Tips and Tricks for a Better RPing Experience!
Livejournal, while sometimes confusing, offers a lot of customization options to make your journal look the way you find most appealing. Of course, you just have to know where to look. So, we’re here to offer a few tips and tricks that you may not know!
How Do I ______ ?
How do I turn off custom comment pages?
Custom comment pages can sometimes make posts very hard to read especially if those posts start hitting a high number of comments. To disable custom comment pages, go here and scroll down to BASIC OPTIONS. Find the spot where it says DISABLE CUSTOM COMMENT PAGES and select YES from the drop down box. ,b>REMEMBER TO SAVE YOUR CHANGES! That’s it!
What's with the navbar?
The navbar is tool that can either help or annoy, depending on taste. It provides information, quick links, and the ability to search LJ. Keeping it enabled will give you fast access to posting (both in your journal and a community), viewing communities and journals in your style (without typing in ?style=mine manually), and links to your homepage, friends page, friends management, and filters.
Some people (like Pard) love the navbar while some people (like Tracy) hate it. If you want to get rid of it, go here and scroll down to NAVIGATION STRIP. Uncheck the boxes that read always show on journal/community and always show on any journal/community I view.
How do I install Greasemonkey?
Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on (and I think it might be available in other browsers as well) that allows further customization of how your LJ looks and how you can read it. To install it, you, of course, have to have Firefox. Then, go here and install it. Once Greasemonkey is installed, you’ll have to restart your browser to install it completely. When Greasemonkey is installed, you can find various helpful LJ scripts here. We’re going to have a place for people to recommend Greasemonkey scripts down in the comments!
How do I add a header/remove the sidebar/add different metadata/etc on my journal?
This question is harder to answer because there are many ways of customizing your journal. The best thing to do would be to find the community solely dedicated to your journal style (s2flexisquares, s2smoothsailing, s2expressive are the most common) to read up on the various ways to manipulate your journal.
What is ?style=mine?
?style=mine is a simple way to view someone else’s journal in your style. So, if you’re looking at a journal that has writing too small for your eyes, has custom comment pages turned on, has a color scheme that hurts your eyes, all you have to do is append ?style=mine onto the end of the URL and it will change the journal’s look from theirs into yours.
Where do I turn off birthday notifs/userpic notifs/etc?
Yeah, this is a good question. When you set up a new journal, Livejournal turns on a CRAPLOAD of notifications for you. It’s opt out, not opt in. To change your notifications, go here. There are a lot of notifications. Feel free to go down that list and UNCHECK any boxes of notifications you don’t want. Make sure to uncheck both EMAIL and INBOX if you don’t want the notifs showing up at all. PLEASE MAKE SURE TO HIT SAVE CHANGES!.
How do I set up my timezone/my viewing prefs/etc?
If you’re like me, you don’t want to read in UTC settings or see the hover menu or things like that. So, go here. There’s a lot of categories here that you can customize as well. TIMEZONE is near the top and you’d click the drop down box and find your timezone.
There’s also a VERY HELPFUL option a bit below. Find the OTHER JOURNALS and COMMENT PAGES entries. If you check the boxes next to those entries, you’re going to ALWAYS see other journals in YOUR STYLE and you’re ALWAYS going to see comment pages in YOUR STYLE. This, of course, only works if you navigate to the other journals/comment pages from your flist. If you just type the URL into the address bar, it’s not going to work.
How do I create customer friends list filters?
Some people like to read their flist in filters. Some don't. With our friending list set up to sort people into filters, we should know how to create them, at least. So, to start, go here. From there, you'd click NEW which will bring up a box to name the group. Fandom High utilizes the names: alumni, students, comms, teachers and townies. Make sure you have a name for each of those groups and then do not forget to SAVE CHANGES. From there, you can go to the handy dandy friending list and get started adding people to your filters!
What are other Firefox extensions I might find helpful?
Well, everyone has their preferences but, awhile back, we compliled a list of helpful extensions that people in the game recommended. Check those out here!. What other Firefox extensions might be helpful? Let us know in the comments!
What other tips and tricks would you recommend?
We’re not going to be able to cover EVERYTHING because everyone uses LJ in different ways but we can get things started.
Awhile ago, our very own the_merriest wrote up a great tutorial on how to code preplay tables here. I don’t know about you guys but I still go back to that post when I’m trying to figure out how to code tables. Sometimes, I just forget. I’m a bonehead.
weldedtomyspine has also made an online automatic coder if you'd prefer to do it that way!
If you’re wondering how to backdate or postdate something, needsaparrot wrote up a tutorial here for your viewing pleasure!
The plot calendar is heavily used and very helpful so, if you’re wondering about that, take a look at the introductory post here!.
Google Calendar can also be a very helpful app for those that are either extra OCD or have trouble remembering what happens when. To create a new calendar, click on settings, which is located in the top right corner of GCal, and then click calendar settings. From there, click the CALENDARS tab and scroll down to CREATE NEW CALENDAR. That's going to bring up a GCal customization page that you can be inputted with whatever you'd like! After you've created your calendar, you can start adding dates/tasks to it! Click on any day and it's going to pop up a box where you can start filling in basic event details. If you'd like to fill out more, click the EDIT EVENT DETAILS link at the bottom of the pop up box. It will bring up more options and more ways for you to customize!
We think that’s a good start and we’d love to hear from you guys below. There’s going to be OCD that you guys can use to drop various tips, tricks, links and other fun stuff to help us all enjoy our LJ experience a little more!
How Do I ______ ?
How do I turn off custom comment pages?
Custom comment pages can sometimes make posts very hard to read especially if those posts start hitting a high number of comments. To disable custom comment pages, go here and scroll down to BASIC OPTIONS. Find the spot where it says DISABLE CUSTOM COMMENT PAGES and select YES from the drop down box. ,b>REMEMBER TO SAVE YOUR CHANGES! That’s it!
What's with the navbar?
The navbar is tool that can either help or annoy, depending on taste. It provides information, quick links, and the ability to search LJ. Keeping it enabled will give you fast access to posting (both in your journal and a community), viewing communities and journals in your style (without typing in ?style=mine manually), and links to your homepage, friends page, friends management, and filters.
Some people (like Pard) love the navbar while some people (like Tracy) hate it. If you want to get rid of it, go here and scroll down to NAVIGATION STRIP. Uncheck the boxes that read always show on journal/community and always show on any journal/community I view.
How do I install Greasemonkey?
Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on (and I think it might be available in other browsers as well) that allows further customization of how your LJ looks and how you can read it. To install it, you, of course, have to have Firefox. Then, go here and install it. Once Greasemonkey is installed, you’ll have to restart your browser to install it completely. When Greasemonkey is installed, you can find various helpful LJ scripts here. We’re going to have a place for people to recommend Greasemonkey scripts down in the comments!
How do I add a header/remove the sidebar/add different metadata/etc on my journal?
This question is harder to answer because there are many ways of customizing your journal. The best thing to do would be to find the community solely dedicated to your journal style (s2flexisquares, s2smoothsailing, s2expressive are the most common) to read up on the various ways to manipulate your journal.
What is ?style=mine?
?style=mine is a simple way to view someone else’s journal in your style. So, if you’re looking at a journal that has writing too small for your eyes, has custom comment pages turned on, has a color scheme that hurts your eyes, all you have to do is append ?style=mine onto the end of the URL and it will change the journal’s look from theirs into yours.
Where do I turn off birthday notifs/userpic notifs/etc?
Yeah, this is a good question. When you set up a new journal, Livejournal turns on a CRAPLOAD of notifications for you. It’s opt out, not opt in. To change your notifications, go here. There are a lot of notifications. Feel free to go down that list and UNCHECK any boxes of notifications you don’t want. Make sure to uncheck both EMAIL and INBOX if you don’t want the notifs showing up at all. PLEASE MAKE SURE TO HIT SAVE CHANGES!.
How do I set up my timezone/my viewing prefs/etc?
If you’re like me, you don’t want to read in UTC settings or see the hover menu or things like that. So, go here. There’s a lot of categories here that you can customize as well. TIMEZONE is near the top and you’d click the drop down box and find your timezone.
There’s also a VERY HELPFUL option a bit below. Find the OTHER JOURNALS and COMMENT PAGES entries. If you check the boxes next to those entries, you’re going to ALWAYS see other journals in YOUR STYLE and you’re ALWAYS going to see comment pages in YOUR STYLE. This, of course, only works if you navigate to the other journals/comment pages from your flist. If you just type the URL into the address bar, it’s not going to work.
How do I create customer friends list filters?
Some people like to read their flist in filters. Some don't. With our friending list set up to sort people into filters, we should know how to create them, at least. So, to start, go here. From there, you'd click NEW which will bring up a box to name the group. Fandom High utilizes the names: alumni, students, comms, teachers and townies. Make sure you have a name for each of those groups and then do not forget to SAVE CHANGES. From there, you can go to the handy dandy friending list and get started adding people to your filters!
What are other Firefox extensions I might find helpful?
Well, everyone has their preferences but, awhile back, we compliled a list of helpful extensions that people in the game recommended. Check those out here!. What other Firefox extensions might be helpful? Let us know in the comments!
What other tips and tricks would you recommend?
We’re not going to be able to cover EVERYTHING because everyone uses LJ in different ways but we can get things started.
Awhile ago, our very own the_merriest wrote up a great tutorial on how to code preplay tables here. I don’t know about you guys but I still go back to that post when I’m trying to figure out how to code tables. Sometimes, I just forget. I’m a bonehead.
weldedtomyspine has also made an online automatic coder if you'd prefer to do it that way!
If you’re wondering how to backdate or postdate something, needsaparrot wrote up a tutorial here for your viewing pleasure!
The plot calendar is heavily used and very helpful so, if you’re wondering about that, take a look at the introductory post here!.
Google Calendar can also be a very helpful app for those that are either extra OCD or have trouble remembering what happens when. To create a new calendar, click on settings, which is located in the top right corner of GCal, and then click calendar settings. From there, click the CALENDARS tab and scroll down to CREATE NEW CALENDAR. That's going to bring up a GCal customization page that you can be inputted with whatever you'd like! After you've created your calendar, you can start adding dates/tasks to it! Click on any day and it's going to pop up a box where you can start filling in basic event details. If you'd like to fill out more, click the EDIT EVENT DETAILS link at the bottom of the pop up box. It will bring up more options and more ways for you to customize!
We think that’s a good start and we’d love to hear from you guys below. There’s going to be OCD that you guys can use to drop various tips, tricks, links and other fun stuff to help us all enjoy our LJ experience a little more!