How many times can I break 'till I shatter?
So, you may have heard that half the LiveJournal U.S. staff was laid off. Obviously, LJ's not going anywhere in a hurry, since the Russian owners are still out there, but who knows what service is going to be like? And if the plug might eventually be pulled?
Just in case, I've backed up my journal and duplicated all my entries over to JournalFen with a couple of handy tools. (You won't see the entries if you go there; I put all the public posts under a custom filter to keep things tidy, but if LJ ever kicks the bucket I can open them all up easily.)
ljArchive is a handy piece of software that will download a backup of your entire journal to your computer, comments and all.
LJ-Sec is a security management tool that can copy all your entries to another journal service such as JF or IJ. It does not preserve comments, but it does a beautiful job of duplicating the entries, and it also works on community posts. It's also very useful in that it can change your security settings en masse. If you want to make a bunch of entries in an old journal private, for example, this is the tool for you.
A somewhat outdated (moods and community posts can be transferred, for example) FAQ and guide to other options can be found here.
If LJ were to go down, that would probably be it for me. Everyone would be scattered to the winds, and I don't think I'd have the energy or the drive anymore to start over and build a new circle of friends from scratch. I feel overwhelmed by the wide scatter of fandom sites as it is; LJ is one of the last major hubs.
While I'm being alarmist, I learned last night that there's a new law pending that would prohibit the sale of any product intended for children that isn't certified lead-free. That's all well and good, but it also affects used items such as toys and books. I'm no lawyer, but the indication is that it will become illegal to sell or donate used children's books, clothes or toys if you can't prove they are lead-free. I'm not sure if this affects private citizens or just businesses, but there it is. [ info]
Also, FanWorksFinder was recently taken over by FanHistory, so if you have listings there, you may want to pull them.
Just in case, I've backed up my journal and duplicated all my entries over to JournalFen with a couple of handy tools. (You won't see the entries if you go there; I put all the public posts under a custom filter to keep things tidy, but if LJ ever kicks the bucket I can open them all up easily.)
ljArchive is a handy piece of software that will download a backup of your entire journal to your computer, comments and all.
LJ-Sec is a security management tool that can copy all your entries to another journal service such as JF or IJ. It does not preserve comments, but it does a beautiful job of duplicating the entries, and it also works on community posts. It's also very useful in that it can change your security settings en masse. If you want to make a bunch of entries in an old journal private, for example, this is the tool for you.
A somewhat outdated (moods and community posts can be transferred, for example) FAQ and guide to other options can be found here.
If LJ were to go down, that would probably be it for me. Everyone would be scattered to the winds, and I don't think I'd have the energy or the drive anymore to start over and build a new circle of friends from scratch. I feel overwhelmed by the wide scatter of fandom sites as it is; LJ is one of the last major hubs.
While I'm being alarmist, I learned last night that there's a new law pending that would prohibit the sale of any product intended for children that isn't certified lead-free. That's all well and good, but it also affects used items such as toys and books. I'm no lawyer, but the indication is that it will become illegal to sell or donate used children's books, clothes or toys if you can't prove they are lead-free. I'm not sure if this affects private citizens or just businesses, but there it is. [ info]
Also, FanWorksFinder was recently taken over by FanHistory, so if you have listings there, you may want to pull them.