How to Move to Dreamwidth and Like It

[promethia_tenk]

Hello all,

When LJ moved their servers to Russia, I wrote a post called How to Move to Dreamwidth and Like It with my accumulated advice and resources on making the switch and a heavy dollop of pep-talk and getting in the right frame of mind. Now with the Terms of Service debacle, it occurred to me that I should share it a little more widely than my circle.

When I wrote the post, I was operating under the assumption that most people would and should move in small stages, so the post is structured to support that. Now, I will admit that my basic advice has shifted to 'abandon ship as soon as possible,' but hopefully people still find it useful : )

As I imagine most of the people who really need this are not (yet) part of this comm, please feel free to share with anyone who you think could benefit.

Comments

[groovesinorbit]

Shared. Thanks for posting this.

[promethia_tenk]

You're very welcome! Thank you for sharing.

[dantesspirit]

I have friends asking right now how to mirror their LJ to here, so this is timely.

[promethia_tenk]

Excellent. I figured more than one person would find it of immediate interest ; )

[veritas_poet]

Thank you for this. I moved her a few years ago for various reasons. I just wish all my LJ friends would make the move as well so I could keep in touch with them. Apparently it's too much work to go to another site to keep up with people. (Even though I was doing it for a long time! Now I can't even get in to LJ with that new TOS thing, which I am not agreeing to.)

[promethia_tenk]

You're welcome!

Apparently it's too much work to go to another site to keep up with people.
I just got asked how to syndicate DW journals as RSS feeds to read on LJ. And, yeah, you can do it, but . . . just make yourself a reading list. You'll make your life much easier. Just bookmark them next to each other and read the one and then the other. Not difficult; did it for years.

Though, amusingly, I suddenly find myself with the inverse problem. Having deleted my LJ leaves me with a single reading list and I don't quite know what to do with myself. Only . . . read . . . one . . . pAgE? But . . . how does that . . . work?!?? O_o

[veritas_poet]

Just bookmark them next to each other and read the one and then the other. Not difficult; did it for years.

I know right? I'm not worth the time it takes to just do a couple extra clicks?


Though, amusingly, I suddenly find myself with the inverse problem. Having deleted my LJ leaves me with a single reading list and I don't quite know what to do with myself. Only . . . read . . . one . . . pAgE? But . . . how does that . . . work?!?? O_o


Oh, now that is interesting! Ha!

[blackmare]

Is it okay to link on Tumblr?

[promethia_tenk]

Sure! Can I have a link to the Tumblr post if you do?

[blackmare]

Of course. I don't know if I will, now that I've read it; it seems, um, more advanced than I or almost anyone I know on Tumblr would be up for, what with RSS feeds and custom CSS and all.

But it may just be that I am home from a very long day and tired and not braining well. :-) There's that, too. I appreciate having the resource, either way, because you brought up some stuff that I hadn't heard about (claiming OpenID comments? Whuh?).

As for not liking the default site skin (I haaaaaaate it), my #1 recommendation about that is picking Celerity instead. Sweet relief.

[promethia_tenk]

Entirely understandable. Yeah, I wanted it to be a pretty deep dive for someone who was serious, but . . . it's a lot.

I do have a post on the beginners set-up basics stuff here (importing, setting up cross-posting, etc.). Though plenty of people have written similar. ETA: also pretty old. Has some outdated information.

(claiming OpenID comments? Whuh?)
I highly recommend. Makes all your imported pages look so much nicer. And if your DW icons have the same names as your LJ ones, it will apply the correct icon to your comment!

As for not liking the default site skin (I haaaaaaate it), my #1 recommendation about that is picking Celerity instead. Sweet relief.
Lol! I found it a bit jarring at first, but now I actually prefer it. I like red generally, though.

[sgamadison]

Thanks for sharing this. I've been using DW as my mirror account for LJ for years, but after the servers moved to Russia, I'd decided not to renew my LJ account. I didn't think I'd get locked out for not accepting the new TOS though!

Because 90% of all my interactions were on LJ instead of DW, DW has always felt a little like a ghost town to me. I'm going to have to find people and comms and get reconnected. :-)

[promethia_tenk]

You're welcome! Yeah, the TOS have been a real kick in the pants . . .

The amount of people migrating from the server move and the new TOS really has been staggering compared to earlier LJ debacles. If you actively seek out people over here and make it a point to interact over here, I don't think you'll have any problems making your DW pretty lively, even if you can't drag your whole flist over with you. Good luck!

[sgamadison]

Thanks, I appreciate it!

Debugging the process?

[jeneralist]

When I try to import my LJ account, I get the error message
"Your import has failed to import.
XMLRPC failure: Terms of Service agreement required"

Do you know if this means that I need to agree to the new LJ Terms of Service, or is there a DW ToS that somehow I'm missing?

Re: Debugging the process?

[promethia_tenk]

I do believe that is what that means. I have not personally run into it, but everybody says you need to have agreed to the TOS in order to import content.

Sorry!

[upanddisappear]

Thank you so much for this! I am reading ALL THE THINGS I can get my eyes on. And I've made so much progress! I did the open id thing, I started the import for a comm I made a mirror of, and once that's done I will do my personal import.

[promethia_tenk]

You're welcome! I too read ALL THE THINGS back when I migrated years ago. There is a whole lot of helpful information out there.

Good luck with it all!

[upanddisappear]

💗