i think i hit everything?

Hi new DWers/returning DWers!

If you are new and baffled, or been away so long it's like you're new and also baffled, you're probably wondering what the hell you're looking at and what it does. I am a native LJ/DW and will try not to confuse the fuck out of you but it's also been a while, so anyone want to correct me or clarify something I made sound incredibly byzantine, feel free.

Let's talk about your posts:

Same

Your posts are just that--you're posting words to your journal. Just like in Tumblr; it shows up on your journal home page, your reading list, and on the reading lists of those who are following you.

You can tag it with personal tags, and no, shitpost tagging is not a thing though you can if you want? But unlike Tumblr, you can use the tagging system of your DW to actually organize your own journal and find shit, like that post you did on that thing like two years ago and had cats?????

Different

You have options.

At the bottom of your post is a lot of stuff; tags, mood, location, whatever. Then there's "Show this entry to" and here you can choose who sees what you write.

Options:
- Everyone - this is public. Anyone can see this post anywhere.
- Access List - everyone you have granted Access to your posts can read this. We used to call this 'friendslocked' in LJ. The next section will explain this.
- Private - just you.
- Custom - this is where it gets fun. You can create subgroups of those you granted access for posts only they can see. See next section.

Posting Summary

Posting to your journal with "Show this entry to Everyone" is public. Anyone can see this.
Posting to your journal with "Show this entry to Private" is private to YOU. Only YOU can see it.
Posting to your journal with "Show this entry to Access List" is restricted to PEOPLE YOU GIVE ACCESS TO. Only people on your ACCESS LIST can see it.
Posting to your journal with "Show this entry to Custom Filter" is restricted to people both in your ACCESS LIST and also in a custom group you can create.

Let's talk about your circle, friends, and follows.

Same

Your Circle is who you follow aka want to read. When you add someone to your Circle, you are saying "I like this person's thoughts and want to read them." So like a Tumblr follow. They appear on your reading list (tumblr: dashboard). We're good? Awesome.

Different (ish)

Your Circle is your reading list; this is how you control who you read.

Access List is how you control who can read your posts.

Granting Access: granting access means you are explicitly letting someone have access to your locked posts. At the bottom of your Post page, "Show this entry to: Access List". Anything you want to limit access to, this is how it's done.

You can also create custom groups out of your Access List, giving certain people access to access-locked posts but not others.

Summary

Add to Circle - Who I want to read
Add to Access List - Who I want to read MY access-locked posts.
Add to Access List in a Custom Group - Subgroup of my Access List who can read my Subgroup-locked posts.

Let's talk about images and art

DW does have native image hosting. kore talks about it here in comments.

Also of Interest

Network - PAID FEATURE - You'll see something called "Network" - that page contains all the public posts of the friends of your friends aka, the people who belong to the Circles of those in your Circle.

...seriously, just call it friends of friends.

Search - PAID FEATURE - okay, I get it's not perfect but IT ACTUALLY WORKS AND YOU CAN FIND SHIT. Search here.

Inbox - no, this is actually useful. For [insert reason], you want to see all the comments you've gotten on any post? You want to see who added you to their Circle? You want to check your IM's Your inbox: you can see it all or use those links to break it down a little.


Conclusion

You'll notice one word I use a lot up there: control. That's the biggest difference between tumblr/twitter and DW/LJ.

DW/LJ give control of content to the creator; you choose exactly who sees what you post. You can edit it, delete it, whatever you want; your content never leaves your control and cannot be edited/changed by someone else. Someone could copypaste the entire post to their own journal, change it, and post it, but your original is still under your control.

DW/LJ give control of comments to the owner of the journal. You can disable comments on your posts, screen them, delete them.

Me

Okay, it's possible I wrote this for myself to make sure I remember everything. Did I miss anything important?

Note: this is being updated and clarified in progress.

More Reading:

This will be for links to comments or posts on DWness. Some of this stuff I didn't even know or forgot so feel free to link me.

kore How to filter by tags for people on your feed. Kore's been all over my comments with some fantastic advice and info, btw.

independence1776 has a fantastic master post of links here. So. Many. Beautiful. Links.

Comments

[jamethiel]

Thanks for posting this! I shall link it! (Do you want to put something in about posting/hosting images?)

[seperis]

I dont know enough about it, but there was a post on images. I'll find it.

[aerialiste]

The main thing I'm hearing from tumblr users is...the gifsets. We're addicted. And now we have to hand-code 'em, at least until someone hacks out a macro or something? I have...no clue how to do this. :/

[jamethiel]

Oooh, aeon flux icon! Nice!

[aerialiste]

Thank you! It's been me for so long I tend to forget some people might find it, uh, creepy?

[jamethiel]

Man, those 90s MTV cartoons were the BOMB. The Maxx is still up there with Daria and Ghost In The Shell for favourite works of animation ever.

I love the creepy

[jesse_the_k]

...and I think mine might even be creepier.

Re: I love the creepy

[aerialiste]

...wow, you might be right! CREEPY EYE-CONS FTW

[seperis]

Didn't there used to be a gifmaker site?

[aerialiste]

It's not the making of the gifs, it's that tumblr put them in nice grids of eight or six or whatever. That would have to be done via CSS or (gasp) a TABLE (j/k, it's 2018 not 1998)...

[seperis]

*giggles*

[seperis]

You know, it wouldn't be hard to write a simple imbeddable code for everyone to use for that, now that I think about it. If it could be turned into a function, the user would just need to say how many grid spaces were needed and it should do it automatically.

Hmm.

[aerialiste]

I think it wouldn't be hard for YOU, Rodney McKay, but for me it would take probably a month or two. That's the biggest obstacle, though; that and losing the ability to reblog (or at least some kind of permanent in-app bookmarking-type function). (Sorry if I sound off; I'm incredibly sad today.)

Bookmarking

[doro]

Maybe Memories?

https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=24&q=memories

(Keywords is the way I 'organize' memories for better retrieval)

[kore]

One of the things that made Tumblr (and Twitter) nearly unusable for me were all the gifs -- I have every website I can and lots of extensions set up to freeze them, because they are migraine triggers for me. Dreamwidth is pretty concerned about accessibility so people might ask you to put long grids of gifs behind a cut (or at least, I would).

[momijizukamori]

I wrote a bunch of the current image hosting code, and I'd been contemplating throwing together a 'collage builder' of sorts in Javascript a la the tumblr photopost layout UI for a while now, and maybe now I will actually get around to doing?

[seperis]

...so this is what it's like when a genie grants wishes.

That actually would be super-cool. I probably can't help or anything but I'd love to see your code for this. (I really like javascript.)

[momijizukamori]

Heh, don't thank me until something's actually done, I have a lot of things I said I'd do years ago for DW that ended up in half-finished limbo. This one is smaller than some of those though, at least!

[aerialiste]

I think that would be brilliant, and possibly the way to lure users away from the dark side, as it were!

[momijizukamori]

Hopefully! I actually have an extremely basic prototype here (only works with the images already uploaded, leaving an open upload field on my tiny server is an invitation to disaster) - I still need to do some accessibilty features and then try hooking up to the uploader, but it's a start.

[kore]

If you want to upload images to Dreamwidth, go here: https://www.dreamwidth.org/file/new

There's a drag-n-drop interface even I find easy to use. You can also choose whether your images are viewable to all, to your access list, or just you. You do NOT have to have a paid account to upload images, BUT the image limit is 500 MB.

One workaround for hosting photos might be for people to upload images to Google Photos and then embed the photos. You can do it with this link https://ctrlq.org/google/photos/ (someone on my flist thought of this, no idea who now). Not sure how that plays out in terms of Google and privacy, but it's better than people asking DW to increase photo storage immediately.