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therebelcaptainnetwork2018-12-11 12:20 am
elperian) wrote in therebelcaptainnetwork2018-12-11 12:20 am
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A "How To" Guide for New Dreamwidth Users on TRCN
As many of you have just created your first Dreamwidth account, and may never have had a Livejournal account, we thought it would be useful to go through some of the basics. If you are struggling to familiarize yourself with basic Dreamwidth usage, this is a great summary post which covers a lot of the basics, but the Dreamwidth FAQ is also very helpful. We go over some of the highlights here, but be sure to ask any questions in the comments and we'll update the list as needed. If you haven't already, please check out the community guidelines on the profile!
A General List of "How To" Tips
A General List of "How To" Tips
- Communities: They're a thing! On Tumblr, you might have followed several fandom blogs and used a tracked tag (like #therebelcaptainnetwork) to get attention from them and get your work reblogged by them. Here, as long as you're a member of the community, you can usually post directly to the community! Tags are still important - but since Dreamwidth also publishes all your tags in https://theirusername.dreamwidth.org/tag, it is not really the norm to do tag scrawls like on Tumblr. Instead, use standardized tags for users to find your content. If you are confused about how to do this or format this, just watch and wait and you'll see how others do it!
- Posting to the Community: To post to a community you've joined, look for the drop-down menu at the top of the Post an Entry page and toggle to the journal or community you want to post to. The default posting will be to your personal journal, unless you go to a community and click the Post in the top bar. Either way, it's easy to switch which journal you're posting to.
- Community Events: Like on Tumblr, communities will often host exchanges and challenges to generate fandom content. We are listing current community events on our profile.
- Posting Queue: When you post to therebelcaptainnetwork, your post will be queued for a moderator to review. This is just to make sure your tags are in proper order and to make sure, since membership is open, that people are posting content related to Rogue One or RebelCaptain.
- Content Hosting: It is also a norm for you to host your content directly on your own blog but to create a separate post in communities linking back to the content. This protects your content in case one day the community goes *poof*! Many people keep their fandom content hosted on their journals public, or they create separate communities for their fandom content which people can join (without posting permission). There are lots of ways to control how your fandom experience goes.
- Public versus Friends-Locked Journals: Some of you were confused in the Intro Post comments about what the difference between a public and an friends-locked (or f-locked) blog is. At the bottom of any Post page, you'll see a little drop-down menu that says "Show this entry to:" with multiple options. One beauty of Dreamwidth is that all content is not by necessity public to everyone, and you don't have to lock your entire journal to existing mutuals to protect the privacy of any one post. The post will default to your default privacy settings (posts here will always be public).
- Subscribe to Journals for Your Reading Page: Don't forget to Subscribe to journals and communities if you want to see their content on your Reading Page!
- Commenting: Please comment! It supports creators of fan content, but it's also part of the dynamic on Dreamdwidth. As reblogs aren't a thing, comments are the best way to tell other fans how much you like their stuff! You can also choose who can comment on your posts, e.g. friends, registered users, anyone, etc. If necessary, you can also block users if you want to keep commenting open but restrict their access to your blog.
- Icon Usage: Although Dreamwidth is more of a text-based platform, there are still tons of graphics components. One of the most popular types of graphics on both Livejournal and Dreamdwidth were icons! Unlike Tumblr, you get to have 15 icons with a free account, and 100 icons with a paid account, and even more with a premium account. These little 100x100 boxes of joy let you reply with varied fandoms to individual comments, have different fandom icons with different themed posts, and they're also a handy way to see what fandoms you may have in common with another user. You can see anyone's icons by going to https://theirusername.dreamwidth.org/icons. You can find lots of icon journals, often by fandom. Make sure you credit any users whose icons (or other graphics, like journal headers) you use! Also know that when you change an icon description, the icon itself will "change" and posts you used it on before will change to your default icon. Stick to the description you have at the start!
- Usernames: It is not nearly as easy to change your username on Dreamwidth; you have to pay for a username change any time you want to do so. It does create more stability and recognition in fandom over time, but it's definitely different from Tumblr!
- Tags: You can manage your tags (and mass change a tag) from your tags page! Common tags for journals and communities can usually be found in the sidebar.
- Creating Communities: It's very easy to create a community, which does not require a username change! Look for the Create drop-down menu at the top of your dashboard or the Post an Entry page, and look for 'Create Community'! Communities are great ways to organize your fandom content off of your personal journal.
- Formatting Freedom: There is also a ton of HTML formatting you can do within posts. If you're using the Rich Text format, many of these options will be in the top of your entry box, but the HTML format is great for free expression. You can switch between Rich Text and HTML formatting very easily. This also means that sometimes your formatting can be twitchy, so...
- Previewing: You can see what a post formatting looks like by hitting the Preview button on any post entry.
- Memories: There is no reblogging but the little heart-shaped icon on a post that looks like this
lets you save a post to your memories, which can be public or private (and include tags of their own). It's a little bit like a cross between reblogging and likes - No Drafts or Queue: Alas, there is no true 'drafts' or 'queue' like on Tumblr, but if you close out of an entry without saving it, Dreamwidth will ask you if you want to use the 'draft' you had when you start another post. It's not foolproof, but don't panic right away if your computer crashes on a post.
- Under the Cut: Lastly, please use cuts! It's the icon in the Rich Text that looks like this
, or you can use the HTML code of <cut text="what you want the cut jump to say">Your Content</cut>. It saves scrolling on long posts on people's reading pages.
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