the_great_tumblr_purge | Entries tagged with tutorial

It's time to talk about Cut Tags, Dreamwidth's version of "Read More"s!

I'm going to start by demonstrating one, and I'm going to ask you not to click the actual "read more" text for now, so I can demonstrate one of the properties of cut tags. This should be the first post at

newcomers or

the_great_tumblr_purge for April 26th, 2025, so if you've been linked to the post itself, please visit the archive for that date, instead!

( Read More (or don't) )

That's a cut tag. One of the neat things is that you can put whatever text you want there, instead of just "Read More". The thing I want you to pay attention to, though, is that little arrow next to it:

You know how, on Tumblr, sometimes when you click a "Read More", the link will take you to directly to the page of the post, and sometimes it'll just unfold whatever is under the "Read More" so it shows up on your dash? I'm sure there's some logic to which one it is somewhere, but I have yet to really figure it out. (Not that I've been trying, mind.)

Dreamwidth has it codified so you know what's going to do what: The text itself will take you into the post, anchored to where the cut tag/Read More starts, while the arrow beside the cut tag will unfold the post for you. If you want to read the contents of a post, but don't feel like clicking away from your reading page to do so, click on that little arrow right there!

But wait, there's more! Somewhere on your page layout you might see a section that says, "Expand Cut Tags", with double right-pointing triangles and double down-pointing triangles. Click on the double-down triangles, and all cut tags on your reading page will be automatically opened for you! Pretty neat trick, right? That includes what's in the next bit...

This time, please click on that triangle there: ( Read More (yes, please) )

You may also have noticed at this point that cut tags on Dreamwidth can be closed. No more putting the entire remainder of a post under a Read More; you can put the long essay under there, and leave the TL;DR out at the end! This also means you can also include multiple cut tags in a single post, not just one. And not just the nested kind, either; just be careful when using nested cuts to make sure to close all of the ones you want closed, so any text you want on the outside doesn't get caught on the inside!

Etiquette-wise, Dreamwidth users (DWenizens?) tend to apply cut tags to posts that get a little longer, and to hide images that are more than, say, 800 pixels wide. The latter is a holdover from when bandwidth was a lot worse, though last I knew, some places were still running on dial-up, and it's polite to remember them, as well. And both are good for not turning your subscribers' reading page into Color of the Sky. If you've got a post that's more than a couple thousand words long or has a bunch of really big images, you might want to consider a cut tag. Writing that's more than a few hundred words or a dozen lines long (in terms of poetry) is a good choice to put under a cut tag, as are image posts that have multiple large images (unless you're using preview thumbnails). ~~Honestly, this post is long enough that I want to put more of it under a cut tag, but it would mess up the demo...~~

That's all I can think of about cut tags at the moment; if there's something I missed or something you have questions about, feel free to bring it up in the comments!

Edit:

ysabetwordsmith has some concrete advice about when and where to use cut tags!

Current Mood: chipper

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)

Current Mood: busy

teres

Hello! I've written a tutorial on the RTE on my own journal, and, at soc_puppet's suggestion, I've reposted it over here.

So, at the request of soc_puppet, this is a guide to the basic functionality of Dreamwidth's Rich Text Editor ("RTE" for short).

( How to do things like "this". )

soc_puppet

Side blogs are a feature of Tumblr that are beloved by many: A secondary blog that you can post to without signing out of your primary blog. Most people use this secondary account to blog about and reblog things related to an interest they consider too "niche" for their main account, specific fandom content being among the main contenders. Other Tumblr users can subscribe to/follow specifically that side account, and while Tumblr recently added the ability for side blogs to respond to comments under the name of the account that is commented on, the side blogs themselves cannot subscribe to/follow anyone.

That's not quite a thing on Dreamwidth. One alternate option would be to create an entire separate journal account; Dreamwidth Roleplayers do this a lot, and may even be able to direct you to widgets that can help you switch between accounts quickly. But this is about the same as creating a separate Tumblr account, and not so much as creating a side account.

Something that might come closer is creating a personal community: A community that only one person can post to.

If you've been nosing around

newcomers or

the_great_tumblr_purge for a while, you probably have some idea of how communities work on Dreamwidth. Tumblr is, in fact, currently implementing a similar feature, so you may be familiar with the idea from there, as well (though last I knew it was still in beta).

Creating a community of any kind should start in a similar way to creating a personal account; unlike creating a new journal, however, it can be done while you are logged in: Go to the "Create" tab and scroll to the bottom to Create Community. There, you will be prompted to name and title your community. As an example for this post, I am currently creating a community named

example_comm, whose title is, "An example community for demonstration's sake".

You will then be prompted to pick how open you want community membership to be: open (anyone can freely join), moderated (anyone can ask to join, must be approved by an administrator), or by invitation only (only people invited by an administrator may join). This does not affect whether people are able to subscribe to a community, only whether they can post. I'm selecting "By invitation only", because this community is only for an example, but you can pick whichever you like.

Some things to keep in mind when picking your preference: Anyone who joins a community will be able to see posts locked to that community; if you want to have a side blog that only a certain subset of people can see the posts of, they will need to be members of the community. If you've ever wanted to have control of who follows your side account before they click the follow button, go with "moderated" or "by invitation only". If you don't have a preference to who joins, go with "open". If you don't plan to make any locked posts that only your community members will see, pick "by invitation only".

The next steps are to edit the community settings, edit the community profile, and customize community appearance.

( Edit Community Settings )

( Edit Community Profile )

( Customize Community Appearance )

And that should do the trick! If you have any questions, if I've missed anything, or anything else, please feel free to comment and I'll do my best to help.

Current Mood: hungry

soc_puppet

I've covered What to post about on Dreamwidth, but now that I think of it, that may have been putting the cart before the horse! That sort of thing is good to know, but harder to do if you don't know how to post on Dreamwidth.

When it comes to actually posting, you'll want to pick a text format to use. I personally use Casual HTML, since it's what I was used to on LiveJournal before Dreamwidth, but I know a lot of Tumblr users are going to be more familiar with Rich Text Entry (RTE); if you want to know more about the RTE options,

teres wrote a great breakdown right over here. To find out what HTML you can use on Dreamwidth, check out this FAQ page.

Once you have that done, the first thing I'm going to recommend you do is to turn on the Beta "Create Entries" page. Why? Because Dreamwidth is going to make it the default sometime soon, and it'll be better to get used to it sooner rather than later. Also, it's just superior to the original Create Entries page in a lot of ways! I'll go into more detail on that in a moment.

To turn on the Beta "Create Entries" page, first go to the Organize tab. At the bottom of the drop-down menu is the option, "Test Beta Features". On that page, you have the ability to opt in to helping test five different beta features. At the top of that list is the Beta Create Entries page. Click to Opt In on that, and you should be good to go! (I also recommend opting in on the beta Inbox page.)

Now comes some of the fun: If you go visit the Create Entries page now, you'll notice some different features. At the very top, right above the subject line, is the option "Rearrange Panels". Surprise! You can now decide, with some limitations, how you want the Create Entry page to look!

(With thanks to

teres for the reminder: There are some animations built into this process; if you want those to go away or to be minimized, that is the final option to click in the Rearrange Panels field.)

( Let's get into the nitty gritty of that )

One field that won't move is the field where you select whether to post and what privacy level to post at; you can find it right below the text entry field. There you will find one or two drop-down menus. The first menu will allow you to choose the privacy level of the post, be it public (anyone can read it), access-locked (only people you grant access to can read it), access-locked to a specific subset of your access list (a custom access filter), or private (only you can read it).

The second drop-down menu is for whether you're posting to your own journal or to any communities you may be a member of that allow you to post. The default option from both the "Create: Post Entry" drop-down and the "Post" option on the left-hand side of the navigation strip at the top of various Dreamwidth pages is to your own journal, but if you are visiting a community and click the "Post" option on the right-hand side of the navigation strip, it will select that community for you instead. If you post using that method, you will not have a drop-down menu to choose another location from.

And those are the basics of the beta Create Entries page! If I missed anything, or if you have any questions, please feel free to comment and let me know, and I'll do my best to clear things up.

Edit: Shoot, I forgot to talk about cut tags. Next post, maybe?

Edit 2: With thanks to

teres for suggestions to make this post better!

Current Mood: phew!

soc_puppet

There's a number of technological and cultural shifts Tumblr users will have to make when switching to Dreamwidth; the differences in image hosting are probably the biggest technological switch, but the one I anticipate giving people the most trouble is tagging.

On Tumblr, you can add pretty much whatever you want to the tags, in any order you want; there is no limit to them, and they're essentially used as a secondary comment system.

Not so for Dreamwidth! Dreamwidth has a hard limit on the number of tags any journal or community can register; it's 1,000 for free users, 1,500 for basic paid accounts, and 2,000 for premium paid accounts, and they're basically entirely for organizational purposes. One of the ways that Dreamwidth's code reflects this is that it lists tags alphabetically in posts, not in the order that they were written or added. If you want to include a stream of consciousness in your tags and have them make sense, your best bet is to find a way to make them alphabetical. There's also a hard limit of 40 characters per tag for everyone, regardless of account type (paid vs free).

There are other organizational options, Memories chief among them, but it's not really possible to opt out of tags being organizational and switch them to being communication. So what, if anything, can you do instead?

( Option One: Icons )

( Option Two: Titles and cut text )

( Option three: Currents )

( Other options: Tiny text and comment editing )

So there you have it! Dreamwidth may not have "talking in the tags" the way Tumblr does, but it does have some other forms of communication that you can still have fun with.

Current Mood: 30 character limit
Current Location: 80 character limit
Current Music: 74 character limit

soc_puppet

Hello, everyone! I'm Socchan, but you may know me better as

bisexualbaker on Tumblr. I've been coming up with various guides and info posts for Dreamwidth over the past several years, but have been ramping things up again in light of half of Tumblr's remaining staff being laid off, reducing them to a mere 25 people. I'm planning to mirror said guides over here over the next few days or weeks, to better organize all of the information, so you may see some familiar posts in the near future.

I hope you're all adjusting well to Dreamwidth, or have over the past few years, and if you have any questions at all, please feel free to ask them in the comments on a post here, make your own post to this community, or even DM me! Posts here will probably be the most likely to get you the information you need, since I don't actually know everything about Dreamwidth (I'm a terrible person to ask about journal customization, for example), but I understand it can be a bit intimidating to take the plunge and post on a community for the first time.

Anyway, on to the meat of this post!

( What should I post about on Dreamwidth? )

(With thanks to

ysabetwordsmith for some of these suggestions 💖)

Current Mood: contemplative

goodbyebird

I recently gave a few tips to a new-ish user on how to find new content on dw, and figured I could share a few pointers here =)

How to find content
I ye olden days, communities were thriving places with many people posting on a daily basis, but with fic migrating to AO3 and graphics to tumblr, they've dried up. These days the communities that keep it going are challenge/icon/rec communities, and where you find actual meta/episode reactions/discussions has mostly moved to personal journals.

So if you're new to Dreamwidth, how do you go about finding your way? I won't lie: it takes a bit of work at first. When I moved to dw from lj, I was struck by how isolated I felt at first. Building a bit of a network takes time (of course, you can always lurk). But it's well worth it!

To find what you're looking for,
* Clicking an interest tag on your profile will take you to a list of users/communities, sorted by who's posted last. Very useful in finding active places who share your interests.
* Explore/Site and Journal Search lets you search for keywords, and brings up public posts containing that word. Can be very useful if you've just come across an amazing new show/movie/book, and want to find other people talking about it. (also more reliable than journal interest searches, as people might not update their current interests very often).
* Browse friending memes. Can be very useful even if it's a month or two old.
* If you're following someone already and they share your interests, consider giving their reading list a peek. It won't show you locked posts from the ones they're following, but public posts are all there for you to check out. (add /read to the end of their url if you don't see a link)
* If you see a comment you like, maybe join in the discussion? Or click their username and check their journal out. Same goes for icons; if you spot your fave in an icon, you'll likely have some fannish interests in common! (I've always found userpics to be super useful in gauging what fannish preferences people have)

Building community
Basically, interaction is key. You don't get community without communication. Comment when something interesting pops up. Join discussions in the comments section (that's how I fell into fandom after googling for Buffy comics reactions lol). If you're watching/reading something you enjoy, post about it. Doesn't have to be an essay. For those who are mostly comfortable with reblogging, you can always linkspam, and then chat a bit in the tags like you would on tumblr (limited amount of tags on dw though, so tag responsibly. Mood/location are other useful places to do a bit of tag-yelling).

Subscribing is like following on tumblr, and then you can decide whether to give access to a person so they can also read your locked posts. Your dash is now your reading page =)

To make yourself easier to find,
* Make a post here, at

the_great_tumblr_purge!
* Make a post at

addme_fandom. Thoroughly tag your entries so people can find you easily.
* Fill in your interests on your profile page.
* Make a short bio, either on your profile page or as a sticky post at the top of your journal. Lets people know what you're about.
* Actually post something from time to time ;)

A few useful communities to have on your radar
*

fandomcalendar lets you know about upcoming challenges, big bangs, friending memes, etc.
*

icons /

fandom_icons /

comicbook_icons are full of userpics you can use for your account.
*

dreamwidthlayouts for pretty journal layouts, and

dreamcodes gives you various profile/rpg module codes to use.

style_system is great if you're having issues with coding and need a helping hand.
*

dw_community_promo to see new community promos.

starterpack has also recently begun, and is a step by step place for setting up your journaling home, and finding other like-minded folks =)

Current Music: Lido Pimienta - Nada

dendriteblues

(EDIT: This practice poses some format and ethical issues, which were brought up to me in the comments. I think it is natural and healthy for our population of users to try out new things and develop our own ways of using the site, but it also important for us to respect DW's existing users and adapt ourselves to their ways of doing things. I'm going to leave this up so that other Tumblr immigrants can benefit from what we learned here.

We have taken the feedback and stopped using this format, which makes this post no longer relevant. I'm going to freeze comments since I think everyone has had ample opportunity to express their opinion. For new users looking for the proper way to signal boost other's posts, please see shy's guide to blockquotes. Thank you all for your input.)

So my friend

shy_magpie has found a really great way to emulate reblogs, and it's actually quite simple to do. While threaded discussions are a vastly better way to talk one-on-one they really aren't good for Tumblr style memeing. (and personally, I am very, very passionate about the good old fashion shit post! I can't quit, you can't make me!) So for those times when you really, really want to copy someone's entire post and then add to it, here is a very simple method:

The codes in use are <dt> and <dd>. In normal HTML they are used to generate lists. <dt> is used for list items. <dd> is used for list details.

Example:

<dt>Coffee</dt>

<dd>Black hot drink</dd>

<dd>White cold drink</dd>
<dd>Hated by Edward Elric</dd>

Would create:

Coffee

Black hot drink

Milk

White cold drink

Hated by Edward Elric

So in order to create a faux reblog, all we need to do is put our username and the OP's username in <dt> brackets, and put the content of the entry/response in <dd> brackets. Out of respect to the OP, I think we should be in the practice of linking to the original posts and to all the journals involved in the discussion. So, with all that taken into account, the standard code would be formatted like this:

<dt> <user name=OP USERNAME> said <a href="ORIGINAL ENTRY URL">in this entry</a>:</dt>
<dd>COPY/PASTE ORIGINAL POST'S CONTENT</dd>
<dt> <user name=YOUR USERNAME> said:</dt>
<dd> YOUR RESPONSE</dd>

And when previewed should look like this:

dendriteblues said in this entry:

questionoftheday Do you like strawberries?

my answer: Oh my god I love strawberries. When I was a kid my mom would always make the most delicious pies...blah blah blah.

dendriteblues said:

my answer: I like them too, but not for the reason you would think! As a kid I had a puppy named Strawberry Pie. What a great dog, let me tell you all about him for thousands and thousands of words. Blah, blah, blah.

There is no limit to the number of "reblogs" you can add to the list, it just gets longer and longer as it did on Tumblr. When you copy and paste the contents of the entry all of the links and HTML in that entry are preserved AS LONG AS YOU PASTE INTO THE RICH TEXT EDITOR. If you paste into the HTML editor, you will lose all the code and have to manually recreate it. EW! Likewise, if you paste into Rich Text and forget to switch to HTML before typing your <dt> and <dd> tags then your code won't work.

So to be as clear as possible, the procedure for posting a reblog should go like this:

Copy the entry you want to reference.

Click "Post Entry"

Click "Rich Text" in the top right corner of your text box.

Type CRL+V on PC or CMD+V on Mac to paste the entry.

Click "HTML" in the top right corner of your text box.

Paste the template code into the text box.

Change the username to the OP's username and the URL to the original entry's URL

Put <dd> and </dd> on either side of the original post.

Move the second half of the template code below the OP's code and add your own username and comments.

Hit preview and make sure everything looks correct.

It sounds like a lot, but once you do it a few times it becomes second nature. Obviously, it's quite a bit more work than just clicking a reblog button, but I think it will go a long way in helping us Tumblr refugees preserve the meme culture we are accustomed to. And all that while being able to have a civilized, threaded conversation when you want to. In a way, it's actually really cool. The best of both worlds.

Please let me know if you find this useful, or if you find it confusing. I'm not a coder, but I'll do my best to explain it!

(EDIT: Also worth mentioning, reblogging is much easier after the intitial reblog. Because if a friend of yours reblogs a post and you want to reblog your friend's reblog, all you have to do is copy your friend's post and add <dt> and <dd> tags around your own comments. Your friend will have already done the formatting on the OP's post. So in theory, reblogging gets easier the more people do it.)

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Reconnecting through Dreamwidth

Entries tagged with tutorial

Cut Tag Basics

Dreamwidth for Tumblr Users Tutorial Compilation

A quick introduction to Dreamwidth's Rich Text Editor

Personal Communities: Dreamwidth's "Side Blogs"

The Create Entries Page

Dreamwidth Alternatives to Talking in the Tags

What to post about on Dreamwidth

Getting around on Dreamwidth

DW Style Reblogging

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April 2025

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