Dreamwidth for Tumblr Users Tutorial Compilation

[soc_puppet]

Honestly, even aside from me writing my own, there are a lot of tutorials out there for Tumblr users who might be interested in getting started on Dreamwidth. I'm thinking it wouldn't hurt to get all of the ones we know about rounded up in one place.

Here's the ones I know about:

Dreamwidth's official Frequently Asked Questions list - Not exactly in the spirit of the rest of these, but if you can't find something somewhere else, it's worth checking here! Or vice-versa.

Basic Dreamwidth for Tumblr Users by star-anise; has some very good intro stuff and basic comparisons.

A Tumblr User's Guide to Dreamwidth by aniamra; has some useful Dreamwidth etiquette. (Full disclosure, it also links an older post about finding things to do and making new friends that I wrote.)

DW for Tumblrites Masterpost by potofsoup; this one has a lot of really fantastic information. Highly recommended.

Click here for the table of contents

Part 1: How do I follow a blog?
Part 1.5: How do I find people to follow?
Part 2: Posting and HTML basics
Part 2.5: Images
Part 2.8: Backdating and Drafting
Part 2.9: Scheduling Posts
Part 3: Dash/Reading Page curation (Subscription Filters)
Part 3.5: Access vs. Join vs. Subscribe, and targeted friends-only posts (Access Filters)
Part 4: Likes and Reblogs
Part 4.5: Stickies, Sidebar, Anon Askbox
Part 5: I miss yelling in the tags! (subtext, icons, and moods)
Part 5.5: Actual tags tho
Part 6: Themes and mobile
Part 7: Sideblogs and tag filters
Part 8: Paid features

The official Dreamwidth News post from December 3rd, 2018, right around when Tumblr announced it was banning a certain type of content. While not everything is up to date, there should still be a lot of information in the comments here. I also recommend reading the news post itself, or any dw_news posts, as it'll give you an idea of what the staff here is like. Ditto on the comments reflecting the Dreamwidth community at large. Yeah, there's some trolls and jerks out there, but by and large, Dreamwidth is a pretty welcoming place, if I do say so myself.

A quick introduction to Dreamwidth's Rich Text Editor by teres

How to Post Fiction or Other Writing on Dreamwidth by ysabetwordsmith

Guides by soc_puppet (me): I'm sharing the newcomers links, because that's what I have most easily at hand, but if you check, you can probably find them mirrored at the_great_tumblr_purge on the same date.

What to post about on Dreamwidth
Dreamwidth alternatives to talking in the tags
A quick guide to mood themes
The (beta) Create Entries page
Personal Communities: Dreamwidth's "side blogs"
What do I do instead of reblogging?
Audience on Dreamwidth vs Audience on Tumblr
Cut Tag Basics (first post for April 26th; you may have to scroll down)


That's all I can think of/am aware of at the moment! If you know of any others, please link them in the comments.

Edit: More tutorials and guides!

How to Dreamwidth: A Primer and How to Dreamwidth: Commenting Options by larissa (Rebloggable Tumblr links, has some good, if sometimes outdated, general info)

PSA by conuly (Sooooo many links; so many)

What do I do instead of reblogging?

[soc_puppet]

Reblogging is a core feature of Tumblr that doesn't really translate well to Dreamwidth. There are a couple of different ways to replicate it, but which one you pick depends on what your goal was when reblogging a particular post.

"I want to be able to refer back to this post at a later date."
The feature you want for this is likely Memories. Memories are a site-specific bookmarking system that predate tagging. In those times, a lot of LJ users would use it to organize their own posts, such as keeping track of their fics. (Tags were introduced a relatively short time before Dreamwidth split off from LiveJournal.) Memories can be public, access-locked, or private. Any Memories you make on Dreamwidth will be of Dreamwidth posts only.

Unlike with Tumblr's reblog feature, if you add someone else's post to your Memories and the original poster deletes it or locks it, you will no longer have access to it, but it does give you a way to keep track of posts made by other people. If you want to be sure that you'll have access to a post for later, ysabetwordsmith suggests using an archiving service, such as Wayback or Archive.today. Be aware that not all archiving services will save Dreamwidth posts, Ghost being one of those that does not.

"I want to be able to spread the word about this post."
The way most Dreamwidth users do this is by making their own post about it, either in their own journal or on a community, and including a quick blurb and a link to what you want to share. (If it's a post by another Dreamwidth user, it's considered polite to ask in the comments if OP is okay with you sharing the link around. Most people are okay with this if they made a public post, but some may ask you to make your own post about the topic instead, especially if their own post is access-locked.)

That said, there's also technically a workaround made to mimic reblogs, made by astolat (yes, that Astolat), ljwrites, and melannen. I haven't tried it myself and don't particularly want to, so there aren't a lot of questions I can answer about it. However, I would say that it would still be polite to ask for permission to reblog a post in this case, especially since, as far as I'm aware and unlike with Tumblr reblogs, the original poster will not automatically be made aware of your reblogging.

Interestingly, I've heard that this reblogging tool can also work on some non-Dreamwidth site links, such as from AO3.

ysabetwordsmith suggests: "If it's something you especially adore, you can ask the author to let you repost it on your blog as a guest post. If you host a community, however, it's more common to invite folks to crosspost it there whenever you see something that fits the theme. You can also tell people about a comm that matches their post if it's generally open to such things."

"I want to share this cool, funny, or interesting thing with other people."
Did a friend or someone else you subscribe to make a post that you thought was particularly funny or insightful? I recommend sharing it at metaquotes! Metaquotes is a community specifically dedicated to sharing fun and interesting things made by other people. It's not very active at the moment, but with a little work, we can change that...

"I have something I want to add to this post."
If what you want is to share your thoughts on a topic, I recommend replying to the post with a comment! If it's something you would have put in the tags or comment section of a reblog (and isn't rude), I can about guarantee that the original poster would be interested in receiving it.

There are exceptions; if you feel like your comment might derail too much from the original post, or if you manage to exceed the character limit for one comment, you might consider making your own post (with a link to the original), and replying to the original post with a link to your own.


And those are the basics! You may want to mix-and-match on these, depending on the content and your goals for it; for example, if someone posts something really funny that you want to share, you can reply to the post, and post to Metaquotes, and link back to it in a post of your own. You may also be able to do a bunch of any of these at a time ("linkspamming" is the nickname for a post where you share a bunch of links). But overall, these options should cover most of your needs.

If you have any questions, or if there's something I missed, please feel free to let me know in the comments!