Basic Dreamwidth for Tumblr users
For people who want to use Dreamwidth, but are totally confused about how it works!
What is Dreamwidth?
Dreamwidth is a social media platform founded in 2009 after Strikethrough
Itās made out of a heavily-modified version of Livejournal code
Itās based around producing your own original content, and seeing original content other people post
The site is owned and run by fans and aims to provide creative people with an Internet home
Getting around your account
Your journal is like your āhomeā. Itās where you keep your stuff. Itās got different parts:
Recent Entries: View your posts in chronological order
(yourusername.dreamwidth.org)
Profile: Your āaboutā page
(yourusername.dreamwidth.org/profile)
Archive: See your posts as a calendar
(yourusername.dreamwidth.org/archive)
Tags: See all the tags youāve used and go to their posts
(yourusername.dreamwidth.org/tag)
Memories: Like the āLikesā feature on Tumblr
You also have a āReadingā page (yourusername.dreamwidth.org/read)
This is like your Tumblr dash
Itās where you read entries from your ācircleā, the people and communities youāre subscribed to
You can customize it a lot with filters and control who you see when
You also have a āNetworkā page (yourusername.dreamwidth.org/network)
This is where you see posts from everyone that everyone in your circle subscribes to
Itās a great way to discover new stuff and also learn what awful taste some of your circle members have
Finding new things
Listing an Interest in your profile is like getting listed in the phonebook. This is opt-in, choosing to say, āYes! Iām really into this thing! Consider me a person who blogs about it!
Content Search is the more powerful way to search through the blog of everyone whoās opted into it, so you can look for everyone whoās posting about a certain thing right now. However, youāll have to wade through a lot more junk.
Communities are Dreamwidthās social hubs. Theyāre places where a lot of people can share content theyāre interested in and talk to each other. Unlike Tumblr tags, theyāre managed by specific people and have rules, so people behaving badly can get kicked out.
Latest Things is a direct firehose of EVERYTHING PUBLICLY POSTED TO THE SITE, HOMG
Privacy controls?! Thatās a thing?!
You get to choose who sees your posts! You can make your posts public, private, or ālockedā, which means only people youāve added to your access list can read them
When you add a new person to your circle you can choose to subscribe to them, to make their posts show up on your Reading page, and/or to grant access, which lets them see your locked posts. You can do one, the other, or both!
Likewise, communities can make posts viewable to members only.
You can also create custom access filters, to allow only some of your access list to see a post.
Banning someone means they cannot leave you comments or send you messages. There are more advanced tweaks to make sure they never show up on your reading page if they post to a community you subscribe to, or remove them from the comments on a post.
Comments
The comments to a post are where the real fun happens.
Comments are sent to the email of whoever youāre replying to. Theyāre a real conversation. Youāre not shouting into the voidāyouāre talking back directly to the postās originator and other commenters.
You can edit your comment so long as it hasnāt been replied to, and you can delete your own comments.
The originator of the post, and administrators if itās a community, can delete threads, or āfreezeā them, leaving them intact but preventing anyone from replying to them.
You will add new skills to your resume
Dreamwidth leaves a lot more ābackendā open so you can customize your experience to a huge degree. However, this means learning or using coding languages like HTML and CSS
The comment box on entries does not have a built-in text editor, so you will have to add your own HTML if you want to add <i>italic</i>, <b>bold</b>, or <a href=āhttp://websiteurl.comā>links</a>.
There are lots of cheat sheets and informative guides around, like HTML on Dreamwidth and Dreamwidth-specific markup tags






















