QUICK AND DIRTY: HOW TO BACKUP ON DW
Please give this a shot. Even if you've tried before and failed, try again now, dreamwidth and live journal have gotten things sorted and the imports (read: backups) currently seem to work.
This is the short(ish) and sweet(ish) and not pretty version as it's potentially time sensitive, but here goes:
If you don't have a dreamwidth account, go ahead and make one. (Flisties, please post your new nick here so your other flisties will know to add you.) Then add it to your profile page. When logged in, you can do that by editing your bio here: https://www.livejournal.com/manage/profile/ Scroll down to BIO. Edit and SAVE CHANGES.
Flisties, if you already have a dreamwidth account and haven't done so yet, please post your DW nick here and / or in a post of your own so your flisties will know to add you. Also, add it to your profile page. You can do that by editing your bio here: https://www.livejournal.com/manage/profile/ Scroll down to BIO. Edit and SAVE CHANGES.
THERE ARE ISSUES WITH FRIEND'S POSTS NOT SHOWING UP IN THEIR FLISTIES' FEEDS, so please try to be robust about sharing your dreamwidth nicks.
If you've never tried importing your journal to dreamwidth before: go here and do what it says. As long as you are careful to enter the right (read: LJ) password (please make sure not to confuse the two, autofill functions will try to enter the password for the wrong (read: dreamwidth) platform at the prompt because you're initiating the import from their site), you basically can't screw anything up. If you have more than one account and confuse the two, if you're doing this for the first time, you could still easily delete all the posts and start fresh. You will not mess this up. Go. Do it now. I'll wait.
If you've imported your livejournal to dreamwidth before but aren't sure what to do now, go here and skip to step 3. FULL DISCLOSURE: the import can make a slight hash of things with double entries, very occasionally the order of entries, and old / now defunct tags, but it's still much better than the alternative of losing your journal and all the wonderful comments. (If you have a journal where the formatting is far more important than the comments, for example if it's a book (who would be so foolish... 😉), then unfortunately 'importing' by hand is the way to go, copy / pasting into the other journal. You won't have any of your comments that way, though, and it's probably still easier to import and then adjust the order / tags / entires if need be.)
NOTE: If you're trying to import from a comm you admin, you cannot import from your journal and vice versa. Decide which matters more and prioritise it, and then do the imports successively.
IMPORTING OFTEN FAILS AT THE MOMENT. Don't panic. Check the import page periodically, and if it failed, either altogether or in part, then simply start another one. You can do this. You've got this. You may just need to be persistent and keep at it.
Now that the backup process is under way, make sure you can find your friends on dreamwidth. You can check their profile pages and hope they're up to date 🤣, or if we share a bunch of the same flisties, go through the list of dreamwidth accounts I've indexed so far, and add your flisties over on dreamwidth. (I'll try to put more details in the next post if you need them, but in broad strokes, click the name of the dreamwidth account you want from that list, and as long as you're logged in over there, somewhere in the upper middle of the screen you'll see the name of the account and if you haven't added them yet "Add to Your Circle". (If you've already added them, you'll see "Modify Relationship" instead.) Assuming you want to add them to your friends list to allow them to read your journal and want to read theirs in turn (to the extent they let you), click on "Add to Your Circle" then "Grant Access" and "Subscribe" respectively. Obviously it's easy to only "Subscribe" if that suits your needs better, for instance if you're eager for my pearls of support wisdom... 😉)
And that should get you started without sinking too much time into things. 🥳 I'll try to put something together explaining how to make your backup more robust in the next couple of days. (May we soon live in more boring times... xox G. ❤️)
This is the short(ish) and sweet(ish) and not pretty version as it's potentially time sensitive, but here goes:
If you don't have a dreamwidth account, go ahead and make one. (Flisties, please post your new nick here so your other flisties will know to add you.) Then add it to your profile page. When logged in, you can do that by editing your bio here: https://www.livejournal.com/manage/profile/ Scroll down to BIO. Edit and SAVE CHANGES.
Flisties, if you already have a dreamwidth account and haven't done so yet, please post your DW nick here and / or in a post of your own so your flisties will know to add you. Also, add it to your profile page. You can do that by editing your bio here: https://www.livejournal.com/manage/profile/ Scroll down to BIO. Edit and SAVE CHANGES.
THERE ARE ISSUES WITH FRIEND'S POSTS NOT SHOWING UP IN THEIR FLISTIES' FEEDS, so please try to be robust about sharing your dreamwidth nicks.
If you've never tried importing your journal to dreamwidth before: go here and do what it says. As long as you are careful to enter the right (read: LJ) password (please make sure not to confuse the two, autofill functions will try to enter the password for the wrong (read: dreamwidth) platform at the prompt because you're initiating the import from their site), you basically can't screw anything up. If you have more than one account and confuse the two, if you're doing this for the first time, you could still easily delete all the posts and start fresh. You will not mess this up. Go. Do it now. I'll wait.
If you've imported your livejournal to dreamwidth before but aren't sure what to do now, go here and skip to step 3. FULL DISCLOSURE: the import can make a slight hash of things with double entries, very occasionally the order of entries, and old / now defunct tags, but it's still much better than the alternative of losing your journal and all the wonderful comments. (If you have a journal where the formatting is far more important than the comments, for example if it's a book (who would be so foolish... 😉), then unfortunately 'importing' by hand is the way to go, copy / pasting into the other journal. You won't have any of your comments that way, though, and it's probably still easier to import and then adjust the order / tags / entires if need be.)
NOTE: If you're trying to import from a comm you admin, you cannot import from your journal and vice versa. Decide which matters more and prioritise it, and then do the imports successively.
IMPORTING OFTEN FAILS AT THE MOMENT. Don't panic. Check the import page periodically, and if it failed, either altogether or in part, then simply start another one. You can do this. You've got this. You may just need to be persistent and keep at it.
Now that the backup process is under way, make sure you can find your friends on dreamwidth. You can check their profile pages and hope they're up to date 🤣, or if we share a bunch of the same flisties, go through the list of dreamwidth accounts I've indexed so far, and add your flisties over on dreamwidth. (I'll try to put more details in the next post if you need them, but in broad strokes, click the name of the dreamwidth account you want from that list, and as long as you're logged in over there, somewhere in the upper middle of the screen you'll see the name of the account and if you haven't added them yet "Add to Your Circle". (If you've already added them, you'll see "Modify Relationship" instead.) Assuming you want to add them to your friends list to allow them to read your journal and want to read theirs in turn (to the extent they let you), click on "Add to Your Circle" then "Grant Access" and "Subscribe" respectively. Obviously it's easy to only "Subscribe" if that suits your needs better, for instance if you're eager for my pearls of support wisdom... 😉)
And that should get you started without sinking too much time into things. 🥳 I'll try to put something together explaining how to make your backup more robust in the next couple of days. (May we soon live in more boring times... xox G. ❤️)