I’ve got my own blog!

[rusty_halo]

I took the LJ strike as an opportunity to set up my own blog on my own server. Now I am officially no longer subject to the whim of any journaling service!

You can view my new journal at rusty-halo.com.

I’m going to be cross-posting everything to InsaneJournal, because I think they’re more fandom-friendly than LiveJournal. I’m going to cross-post some (but not all) posts to LiveJournal, in order to keep up with friends and fandoms that aren’t leaving LJ any time soon.

I would prefer comments on my own blog, but for now you can still comment here. If you want to read/comment on friendslocked entries at my blog, please register and I’ll add you to my “friends” group which can view private entries. (Registering also means you won’t have to re-enter your name every time you comment.)

Please feel free to test it out, and do let me know if anything weird happens. This is brand new and sure to have bugs, but I’m really excited about it.

More details, for those who are curious:

* I’m using WordPress. I chose it because it’s written in PHP and because it already has a lot of user-created plug-ins for things I want.

* I’m using LiveJournal Crossposter to cross-post directly from WordPress to InsaneJournal. This is nicer than Semagic, because if you edit a post in WordPress, it’ll automatically edit it at InsaneJournal too. It doesn’t match up moods or icons, but it matches WordPress categories to IJ tags. It won’t cross-post to both IJ and LJ, so I’m automatically cross-posting everything to IJ and will cross-post some of those to LJ manually.

* I copied over all my LJ archives using ljArchive. It kept entries and comments, but lost metadata (security settings, icons, tags, moods, music, etc). The comments lost their threading. It also errored out at March 2008, so I copied those last few entries from InsaneJournal instead of LiveJournal (which didn’t give any errors).

* I was able to restore the security settings by importing the XML file into Microsoft Access and then exporting the date column for only the friendslocked entries, then writing a MySQL query that changed the security settings for those entries to “private.”

* I’m going to have to add the tags back in manually. Argh. This will be easier with the SimpleTags plug-in.

* I don’t know what the hell is up with WordPress categories/tags (why it has both and what the difference is). Since LJ Crossposter matches WP categories to LJ tags, I guess I’ll just have enter the same tags and categories for every entry.

* I’m using Wordpress Thread Comment for threaded comments. It seems to work better than Brian’s, although you have to fix the bad translations. It automatically emails people whenever their comments get replies. (I wish users could choose this on a case-by-case basis; right now if you don’t want to get comment replies, don’t put in your real email address.)

* I can’t get OpenID to work with threaded comments. When OpenID submits the comments, it loses the parent comment value. I spent four hours yesterday trying to get this to work and eventually gave up in frustration. If anyone knows how to fix it, please help. Until then, there will be no OpenID. (But I’ve enabled anon comments so, really, it’s still very easy to comment.)

* I’m using Post Avatar to use icons on my posts. It works like a charm; you just save all your LJ icons (use the “Download Them All” Firefox plugin) then upload them to a directory on your server. (You do have to rename them by keyword if you want to keep the keywords, though.)

* Post Avatar doesn’t work for comments. I’m using Easy Gravatars so that I–and anyone else–can have an avatar in my comments. Unfortunately it’s limited to one icon for all comments, but it’s better than nothing. If you want to comment with an icon, register an account at Gravatar.com and then comment using the same email address as your Gravatar account. It’ll automatically pull in your icon.

* I’m using Cricket Moods to duplicate my LJ Mood Theme. I know it’s cheesy and ridiculous, but I didn’t want to give up my animated Master moods. And now I can have multiple moods per post! (Note: if you do this, edit the HTML in the moods display plugin so that the images don’t appear on your post page along with the mood checkboxes. ~150 animated mood icons really slows down the page!)

* I’m using LJ user ex to display “lj user” and “lj comm” tags correctly.

* WordPress’s “more” tag works like LJ cut, but you can only use it once per post. So I’m going to enter lj-cuts for LJ/IJ, and more tags for WordPress, and the entries will just display differently.

* WordPress sucks at handling friendslock, and has no levels of privacy. I haven’t found any plugins to solve this. The best solution I’ve come up with is to post friendslocked entries as “Private” and to use the Role Manager plugin to create a group called “Friends” which has access to private posts. So if you want to read my friendslocked entries, join the site and I’ll add you to the friends group.

There is no way to handle custom filters, though, so I’m either not going to post custom filtered entries, or I’m going to password protect them. The biggest flaw there is that people will still be able to see that there’s a password protected entry, they just won’t be able to read it.

And there’s a huge flaw which is that anyone can see when there are recent comments on private posts, so anyone looking at the “recent comments” section will know that there was a private post, what it was titled, and who commented on it, though they won’t be able to get to the actual post or read the comments. (I disabled recent comments from the sidebar, but it’s still visible in the dashboard.)

* My conclusion: it is really freaking cool to have my own blog, which I can customize any way I want, on my own server, where I know my data is safe. However, its social networking aspects suck, and all those guys going “Just get your own blog and stop whining!” are seriously missing the point of LiveJournal. (Thus, my continued cross-posting.)

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[x-bluerose-x.livejournal.com]

So what exactly crossposts entries to different journals? Is it the openId?

I'd love to do this!

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

The thing that cross-posts is a WordPress plug-in called LiveJournal Crossposter.

So basically you need to install WordPress on your own server, then install the plug-in for WordPress. :)

[x-bluerose-x.livejournal.com]

Omgs. I can do this for my author blogs!!

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

It's really nifty. :)

I do wish I could cross-post to both LJ and IJ, but for now it'll only cross-post to one other journal. Hopefully with more people leaving LJ, someone will write a plug-in that does both.

[x-bluerose-x.livejournal.com]

I was JUST about to ask that question about an IJ crosspost!! This Wordpress thing will save me a lot of hassle.

So are you manually doing it from LJ to IJ? How are you handling it now?

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

You can set it to automatically cross-post to any one LJ-type service (LJ, IJ, GJ, presumably DeadJournal and JournalFen...). So I picked IJ (since they are more fandom friendly). It's automatically synced up with IJ; anything I post or edit is instantly reflected in my IJ. (I can also choose not to cross-post certain entries, and set tags and friendslock-level directly in WordPress. I have to go to IJ to set the icon or mood though.)

I'm manually copy/pasting from IJ to LJ to put entries in my LJ. Which is part of why I won't be cross-posting everything to LJ (there's also the fact that my LJ paid time is about to run out, and that, oh yeah, LJ is evil and will happily censor fandom and treat its users like shit if it thinks that'll help its owners get rich).

Let me know if you try it out--if you get stuck I might be able to help. :)

[x-bluerose-x.livejournal.com]

w00t! Next question... my posts show up when I view my own lj but not friends list. Is there some sort of backdating option or whatever that I need to turn off in order to have the posts be visible?

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Really? Hmm. I didn't experience anything like that.

I checked, and LiveJournal Crossposter shouldn't be backdating (it doesn't even have an option for that). Try going to the LJ entry, clicking "edit," and seeing what settings are selected.

Can you link me to the journal where you're trying this? I'll take a look and see if I see anything....

[x-bluerose-x.livejournal.com]

Yup, just went to edit and it shows that the date out of order is checked. GAH

http://adriannebrennan.livejournal.com

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Hmm, my best guess is that your WordPress date/time isn't matching up to your LJ date/time.

It could also be something to do with your WordPress and LJ having entries dated later than the ones you're trying to post. Maybe the future-dated post at the top of your LJ is confusing it.

I'd try Google and search around the LJCrosspost here:
http://code.google.com/p/ljxp/

Maybe this one is similar to your issue?
http://code.google.com/p/ljxp/issues/detail?id=2

There's info here too:

http://ebroder.net/livejournal-crossposter/