Dump LJ in favour of Dreamwidth.

[thorfinn]

Okay. I'm officially dumping LiveJournal - my paid account there will not be renewed, and my Dreamwidth account is now a paid account.

Crossposting to LJ will still occur, and you can comment from your LJ account in my DW account using OpenID.

The prompt for this is that LJ has quietly broken the comment exporter, which I was using to back up comments. If I can't retain an offsite backup off my journal, I'm not interested in paying for the service.

There's a number of indicators that have demonstrated to me that the quality of the software engineering around the LJ codebase has deteriorated quietly for some time, this is simply the last straw on the camel's back.

Dreamwidth, on the other hand, has a great set of principles and a functioning, diverse, high quality, developer community.

If you're over on LJ, here's: A Guide To Dreamwidth for LiveJournal users.

Also, here's a list of Dreamwidth compatible clients.

I have a few invite codes for free accounts, so if you want one, drop me a comment over there. (ETA: All gone for the moment.)

(ETA2: You can just pay for one month if you can't find yourselve an invite code and want to start cheaply - see the Dreamwidth FAQ: What are paid accounts?)

Comments

[punk-rock-nerd.livejournal.com]

Simon would like a code as everyone seems to be moving over here now, so I'd like to make the jump.

But I get what you mean about the LJ service deteriorating further and further.

[kraig.livejournal.com]

hey, this works a lot better when you RTFOpenIDM.

I just sent you an email, but this works too. Like Simon says, lots of smart people are making the jump, and I'd like to think I'm smart. Sometimes.

I know what both of you mean about LJ going downhill too. It makes me sad, was my second crack at online journalling and so far, the longest-lasting.

Well, isn't this interesting.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

For the record, my LJchat came back.

But it seems that all the cool kids are doing the Dreamwidth thing these days...

[vatine]

How... wonderful. Seems as if ljdump ends up in a huge backtrace.

[thorfinn]

Yep. They've broken something with the result from the export comments URL - I haven't bothered to check what. It may simply be non-responsive and ljdump is assuming it's got XML, when it hasn't.

It's just all too indicative of poor regression testing and/or poor change control.

[thorfinn]

http://dw-maintenance.dreamwidth.org/12798.html

Confirmed - it's a problem on the LJ end. :-)

[hasimir.livejournal.com]

I'd like one if there are any left - I'd be interested to see whether having an account will make this site less irritating than it's been for the last ten minutes and even though my LJ backups still provide all the comments.

[thorfinn]

Dropped you a code to your @livejournal address. Let me know if it didn't make it.

[hasimir]

Thanks! :)

[blithespirit]

I have spare Dreamwidth codes if any of your readers want one. :)

[pir]

I also have one spare invite code...

[tyggerjai]

So here's a question. What's the easiest way to read my LJ friends list via my Dreamwidth Reading page? Can I "bulk import" them as rss feeds?

[tyggerjai]

Though I guess I could make a single rss feed of my friends page, but I wonder how authentication and locking would work with that? Only one way to find out, I suppose....

[thorfinn]

It's on their feature todo list. Unfortunately it isn't a trivial exercise and requires cooperation from LJ to make it work properly. For now I'm still reading LJ using an authenticated RSS feed from LJ.

[tyggerjai]

How did you set that up? If I understand LJ correctly, I have to subscribe to each of my friends individually....

[vatine]

As I understand it, you authenticate to LJ using your LJ credentials, then you can suck down the moral equivalent of your Friends page by RSS.

[thorfinn]

http://community.livejournal.com/howto/40882.html

paid/permanent users only, so I guess that'll fall off my ability list when my LJ account expires.

Hopefully by then DW might have done something about similar functionality. I'm going to go poking around dw_suggestions now...

Ahah:

http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/tag/site:+rss

And specifically:

http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/9210.html

:-)

[sweh]

Crossposting to LJ will still occur, and you can comment from your LJ account in my DW account using OpenID.

No I can't, because work blocks dw but allows lj.

[thorfinn]

Well, you can, you just can't do it at work.

[inspiral_rose]

Just for the record, although I'm also my LJ id here as backup and I cross-post from here, my DW account is this one.

Currently not cross-pollinating (IYKWIM) but you know who this is! -- R

PS: I also have invite codes.

[jeshyr]

BTW, your visited link text is the same colour as your background it appears.

Welcome to The Good Place ;)

r

[thorfinn]

:-)

Hrm. Shouldn't have been... just poked the style colours again.

[thorfinn]

BTW, I that was a style bug, I reverted to default style, and it got fixed a couple of weeks ago, so I reverted it back. :-)