getting_started | Entries tagged with ~answers

After much hair-pulling and help from another LibraryThing member, I retraced my steps to their instructions for making a widget for LJ-style sites, including Dreamwidth. baggyeyes suggested I mention it here.

This widget works at DW because it doesn't use JavaScript or any such, but relies on data fetched from LibraryThing.

You can see an example on my journal in the sidebar.

This style of widget was described in a blog post at LibraryThing.

Current Mood: productive

matgb

Hallelujah. I've been trying to figure this out for years. I have never read a how-to that explained how, or why, you could or would create a custom layer.

I've been hacking the complete source code for Expressive on LJ the whole time, as it was the only thing I could figure out to do. Somehow, none of the how-tos made any sense. So, on the assumption that I'm not the only one that needs it explained with a different logic, and because I might need a reference point when I've forgotten, here's how (and why) it's done:
( Many people reading this already know how to suck eggs, but, y'know, for the rest of us )
That's it, job done. It really is that simple. Once you've got your head around it. The taskflow is unintuitve, there's nothing telling you what to do (or, perhaps more importantly, why), and the pages don't link to each other well.

It's no wonder I could never figure it out. Still, now that I have, I can A) add a few extra bits to my sidebar (like some text linking all the awards &c I've won) and b) maybe tidy this ramble up into something the

dw_docs team can use.

But now now—gotta go get

miss_s_b from work. If you know what you're doing, can you check for errors and/or answer my minor questions. If you don't know what you're doing, or bits make no sense, ask, as if I can't help someone else might, etc. And I'd like to figure it out.

hatman

So you've got a brand new Dreamwidth account. Congratulations! :) What do you do with your old OpenID account?

As has already been mentioned, don't delete it. It can cause problems with any comments you've posted (either using that OpenID or comments brought in by the importer).

But then you've got two accounts. And while there's a plan to someday allow you to claim that account with your primary DW account, there's no telling when that will actually be possible.

The best thing to do (if you don't mind linking your offsite account with your DW - some people would rather have a fresh start) is simply to put your DW name in your OpenID profile. (You'll need to log out of DW and then log back in with your OpenID, of course.) OpenID accounts can't have HTML in the profile, but you can post the URL as an inactive link. You can also list your DW URL as your website (the one active link you are allowed).

It's a simple thing, but it can help avoid some confusion, and make sure that your friends can find you when they come over.

Finally, in case you haven't already found it, there's

dreamchasers, a community set up to help people from LJ and other services find friends (old and new) on Dreamwidth.

azurelunatic

I have seen a lot of questions not just here, but all over, about the cross-posting feature. Since a lot of questions generally means that the answer isn't clear enough or prominent enough, here goes!

The cross-post settings that one sets on the Other Sites page only applies to updates made through the update page, not through any other client (Semagic, LoudTwitter, post by e-mail, through Google Documents, or anything else that is not the update page).

When posting from another client besides the update page, you will have to do one of the following:

Use a cross-posting feature from that client.
Cross-post manually.
Post, then edit the post from the Dreamwidth website (rather than through a client) and save the entry with cross-posting turned on. (This will cross-post it if it was not automatically cross-posted before.)
Do without cross-posting.

As more clients are written to include Dreamwidth, cross-posting between sites is likely to become an option in these clients. However, if your client does not tell you that it is cross-posting, or if you did not set up cross-posting in your client, at this time your client is most likely not doing that.

emceeaich

If you are a pedant like me, you probably write your posts in raw HTML, and check Disable Auto-Formatting in the editor.

Unfortunately, when you crosspost the entry to a LJ-based site, the markup:

<p>paragraph one</p>
<p>paragraph two</p>

shows up as:

<p>paragraph one</p><br><p>paragraph two</p>

Because, most likely by default, the auto-formatter is handling the inbound post.

I've opened Bug 904 to see about addressing this on the DW side, however, there is a workaround:

If you are writing markup for your posts, before you save, remove the carriage returns between block-level elements (p, blockquote, div, etc..)

Then the auto-formatter won't try to insert <br> between then.

azurelunatic

Because Dreamwidth welcomes a wide variety of people, not everybody uses the same terminology. This can lead to some confusion, particularly when someone says something as if everybody should know what they're talking about, and yet you have no idea what they mean. There are terms in common use with some people that other people have just never run into before. Use of jargon is rarely intended to be exclusive. Jargon tends to come into use within a particular group, and is used to precisely and concisely describe things that the group encounters on a regular basis. Once a term has come into popular use within a group, people who use that term can forget that not everyone knows it, since they are so used to using it, and a majority of the people around them on a regular basis also know and use it.

Some Dreamwidth-specific terminology is still being developed. Other Dreamwidth terminology has been inherited from the LiveJournal codebase. Terms that are used in the site and directly related to the site will eventually wind up in a FAQ, or some other form of user guide. Some things are defined in the FAQs already.

But not all of the words being cheerfully tossed around by owners, developers, and power users are Dreamwidth-specific. Take "spoons". It is a shorthand for "finite physical/mental/emotional resources to handle daily tasks", and comes from the disability-advocacy community.

To make everybody less confused, there's a wiki page with common jargon and some resources. (Note: the Urban Dictionary, which is linked from the Common Jargon page, is particularly known for having puerile and not-safe-for-work content, so use at your own risk.)

If there's some term you've been wondering about, even if you don't think it's likely to actually relate to Dreamwidth, let us know! You're probably not the only one who's not familiar with it. If there's some term that you've been needing to define to people a whole lot, consider adding it to the wiki!

sarken

tree suggested I post this here, and I live to serve.

If you've imported a layout from LiveJournal and the "unknown view" link is annoying you, I might just have the solution over here. It also shows how to get rid of the duplicate "memories" link that appears on certain styles such as Smooth Sailing and Mixit.

aurora_novarum

I've recently arrived to dreamwidth (er, hi everyone!) and after trying to ~~friend~~ find the people I already know and catch up with the people like me coming on the new wave of invites, I noticed something cool and neat.

If you have your dreamwidth inbox set to notify you about people subscribing or granting access, you can go check them out or immediately subscribe/grant access back directly from your inbox.

Also, if you just pass your cursor over their username at ANYTIME, a box will come up to join communities, subscribe, grant access automatically rather than going to their profile and all these added steps.

Maybe this is something utterly profound and/or everyone knew about already but me, but I thought these features were really cool, so I wanted to share with everyone else.

rosebee

There have been some posts on how to import custom styles over, but that's too complicated/technical for me. Just changing the colors from the black/white/gray is all I wanted to do! I finally stumbled across the method for how to do this, so I thought I'd come here and share:

First go to your LJ (or elsewhere, but these instructions are for LJ): Click on "Journal" then "Customize Journal Style". Click on "Style", then you should see all the various colors (and the official computer-speak letters/numbers that tell the computer exactly what color is what).

Now from your DW home page (a new tab makes it easier), Click on "Organize", then "Customize Style". Click on "Style" on the left-side bar menu.

Now you can take whatever colors you love from your LJ layout and put them into DW!

When you click on Save Changes, the page doesn't go away or anything. This lets you click on save changes (to apply the changes you just made), then open a new tab to view your journal or reading circle to see how it looks.

ETA: This works for the default Negatives style/theme... not sure if/how it works for other styles.

foxfirefey

This isn't something I'm doing for myself yet, but I think others might appreciate the tip, as Facebook is wonderful for keeping in touch with friends but not as good at blogging as LJ or DW. However, Facebook has the option to import an external blog feed and automatically post it as a Note.

You are probably going to want to set up the privacy settings first. They can be found here; click the "Edit Settings" link. This will let you specify who on Facebook you'll want to be able to see your posts--it even lets you set up custom groups for this. This could be useful if you don't want your family to see your DW posts, for instance, but would like to show them to some others.

Then, you can go to the external blog import setup and give it one URL. There, you can add the RSS feed to your journal. Only public entries will be fed to your Facebook! Also note that Dreamwidth's default RSS feed setting uses any cuts you make in your entry.

azurelunatic

echan has a guide on making it easy to add syndicated feeds to your reading list in Firefox.

kazbaby

I finally found the instructions on how to properly set up Semagic for cross posting to multiple journal accounts. I knew I was missing something the other day when I posted on how to set up Semagic to post to DW. Semagic works for Windows; as well as with Mac and Linux (you have to install them using WINE), download information is here.

( Instructions )

When you go to post, click "Journal" > "Post to Multiple Journals". A little box will appear with a list of your journal accounts you've just set up, simply select the ones you want to post to and click "OK". I just did a test a few minutes ago and it works this time!

Courtesy of

morgandawn:

also, if for some reason your tags are not carrying over to DW....

I found a Semagic workaround. very simple
http://semagic.livejournal.com/14582.html

"...tags are enabled for Insanejournal.com and any other site after opening an entry with tags in the history window."

wychwood

Welcome to Dreamwidth and

getting_started! Here's a few handy links to start with:

A FAQ on Dreamwidth-specific mark-up

The journal importer

The account-type page - you can change your account type on this page, while the site is in closed beta, so you can upload all your icons, etc