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FOR BEGINNERS
With thanks to isabeau for her knowledgeable input.
What's a blog?
“Blog” is a portmanteau of “web log”, often referred to as an “online
diary”. However, friends don’t let friends use it as a diary. Think of it
more as an old-fashioned journal that will be read by others only not
posthumously (we hope). You can certainly post about cleaning your fridge if
you so choose, but do not then wonder why people are unfriending you in
hordes. There are many blog products out there, including Blogger and
Blogspot. A popular product for the younger set is the Xanga. Many people
have now settled into livejournal. There’s new techy goodness coming along
all the time.
I want to play, too. How
do I get one?
To get a livejournal (lj), you go the
www.livejournal.com and sign up.
You can pay for additional features, which I do. You can find what's a paid
feature and what's not in the extensive and well-written FAQs at lj central.
You can, initially, exist without an icon. You will find, though, that over
time you will need dozens of them. This is the main reason for a
paid account. You never need to post, but you need an lj in order to get a
friends list together, which, essentially, functions in a similar manner to
a Yahoo group digest.
Can’t I just go to an lj
the same as I read webpages; bookmark it and visit regularly?
You certainly can. But if you have 157 blogs you like to follow, it becomes
much easier to just have them all roll up into one chronological list.
There's a way to make them come up differently, but let's not worry about
that now.
You just said “blog”
instead of “lj”? Can I friend people who have other blogs than lj?
Yes, you can. There's an account type on LJ called a syndicated account,
which takes information from external sources (RSS feeds) and puts them into
LJ entries that can appear on your friends page. Any user, free or paid, can
add existing syndicated accounts to their friends list; only paid (well, or
permanent) users can create new ones. You just go to a particular page in lj
and cut and paste the URL at the bottom. Not all are available, and they
will come in without comments, but they contain a link back to their host
journal so it’s easy to go back to the originating blog and read the
comments and/or add your own.
Go here, then scroll to the
bottom:
http://www.livejournal.com/syn/
(FYI, this is called an RSS feed, which stands for Real Simple Syndication.)
Here’s a list:
http://www.livejournal.com/syn/list.bml
What do I need to know
about friending and unfriending?
To add an individual to your friends list (or "flist") just go to their user
info and click on the first little icon of a person with a plus sign. They
ask you something about colours; I have never figured out why and now ignore
it. Now the politics of friending and unfriending are something
else altogether; and like the ruby slippers, you have to find that out on
your own.
To see who has friended or
unfriended you (and you them) go here:
Here’s me, just plug in your own name:
http://marnanel.org/joule?user=storm_grant&mode=chart
You can see who has friended/defriended other people as well.
There are also lj communities (comms) that function a lot like Yahoo groups. You can elect to watch them only (read but not post) or join the community. To join the community, just click on the link in the paragraph above the row of icons.
How do I comment?
You click on “post comment” and type what you have to say. If you’re not
logged in, it will post anonymously. I remain logged in all the time. It’s
just easier. People customize their journal so “read comments” and “comment”
get cutesy names like “number of fucks” “fuck me”, or other clevah names.
How do I post?
You can download a WordPad-type mini-program called an lj client or just use
the posting interface. If you use the interface, you may wish to click on
"Rich Text" rather than html. That makes it easier to add bold and italics
and ljcuts, etc. You can set the rich text editor as your default,
http://www.livejournal.com/settings/?ta
You can compose in Word and paste into the comment panel. It has a feature that will clean up all the background stuff Word adds.
What are ljcuts?
Ljcuts are a courtesy to other readers. You hide most of your post behind
teaser lines like: “read the pr0n here” to make for easier reading. People
not interested in porn (like I know any of those) will bypass the bulk of my
post with a single scroll.
What do I post?
Anything you like, fandom or non-fandom related. Again, try not to post
about what was caught between your teeth last night. Please.
You should probably see what other people are posting before you start. Communities have written rules as well as traditions and netiquette.
How do I get people to
friend me?
Friend other people. Be a reasonable adult. Join communities. Be a
reasonable adult. Put your own interests in your user info, then click on
them. Friend people who have the same interests as you. Did I mention be a
reasonable adult?
How do I find what other
people are saying about me?
AFAIK, there are three ways to ego-surf:
Go to Google home page, click on “more” and choose Blog Search, stick in
your name.
Or go here:
http://www.ljfind.com/
or here: www.ljseek.com
I commented in someone’s
journal and now I can’t find it.
You can set comments to arrive in your email box which is good so you don’t
have to go back and check old posts. But say you deleted an lj comment
notice and now want to find the post you commented on, go here:
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/recent_
You need to be logged in and can only see your own comments.
My friends posts arrive
in chronological order. How do I get back to where I left off?
Great question. I wish someone would tell me. I just keep going back 20
entries until I find something that looks familiar and start from there. If
you’ve neglected lj for a while and think you probably missed hundreds of
entries, you can save steps by clicking the “back 20 entries” once and then
replacing the “20” in the URL with larger numbers. When I returned from
VidCon, I started with “skip=500” and jumped by hundreds until I found that
“skip=780” was where I left off. This also works for other people’s ljs if
you think you remember a post from a couple of months ago.
Some people’s posts are
hard to read. How do I make the type bigger, and the colour font and
background I prefer?
By now you’ve set your own lj preferences so that it looks the way you want
it to. So when you want to read someone else’s post, just add “?style=mine”
to their URL. (Note: if they have a cut tag id or other info after the
“html” extension, just get rid of that so that their URL now ends in “….html?style=mine.)
I want to save a lot of
stories but the graphics clog up my directories.
This isn’t an lj specific point, but choose “html file only” and you get it
all in one instead of a file and a folder full of graphics. This works for
any webpage. The converse that I find handy for work is that I can extract a
background from a PowerPoint presentation by saving it “webpage complete”.
Note that these names may change in different browsers.
What are tags?
They’re a way to organize your posts for easier reference.
I found a post I want to
come back to, how do I return to it?
Save to bookmarks, your delicious or lj memories.
What’s delicious?
It’s not associated with lj, but I find it helpful. It’s an interactive way
to save your bookmarks and find others with similar interest. To view mine
as an example, go here:
http://del.icio.us/storm_grant
I’ve tagged these, so if you just want to find the ones that are relevant to
lj, for instance, click on the lj tag. To find more, see who else has saved
them and follow along. You can find who has saved your stories that way, as
well as using the blog-search techniques, above. Just post your own story
link to your lj and then when it says “saved by 9 other people”, you can
follow the links to see who’s saved it. Yes, more ego surfing. ;-)
What’s ljtalk?
It’s another Instant Messenger-type program, but it allows you to find your
friends. You can also create/participate in chatrooms like good old IRC, but
again, with your friends and friends of friends.
Anything else?
When you run out of posts to read from your own friends, you can change the
URL to read friendsfriends and see what your friends’ friends are up to.
Friends pages only show up to 1000 entries, and only entries made in the
last two weeks... you have to go to individual journals to see the older
stuff.
You can voice post as well, but I haven’t used that feature.
There’s lots of other stuff, such as posting to other blog products from the same posting client, but I don't think a newbie needs to know that right away.
If I've missed anything important, please email me at storm.grant@gmail.com to correct / add to this webpage. Anyone wanting to link back here it is welcome to.