. a request for recs and someone replies later.

Thank you!

Comments

[misbegotten]

You can link to another user or community by putting an @ in front of their username. @ + vriddy = vriddy.

Cuts (hiding text in your post) are really useful if you have a long post or want to hide a spoiler in your text. You can find out more about creating a cut here. Note that if you click on the little triangle next to a cut, you can view the cut text without it loading a new page, which it does if you click on the cut itself.

Subscribing to your own journal means you see your posts on your circle feed and are able to spot formatting or HTML errors right away! I've found that very handy. It also helps me keep track of what entries by other people on my feed are new since I last posted.

[altamira16]

Thanks for linking to that thing about cuts. I was always using the legacy cuts.

I did not know about either the tracking feature or that @ can be used here.

If anyone is doing a friendzy, go find some people who look interesting.

holiday_wishes is very active right now.

[misbegotten]

holiday_wishes is a great one this time of year! As is fandomtrees.

[vriddy]

Thank you both for the community tips! I actually subscribed to fandomtrees to observe how it works this year and am finding it very overwhelming to follow, I might have another question post at some point on how do people manage their reading lists with communities and the like 😂 Especially exchanges when it's the posting period and there are suddenly so so so many posts about fandoms one doesn't necessarily follow...

[azurelunatic]

You can make custom filters for your reading page, and there are built-in filters for just personal journals, just communities, and just feeds: https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=76

So you could make a filter that contains the accounts and communities that you definitely want to read so you don't miss anything, and another that contains all the other ones so you can catch up on them when you have time.

There are a few communities that I have filtered out of my default view, I think.

[sally_maria]

I track busy communities, rather than including them on my reading page - that way I get emails for all the entries, and only look at the ones I'm likely to be interested in.

[vriddy]

I'm not sure if I want a couple dozen emails related to fandoms I don't know about, but getting DW inbox notifications without the email bit could work out nicely! Thank you for the tip!

[vriddy]

Oh, thanks!! I've subscribed to my own journal too now, that's always a good tip (I do the same with AO3 to see the emails 😂).

I actually found a neat trick with the user tag recently, you can add a site information for fancy formatting: astolat (that's user name=astolat site=ao3 between the angle brackets).

[misbegotten]

The @ + username works with AO3 too! @ + username.ao3 so @ + misbegotten.ao3 = misbegotten

[vriddy]

OOoh love it, even easier!! Thanks!

[shipperslist]

Ohhhh wow! I didn’t know that!

[misbegotten]

Here's the complete list of sites that can be linked to in that way. Twitter, Tumblr, and many others are included.

[firecat]

When I post something with complex formatting I always post it privately first and then edit the audience to public or friends.

[raine]

One of the ways I've found new communities and people to follow has been through the "Network" tab.
Also: subscribing to a community is not the same function as joining it. DW allows you to separate those functions - for example, I might want to check out a community before I join it so subscribing is step 1 and I might never go to step 2 (join), and that's totally OK.

[vriddy]

That is definitely not a page I would have found on my own so thank you for that 😂

Even looking at the FAQ I don't fully understand what is the difference with the reading page. Is it like, friends of friends and what communities they follow as well?

[raine]

The reading page is the list of friends and communities you follow (are subscribed to or have joined). The network page is the list of your friends' friends and the communities they follow or have joined. It's a nifty way to see other communities and friends. The other way is to look at a person or community's profile page and see what they have subscribed to and/or joined. The caveat with using a profile page as a basis for what you might join or subscribe to is that some people (myself included) wind up with a lot of accounts listed on their profile page - some of which aren't even active anymore - and it can get messy. Using the Network tab gets you a quicker, more up-to-date snapshot of what your friends of friends are into. Have fun exploring!

[vriddy]

Haha, I was using the browsing people's profiles technique until now. Thanks for the explanation! It looks like the Network page is only available for Paid users which new joiners might not have just yet, but I'll certainly poke around myself :)

[raine]

Ah, yeah, sorry, forgot that free users don’t have all the access. I have a Seed account, so it’s easy for me to forget what features aren’t available to free vs. paid users.

[azurelunatic]

https://www.dreamwidth.org/feeds/ is good for subscribing to off-Dreamwidth stuff (if it has a feed, sometimes they don't).

[azurelunatic]

I prefer the new create entries page over the old, even though it doesn't have a rich text editor yet; the way to use the new one is to turn it on in the beta testing page: https://www.dreamwidth.org/beta

[vriddy]

Oooh I tried it for my latest entry and will give it a shot for the next while! I don't use my phone to post personally but I know that was a sticky point with a couple of people I introduced to DW, so if that can help make that experience that would be really cool. Thank you for the tips!

[yourlibrarian]

One thing that occurred to me is that people may not know about ways to view content on DW, which is to say that they can make it all either look like their own layout (helpful when people decide to create poor contrast layouts and tiny type in their posts) or in a simple black on white view.

Just go to https://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=display

then pick one in the dropdown:
"Entry Pages: Shown to You When viewing entry pages (including yours), use this style:"

As it happens, this year I got a small TV to use as a monitor and I had to switch as many of my usual sites to dark mode as possible. That includes DW which has one at the bottom of that page.

[feast_of_regrets]

Here is a rundown of free vs paid accounts, if you're curious what the differences are. The Network and increased number of icons are the big things, if you're into icons, although someday I plan to need those extra tags too.

Speaking of which, nested tagging is a thing, making it possible to organize your tagging system into neat components on your tag list if you're into that. (I am.) For instance, if I tag fandom: mcu: iron man on my post, "iron man" will show as the tag link under a heading called MCU, which in turn is under a heading called fandom. That way I can keep all my fandom tags corralled together on my tag list, and also all my MCU tags corralled within fandom if I so desire, but "fandom" and "mcu" won't become linked tags unless you also post an entry tagged just "fandom" or just "fandom: mcu" - also if you tag something just "mcu" it will get a new separate tag outside the nested fandom heading. (This is just an example; I don't have anything nested inside my MCU tag at the moment. But I do have "fandom: mcu" so if you want to see it feel free to stop by.) I hope that's not all terribly explained; I saw the thing about nested tags in a Tumblr post years ago now and it made no sense to me, but now that I have the hang of it I really like it.

Also if all you have in a tag are private entries, that tag isn't visible to the public, so that's nice too.

Also also! Tag editing is really easy if you need to rename a tag or merge two different tags that end up being pretty much the same thing. Just click on your tag link and then on "manage tags" at the bottom. AND you can set your journal to show all your tags on the taglist in your default journal view in your journal style settings "customize your theme" (along with some other fun settings). (YES I love my tags and YES I AM tired of Tumblr eating them, why do you ask?)

[vriddy]

I just spent 20 minutes reorganising my tags haha. I may have gone overboard but the Manage Tags screen does make it easy!! I do tend to link others to tag pages and that breaks the URLs though, so I will have to calm down and find an organisation I'm happy with at some point, but meanwhile thanks very much for these tips!

[feast_of_regrets]

D'oh! Sorry (but not sorry sorry!) about the time sink. I'm glad you found it useful though. Linking to tag pages is something I hadn't considered and I may find useful, so thanks for that. Good to know the links change.