THL Toolbox > Community & Communication > Blogging > LiveJournal Blogging Documentation
LiveJournal Blogging Documentation
Contributor(s): David Germano. The following provides basic help for creating and using blogs within LiveJournal.com. However it was written in 2004 so be forewarned.
The LiveJournal help files are located at 
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faq.bml. For tips as to the creative use of blogging technology, instead see THDL Blogging Tips.
To create an account
- Go to http://www.livejournal.com.
- Select the link that says “Create your own LiveJournal.”
- Fill out the user information form to sign up for a free account. (You may want to consider making the User Name your first initial and last name, or full name, so that others in a community would recognize you. Please note, however, that you cannot have spaces in your User Name - though underscores are permitted)
- Your user name and password will be emailed to you. You will be required to reply to that email to verify your new account. You will also be given your journal’s URL (which is simply their standard URL plus your User Name at the end.
To use and customize your account
1) Log in to your account
Go to your journal online, using the URL that was emailed to you, or the link on the course website. Click on your linked user name to get to your User Info page. Login to your account using the top right login/password fields.
2) Add entries and customize your journal website
Once you are logged into your account, you can customize your website in various ways, using links available from the horizontal menu bar near the top of the screen. Here are some examples of what you can do by selecting the following links from that horizontal menu bar:
- Journal > Update : Here you can add entries.
- Manage > Entries: Here you can edit or delete entries.
- Manage > User Pictures: You can add pictures to your site.
- Manage > Customize: You can customize the appearance of your site. At the bottom of this page, there is a link to the page on which you can add a list of web-links to your site. There is also a link called “Edit Personal Information,” which takes you to the page where you can alter the main title of your site.
3) Make friends
“Friends” are other LiveJournal users whom you have identified as your friends. Every time a friend updates his or her blog, those updated message will appear on the Friends page of your own site. Thus you can easily keep track of what your friends are writing.
To add to your list of friends, go to your User Info page. Using the top right “search” box, search for the friend you wish to add. Once the friend’s account has been found, add the friend to your friends list by clicking the “add friend” icon in the centre of your screen. You will notice that although you are reading your friend’s user information, you are still logged into your own account, as the top right “Welcome” message tells you.
If you have a list of people to specify as friends, an easier way is to login, and then from the top menu bar, choose "manage", and then beneath it choose "friends". That gives you the friends page. From this, you can type in a number of names and specify them as friends.
By identifying another LiveJournal participant as a "Friend", his or her most recent postings will appear under the "journal:friends" link on your own Live Journal page with the most recent appearing on top. It does not keep track of comments that may have been posted on someone's blogs, so it is not a replacement for reading someone's blogs in their own space.
Embedding within your own home page
See Live Journal's documentation on embedding for information as to how to embed Live Journal within one's own home page (http://www.livejournal.com/developer/embedding.bml).