Frequently Asked Questions
We know that a site like Dreamwidth can be difficult to find your way around, and the changes we've made to some things you might be used to can be confusing. We've put together some basic Guides, and written a set of FAQs that should help you do what you want to do on Dreamwidth, whether it's configure your OpenID account or customize your new journal.
If you already have a Dreamwidth account, you may notice your name appearing in some of the FAQs as you read them. If you view the same sections when logged out, the text will simply say "username".
If you aren't sure where to find what you're looking for, the FAQs and the Guides are fully searchable.
Available Categories
- Guides
- About Us
- Your Account
- Journal Entries
- Comments
- Comment Security
- Journal Styles
- Your Profile
- User Icons
- Communities
- Managing Communities
- Relationships
- Notifications
- Organizing
- Feeds
- Explore
- Site Options
- Current Issues
- Conflicts With Other Users
- Miscellaneous
Guides (view all)
- Welcome to Dreamwidth!
- The ethos and ideas behind Dreamwidth Studios: What makes us special?
- A Guide To Dreamwidth for LiveJournal users
- How do I protect my privacy on Dreamwidth?
- What HTML tags can I use on Dreamwidth?
About Us (view all)
- What is Dreamwidth Studios?
- How can I report a bug?
- Where can I leave suggestions for site improvements?
Your Account (view all)
- How do I create an account?
- Why can't I create a free account without an invite code?
- How do I confirm my email address?
- What are paid accounts?
- How much are Paid Accounts? What features do I get with a Paid Account?
- How do I buy a paid account?
- How do I invite someone to Dreamwidth?
- How do I change my email address?
- How do I change my password?
- How do I delete my account?
- Can I change my account name?
- How can I recover my lost username or password?
- What is an OpenID Account?
- Why has my OpenID account left so many comments?
- Can I convert an OpenID account into a regular account?
Journal Entries (view all)
- How do I post an entry?
- How do I set age restriction filters on my journal or entry?
- How do I post an entry to a community that I administer or am a member of?
- How do I control who can read my entries?
- How can I choose which user icon to use?
- How can I set my mood, music, or location?
- How do I edit or delete an entry?
- How do I make a link to another Dreamwidth account?
- What is a cut? How can I hide part of my entry behind a cut?
- What is a client? What clients can I use with Dreamwidth?
- How do I make all my posts private?
- What is the Rich Text Editor? What is the HTML Editor?
- How can I crosspost entries?
- Which journalling services can I crosspost to?
- What HTML can I use in my entry?
- How do I post an entry without it showing on my subscribers' reading pages? Why would I do this?
- How do I create a poll?
- What is Auto-Formatting?
- How can I email entries into my journal?
Comments (view all)
- What are comments?
- How do I post a comment?
- How do I identify myself when I comment?
- How do I comment using OpenID?
- What is Quick Reply? How do I turn Quick Reply on or off?
- How does comment threading work?
- What happens when there are large numbers of comments on one entry?
- What are the limits on comments?
- Can I use HTML in comments?
- How do I quote part of an entry I want to reply to?
- Can I edit or delete my comment?
- How can I control comments posted to my journal?
- How do I find my comments?
- What is comment tracking?
- Can I get comments sent to me by email?
Comment Security (view all)
- How do I control who can comment on my journal?
- How do I control who can comment on a particular entry?
- How do I ban someone from commenting?
- What can I do about unwanted comments?
- What are spam comments? What can I do about them?
- What is comment screening?
- What is comment IP logging?
Journal Styles (view all)
- How do I change the appearance of my journal?
- Which journal styles are available on Dreamwidth?
- How do I change my journal's title or subtitle?
- How do modules and sidebars work?
- How do I add a link list?
- What is the Advanced Customization page?
Your Profile (view all)
- What is a profile?
- What are interests?
- How do I add an interest someone else has?
- How do I edit my profile?
- What does my profile contain? Who can see the information on it?
- How do I change which members of my circle show on my profile?
User Icons (view all)
Communities (view all)
Managing Communities (view all)
- How do I create a community?
- How do I turn a personal account into a community?
- How do I manage my community?
- What are the membership, posting, and content settings for my community?
- How do I make my community members-only?
- How do I control posts to my community?
- How do I add users to my community?
- How do I remove a user from my community?
Relationships (view all)
- What is my Circle?
- How do I subscribe to other journals?
- How do I subscribe to several journals at once?
- How do I give people Access to my protected content?
- How do I grant Access to several journals at once?
- How do I unsubscribe from or revoke Access for another journal?
- How do I get Access to a journal's protected content?
- What is my Reading Page?
- What are filters?
- How do I set up Reading filters?
- How do I set up Access Filters?
Notifications (view all)
- What are notifications?
- How do I send people messages on Dreamwidth?
- What is tracking?
- How do I stop tracking something?
- What different ways can I receive my notifications?
- How do I use the inbox?
- How many notifications can I have?
- Why aren't my comment or notification emails reaching me?
Organizing (view all)
- How do I import my journal from another site?
- Why can't I import a community?
- Can I download my Dreamwidth journal?
- What are tags?
- What are memories?
Feeds (view all)
- What are feeds?
- How do I create or subscribe to a feed?
- Where can I find feeds to subscribe to?
- How do I view my feeds separately from the rest of my subscriptions?
- The feed I'm following isn't updating. Why?
- Can I get an RSS or Atom feed of my Dreamwidth journal?
- Who can read the feed of my journal?
- How much of each entry shows in the feed of my journal?
Explore (view all)
Site Options (view all)
- What is the Navigation Strip?
- How do I change the look of main site pages?
- What is "Adult Content"? How can I keep from seeing it?
Current Issues (view all)
- DISPLAY: I can't set a non-US country for my location.
- DISPLAY: Site pages do not display properly in older browsers, including Internet Explorer 6.
- DISPLAY: There are display problems with imported icons with non-ASCII comments.
- DISPLAY: I can not use the icon resizing tool when uploading an oversized image from URL
- DISPLAY: Pages on the site aren't updating properly.
- DISPLAY: My HTML is not working properly.
- DISPLAY: I'm getting unwanted comment notifications in my inbox.
- DISPLAY: I want to leave a deleted community.
- DISPLAY: I composed an entry in Word and used the RTE to post it.
- DISPLAY: My icons aren't showing up after I purchased paid time.
- OPEN ID: OpenID accounts aren't showing up on my Reading List.
- STYLES: My page content cuts off partway through my entry/comments.
- STYLES: The style I copied from another site has errors on Dreamwidth.
- STYLES: My Reading page is too wide, and I have to scroll sideways to see it all.
- STYLES: The most recent code push has broken my journal style.
- IMPORTER: Tags that were deleted on the import source site are imported to Dreamwidth.
- IMPORTER: Previous/Next journal navigation links are not working after import or when entries are Dated Out Of Order.
- IMPORTER: The importer didn't import all my icons.
- IMPORTER: Embedded media on my imported entry isn't working.
- IMPORTER: I can't import my private community, even though I am the only one who can post to it.
- IMPORTER: My import isn't working.
- CROSSPOSTER: I am having trouble crossposting to Inksome and/or JournalFen.
- CROSSPOSTER: My entries crossposted with a more-secure security setting.
- CROSSPOSTER: I am getting an incorrect password message.
Conflicts With Other Users (view all)
Miscellaneous (view all)
- What Dreamwidth-specific markup/HTML tags can I use?
- What are Dreamwidth's new features?
- How do I keep my journal from being indexed by search engines?
- How do I use Google Analytics with my journal?
- Can I forward my domain to my Dreamwidth journal?
Need more help? Go to the the Support Area.