Getting Started with Dreamwidth

An Assortment of Tutorials

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:38:52 GMT

Posted by: prettyarbitrary

Tagging posts

On DW, post tagging works differently than more modern platforms. Here, your tag archive is easily accessible to you and others, and manageable. Check out my list. (I made those nested ones by using tags fandom: wod and fandom: temeraire--the system understands that's actually two nested tags.)

You can even display them as a widget in your blog's sidebar, like I did on mine: prettyarbitrary.

The post creation module also makes it very easy to review and select the tags you want to apply to any given post. So if you have categories you want to keep organized, such as 'my art' or 'my fic' or 'book recs,' apply them consistently and you can end up with a premade library. Which, yes, you can link to. Here's my 'dreamwidth' tag.

How to @ a user or community

Shows like e.g. pillowfolks. The user or community you link to this way will not get a notification they've been mentioned. But it does make their name linkable.

How to do that text box thing I just did

How to make linkable text

Most platforms make this easy to do these days, but hey, just in case you want to do it by hand and you don't know how:

And it shows like this: Here I'm linking to The text I want to be visible.

How to add a read-more cut

And here's how it comes out.

( Your cut will look like this )

( In fact, you can have multiple cuts in a single post, if desired! )

Note that this does automatically start the cut-text on a new line. If you want to hide or black out a spoiler or potentially triggering text in the middle of a paragraph, it doesn't work well for that purpose.

How to embed an image in your post

How to embed a clickable image in your post

Crossposted to newcomers pillowfolks

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I feel like there was a URL hack for opening tags

Fri, 13 May 2016 11:54:42 GMT

Posted by: triadruid

I can't remember if it was a DW innovation or something LJ had as well, but isn't there something that will auto-open all cut tags loaded below?

I'm thinking along the lines of the ?show=C hack...

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Tag autocomplete

Mon, 18 Nov 2013 15:18:34 GMT

Posted by: melle_chantilly

Hello! Is there a way to remove a tag from the autocomplete? I'm typing on the DW website on Chrome and the autocomplete brings up my old tags when I am typing tags in my entries.

And so of my old tags are unfortunately triggering.

I could code my tags so that they don't pop up, have all the triggering ones start with an *, like a friend helpfully suggested. But I'd like to know if it is possible to remove some of them from the autocomplete, or alternatively to turn the autocomplete off?

Thanks!

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Tag search question

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:55:38 GMT

Posted by: yourlibrarian

I thought I remembered reading some time back that there was a way of performing a combined tag search in journals -- in other words doing a Tag A AND Tag B search. However, I couldn't see anyplace where this would be done. Is this possible?

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Editing tags

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:51:00 GMT

Posted by: surreal_44

When I go into a previously posted entry and attempt to edit the tags by clicking on the little box with my list, it erases all my other tags and replaces it with just the one. If I try to put two tags to an entry, the second one erases the first one, even if I put a comma after them.

Suggestions?

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Importing only entries with certain tags?

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 00:18:09 GMT

Posted by: travels_in_time

Hi! One of many newbies here. I've imported one journal, and I see that it's possible to merge journals by importing another one into the first one.

My question is, is it possible to select only certain entries from the second journal for import? Say, ones which have a specific tag? I know that's asking for a lot, but it would be really convenient.

Thanks!

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Tag Subscription

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 04:26:36 GMT

Posted by: delphinapterus

I thought I read somewhere that it was possible for paid accounts to put in a subscription filter for tags but I can't find it anymore. Am I imagining this? If not, how do I do it?

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Tags question

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:16:30 GMT

Posted by: erinptah

Okay, so DW has larger maximums than LJ for just about everything - longer comment lengths, longer entry lengths, longer tag lengths, longer username lengths, etcetera, etcetera.

Any chance we'll get a larger maximum number of tags? Because I have one account for which 1000 isn't going to cut it.

(Is this the right place to ask? I thought there was a "request features" comm, but now I can't find it.)

Thanks!

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tags list

Tue, 19 May 2009 16:00:45 GMT

Posted by: draconic_voices

Possibly a really stupid question, but I can't figure out how to solve it.

I know there's been a quite a bit of layout overhauling going on, and one of the recent changes seems to have been to add a count for the number of times a tag has been used to the tags list in the sidebar. I find that information interesting on the tags page, but I'd like to hide it in the sidebar as it makes it seem really cluttered.

Is there a way to hide the tag use count in the sidebar?

I'm using "negatives" and have the tag list currently set to "multilevel" as the count is less intrusive than when it's set to "list".

Thanks for any suggestions

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Multilevel tags?

Tue, 19 May 2009 15:43:17 GMT

Posted by: lanterne_rouee

How does one use the multilevel tags feature? I thought it was as simple as writing the tags like so:

music
music: the beatles
music: green day

etc., and then selecting the multilevel option on the Customize Journal Style page. Apparently, it isn't though.

So, how does it work? I don't see anything about it in the FAQ yet.

Thank you! :)

edit: They're showing up multilevel on the tags page, but not in the sidebar. Hmmm...

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default security levels on tags?

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:51:26 GMT

Posted by: xtricks

I don't know if this is possible ... though it would be cool.

Is it possible to set a default security level on a tag? For example: tag 'adult' and I'd like every post with this tag to be at the 'nsfw' security level. Is there some way so that when I tag an entry with 'adult' the security level is automatically set at 'nsfw'?

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