galadhir | How to Get Established on Dreamwidth

I've heard that some people are joining DW and then finding it really difficult to figure out how to find content that they want to see when DW doesn't have an algorithm to suggest things to you. So I thought I'd share my methods of finding content that I want to see.

This is more work than letting an algorithm do things for you, but it also means that you only get exactly what you want, and you get the opportunity to talk to people and make connections that you wouldn't do if you were only pressing a 'like' button.

So, you've turned up on DW and made an account. Now what do you do?

1. Establish you're a person
First of all, upload at least one icon and make a couple of posts of your own. This will establish you as a real person, so that when you start following people, they will be more inclined to allow you access and to follow you back.

It's probably a good idea to make one of those posts an explanation that you're newly arrived and you're going to be following a lot of people. That way if people whom you've just followed go to your journal to check you out, they'll know why you've started following them out of the blue.

2. Choose some interests
In your profile, there is a space to list your interests. List everything you can think of that you would be interested to read about or talk about. If you're fannish, this will be easy - list every fandom you're interested in, every pairing etc. If you're not fannish then list hobbies, interests and things you want to talk about, whether it's knitting or gardening or politics etc.

3. Use your interests to find people to follow
Once you save your interests, you'll see that every interest which is shared by someone else on the site has become a link.

Click on your first interest, and you'll be taken to a list of people who share that interest. Follow anyone who's been active in the last year.

Now see if there are any communities listed who share that interest. Join any communities which have been active in the last year.

Repeat for the next interest, and the next, until you've followed all the people and joined all the communities which list your interest.

4. Use your communities to find people to follow
The communities you belong to will be full of people who share your interests, but who may not have put them in their bio. Now you can go through the posts in each community and follow people who have made interesting posts or comments in the community.

By this time your reading page should have quite a lot of posts on it. Now you need to start commenting on people's posts. If you haven't made an introduction post, then comment on something that each person you followed has said and say hello that way. If you have made an introduction post just start commenting on things that interest you, and people will usually be happy to chat back.

At this stage you might feel that you're fine and you have enough connections and enough to read. If so, that's great - read your reading list, comment on other people's posts, make posts of your own, and people will comment on them. Soon you'll feel settled in a nice community of people you know who are talking about things you like.

5. Use the people you follow to find people to follow
If your reading list is still sparse after going through the steps above, then you can use the people you follow to help you locate more people to follow.

Go to the profiles of people you follow. There will be a list of the people they follow. If you follow interesting people, the chances are that they follow interesting people too. Check out the people your friends follow and follow them too.

EDITED to add this great list of links with lots of tips on how to feel at home on DW by

theladyscribe How to Dreamwidth: a linkspam

That's all I know! Anyone else got other hints?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is a great post! Some other thoughts:

If you’ve found some communities you like, checked the “member posts” page (the community’s reading page) to see what members of the community are posting on their own journals. This is a great way to find who are active, and also find people who might share similar interests.

Another tip is to post in communities like

addme.

followfriday also has a lot of community suggestions.

If you check the profile and pinned post on people’s journals, it’ll also tell you about their friending policy; they might like people to post a comment on a specific post, or have other friending policy notes.

Finally, participating in the

snowflake_challenge and

sunshine_challenge is always a good idea!

Oh thank you! I had not thought of any of those things myself, and hopefully if people are directed to this post they will benefit from the suggestion too :) I'd never heard of

snowflake_challenge or

sunshine_challenge. I'm going to go away and look them up rn :)

They’re really great! Both for actually doing during their months, but also for finishing up later (cough me still finishing up sunshine).

Yeah, I've often thought that maybe all I need is some prompts, so this looks perfect :) Thank you!

This is a great starter kit! Mind if I share it around with some friends who are just setting up their accounts?

Oh please do! I was hoping it would be useful in just that way :)

Good post.
You may want to mention the "Network" button on the Reading page. This will introduce you to friends of your friends who are active. Less helpful now there are lots of feeds, but will still bring up people you would never otherwise see.

Ooh. Thank you for mentioning the Network button on the Reading page, as I didn't know about this one. Must go and check it out myself!

Always glad to help!

Those seem like great tips, and great ways to find people!

I'd say that one thing it helps to remember is that you have two different ways of "friending" people (neither of which are called friending.)
When you add someone to your circle, you can choose to follow their posts AND you choose whether you want to grant them access. Those are different things, and while in my personal experience, I mostly do both, it's totally okay to only do one or the other.
Granting access means that you allow that journal to see your friends-locked posts, not just your public ones. (Though an extra benefit of DW is that you can filter your entries to certain groups, so even if you've granted a journal access to your posts, you can still filter them out of certain topics if you want to.)
Following someone means that their posts will show up on your reading page. This will include their public posts, but also locked posts that the poster has granted you access to.
You can grant access to someone, but choose not to follow them, if you want them to be able to see your posts but you don't necessarily want their posts on your reading list.
You can also follow someone without granting them access: this is pretty common, if you're interested in what someone posts, but aren't sure you want them to see your locked posts. In my experience, it's not uncommon for someone to follow you, and then if the two of you have some good interactions for a while, they may later grant you access.

Communities are much the same, where you can follow the community and/or join the community. Check out the "about" page to note any community rules. Some comms may have moderated membership or may not even allow people to join at all. If you want to post to a community, you'll have to be a member, though a non-member can still see and sometimes comment on public posts.
With very active communities (optimistic, lol) you may want to join but not follow, if you feel like it clogs up your read list by posting many times a day. In my experience, that's not a huge concern, and I'm more likely to forget that a comm exists if I don't see the posts!

Definitely the biggest thing: INTERACT. DW can be used passively, if you just want to look at the things posted to comms and such, but it's very difficult to really get to know anyone as a lurker. Commenting on community posts is HIGHLY encouraged, as is replying to other comments. *Making* (on-topic) community posts is also something that is almost always welcome, yet happens comparatively rarely.

Oh wonderful! I am glad you explained that :) I'm hoping the post will get linked to or passed around and more people can benefit from all these hints. I tend to subscribe and grant access to everyone so I hadn't thought of this, but I bet that is a confusing wrinkle to those who don't know :) Thanks!

And yes, INTERACT. That really is the key to everything. You do get more out of DW so it's probably only fair that you have to put more in too.

I hope the post does get shared with people who might be able to use it!

I also almost always both follow and grant access, though a couple times, especially if someone has a mostly blank journal, I'll just follow for a while first.

Some other sites do offer a difference between following and friending, and a couple like FB even offer some options for privacy filters, but... I don't think most social media sites these days have near the number of options to control your own posts and to create levels of privacy on what you post.

To be fair, interaction is probably the key for most fandom spaces, at least if you want to make friends. But twitter/tumblr/insta/etc are a lot more lurker-friendly, because there is SO MUCH content, you can scroll forever without running out. (And if you're in danger of running out, the algorithm will offer you more!) When it comes to DW, the connections you make ARE the content in a lot of ways - I spend more time commenting back and forth with people than I do reading or posting, and that's the way I like it! So while it's a higher demand in terms of effort on DW, I agree that it's also higher reward.

I find that as well as being easier to lurk it's also harder to interact on Tumblr just because it's not set up to thread comments in a reasonable way, and almost impossible for more than one person to talk to each other in any coherent way. DW's architecture was always better for communities. Although lots of people seem to have made it work on Twitter which to me seems even more hostile toward groups of people talking to each other. I guess people can make things work on anything :) But I do think that the relationships are the point on DW in a way that they aren't elsewhere. I made better friends on LJ than anywhere else

Yeah. Tumblr is much faster moving, and while you CAN talk back and forth in reblogs, that means you're broadcasting your conversation to all of your follows. Directing comments on a post at each other is also fine... but much harder to follow the whole conversation, especially if multiple people are commenting and holding multiple conversations. DMs are a thing, but that feels a lot more personal, and sometimes you don't need a conversation to be that private, especially if it's a broader community you're looking for.
(Also, I basically only use tumblr on mobile, and I hate typing on my phone, lol.)

I mean, people will always adapt to the sites they wind up on, I suppose. As well as adapting the sites themselves to suit their needs. There ARE people who have a lot of great conversation and connection on tumblr, even though it feels like it's not set up well for that. And as hostile as twitter always seemed for that sort of thing, it worked for a lot of people.

DW also feels a bit less... hmm, performative, maybe? Or less locked behind a persona, at least. With twitter or tumblr it seems more like anything personal has to come with a minimum level of interesting or funny, because there's an expectation that if you're putting it out there, people will see it, and that means they have to find something worthwhile in it. (Sometimes it's just being a good storyteller, sometimes it's only sharing the funniest anecdotes, sometimes it's making every post a well-researched essay.) The journaling sites of yore and DW now feel a lot less like that has to be the case. I'll make a mundane personal post every damn day if I want to, lmao. And I think that also lends itself to deeper connections.

Not to say people don't share deeply interesting or weird or amazing things on DW - they absolutely do! But I like the totally mundane stuff having a space, too.

I have to admit I hate DMs. It's like you took texting and then added the worst thing about being on the telephone - that feeling that you have to reply instantly, and you have to stay on the line until the other person hangs up. Like you say, it feels too high pressure and too intimate.

It's true - I had some great conversations on Tumblr and was in two fandoms that seemed to thrive there until they died out. But yeah, the connections you made were pretty much based on the fandom only. I think you've hit the nail on the head that DM is less performative. I did always feel very pressured there that if I did say anything at all, it should be what would qualify as 'good content'. And pretending to be interesting all the time was very difficult! DW is more like people reading each others' diaries and appreciating them as people rather than content providers.

Oh god, that is exactly it - like making texting high-pressure and time-sensitive. I like the slower style of commenting back and forth, where it feels like you don't have to commit to immediate, constant availability. (Which is a thing that burns me out.)

But yes - I guess some people find the idea of reading about someone else's minutia unappealing, but to me that's the kind of stuff that does signify the "getting to know someone" aspect... I mean, I love cool people who do cool things and share them! I know a ton of really cool people on DW who make amazing art and go neat places when they travel and things like that. But getting to also hear about a gripe from work, or the still-fun-but-mundane thing they did with friends, etc. makes it less about that whole "content provider vs audience" model of interaction and turns it into something that feels more like a friend group.

>>When it comes to DW, the connections you make ARE the content in a lot of ways - I spend more time commenting back and forth with people than I do reading or posting, and that's the way I like it! <<

That's one option, but not the only one. People can use DW in many ways because it's so flexible. Possibilities include:

* A personal diary that they keep locked.

* A place to communicate with a few friends or family.

* A place to make new friends.

* Sharing daily images or activities, which is helpful for recordkeeping, with or without interaction.

* Posting archives of useful stuff like recipes, which people may read far more often than discuss.

* Hosting events.

That flexibility matters, because not a lot of other platforms are that versatile, most are more specialized. The more people know about Dreamwidth's versatility, the more users it's likely to attract.

I was aiming my comment specifically toward people who ARE looking to DW as a social space (whether fleeing Twitter or just in general looking for a specific kind of social connection that they aren't finding elsewhere).

But yes, DW can be used in a LOT of different ways! It also lends itself better to those various uses than a lot of other spaces - while you can use many sites in various ways, it often requires almost brute-forcing the site's features to do what you want. DW is legitimately much more flexible, and no choice on how to use it is a wrong one.

Yes, I guess for me the reason why I came back from Tumblr was that it was easier to talk to people on DW - there's more of an expectation that people will reply to you if you add a comment to their post. But if you were using your social media of choice as a diary or a place to host events then DW is actually set up better than Twitter for that, and you can do it just as easily (if not more so) than you could on Tumblr *plus* you have more control over who gets to see it.

>> Yes, I guess for me the reason why I came back from Tumblr was that it was easier to talk to people on DW <<

Dreamwidth really facilitates interaction and conversation.

>> there's more of an expectation that people will reply to you if you add a comment to their post. <<

Depends on the venue -- some people say they don't comment back much, or their blog is not designed for that -- but DW is much more supportive of comment threads like that so lots of people do it. A "What do you think?" type coda at the end of a post encourages comment threads.

Some blogs are just really prone to crosstalk too. You should see some of the threads my readers get into on a Poetry Fishbowl day. Sometimes a group of them will plot out a whole poem for me by the time I get to that prompt thread.

>>But if you were using your social media of choice as a diary or a place to host events then DW is actually set up better than Twitter for that, and you can do it just as easily (if not more so) than you could on Tumblr *plus* you have more control over who gets to see it.<<

Very much so. The privacy and moderation tools here are very robust. I don't even use them all, but I have friends who use filters heavily because they are writing for multiple audiences they don't want to mix up, or post personal things and fanfic where readers might not be interested in both of those.

Like almost everything spending the energy to do some (appropriate) imput greatly improves the output!

>>*Making* (on-topic) community posts is also something that is almost always welcome, yet happens comparatively rarely.<<

In theory, yes. In practice, I and other people have found that some communities are downright hostile to new posters -- even if they are low-traffic and the listed rules are followed. When making my activity community lists for

followfriday I skip ones that seem prone to this. I get the impression that some communities are really closed groups of people, and not all of them necessarily use the tools for that. (DW lets you make posts visible to members only, or choose who can get in a community, or even close it to new members.)

So if you're looking for communities to join, don't rubberstamp them. Look at the top several posts. Are they the kind of thing you want to read? Are people meeting your personal standards of civility? If so, then join/subscribe if you wish.

This topic comes up every year during

snowflake_challenge because lots of folks encourage people toward community activity, which means lots of people posting or commenting in communities, and somebody always finds one of the hostile ones and goes "WHYYYYY?"

Yeah... unfortunately there are people who don't really utilize the lockdown features they have available to them. If new members aren't welcome, because it's actually a private party, I'd really rather they make that clear.

Still, the most frequent complaint I hear from the couple people I know who run comms is how no one else ever posts to them. I hope the existence of some unfriendly groups doesn't discourage people from participating at all (though unfortunately I know that bad experiences can have that impact!)

But yes - definitely good advice to look at communities and make sure they actually have a vibe that works for you. Sometimes a topic looks great based on the about page, but the general tone and attitudes of the space just aren't.

>> Yeah... unfortunately there are people who don't really utilize the lockdown features they have available to them. <<

Not everyone may know about the coded features. But anyone could fill in the community profile or a sticky post with "This community is for members of Group X" or even "This community is not seeking new members at this time." New participants may not always check these places, but many do.

>>If new members aren't welcome, because it's actually a private party, I'd really rather they make that clear.<<

I wish that too. I've seen some do it, and that is fine.

>> Still, the most frequent complaint I hear from the couple people I know who run comms is how no one else ever posts to them. <<

I've seen that a lot, but not everyone who says they want activity is prepared to back it up with action. Sure dealing with newcomers can be pesky at times, but dogpiling people does nobody any good.

I run two communities,

allbingo and

crowdfunding, which have enough activity to attract new people occasionally. I do not run

followfriday but I'm one of the few regular posters there, and I'd love to see more people participating.

>> I hope the existence of some unfriendly groups doesn't discourage people from participating at all (though unfortunately I know that bad experiences can have that impact!) <<

Based on the comments I've seen, it usually does discourage people. This is worsened by the fact that many people who dislike socializing in person, or who rarely find compatible friends in their locale, turn to the internet instead -- and those are exactly the kind of folks most put off by a hostile response. It only takes one. They decide to lurk instead.

I have also had people delurk on my blog after watching for weeks or months to see if it meets their standards of safety, and mention problems with communities.

Hence why both of my communities have profiles that describe typical activities and expectations of civility. Other community hosts are welcome to use that as inspiration if they find it helpful.

>>But yes - definitely good advice to look at communities and make sure they actually have a vibe that works for you. Sometimes a topic looks great based on the about page, but the general tone and attitudes of the space just aren't.<<

Yeah. I've learned a lot in compiling lists of active communities. Some subjects have many, others few. Dreamwidth is littered with dormant or dead communities that sound awesome. :( Sometimes there's a specific subtopic, but no surviving community on the general topic. The tools for finding communities can be super frustrating.

That's why I started listing active communities. It can be hard to think up things you like. It is much easier to go down a list of possibilities and find things that seem interesting enough to explore.

I would hope most new comm members would check the about section. As you say, probably not all - I'm sure plenty of people just click through based on a name, but I think a notice that the comm is closed/not seeking new members would probably be seen by more people than not, and could prevent some of that friction.

Unfortunately yes, it is likely that one bad experience (particularly if it's a first or early experience trying something new) can turn people off from it permanently. (Or semi-permanently.) Which sucks, because there are comms and mods crying out for interaction and participation, and people who'd love to participate except they were burned before!

I have seen a few other comms that talk about the same sort of thing in either a sticky or the about - what's typical and welcome in the space, trying to encourage participation while also giving an idea of *how* to do so, for people who may be nervous about coming in cold.

The number of completely dead communities is a tragedy sometimes! So many interesting topics that lack an active space.

Haha, yeah I think that's roughly how I started on LJ back in the day. XD I had a lot more time to post then, wrote movie reviews etc.
Some of it is also how I got to know new people here. I checked the interests I'd added and then who posted actively in the comms. There was also the friending meme in the cdrama comm that was helpful!

I really like the options to make different access lists for my circle. And really, the most important part is to interact with people here, join some conversations in the comms and commenting on peoples' entries.

It did all seem easier the first time, but I think that was because I was in the grip of an all consuming fannishness and it was exciting to track it down. This time I'm just more tired and vaguely aware that if I'd just come here straight after LJ I could have spared myself a lot of effort!

I seem to have missed the friending meme, but I'll find that comm and look it up. Thank you!

Yeah, it definitely was easier back then, fresh into fandom and jumping into a thriving comm culture straight away! I did set up my DW account when LJ started to turn bad and everyone was leaving, but fandom had moved on to tumblr at the time and so I posted less and less, even stopped for several years.

It was in

c_ent I think! I always enjoyed the friending memes back in the day. :D

Ooh, thank you! That looks like an excellent place that I didn't know about before :)

Great post. Very helpful for beginners.

Thank you! It has turned out to be very helpful for me too as several people have suggested other things I had never heard of :)

Thank you for this post! Do you mind if I link it here? I'm gathering resources for people in this community who are new to DW.

Oh please do! I hoped that it would be of help to new people and it can only do that if it's shared around. Thank you :)

Thank you!! :)

I made a Twitter Exodus resource post too.

That looks great, thank you!

Hurray! That looks amazingly useful, not only for people coming from Twitter but also for people like me who've been here a while but never really got to grips with all the communities and resources Thank you!

You're welcome.

I have long tended to post resources whenever there's an exodus, in hopes of scooping new users. Previously, someone else usually wrote a "Dreamwidth for X Users" post that I could link and be done. This time, nobody has. So I started linking other types of beginner references and ... just ... kept ... going. Last night I edited the link list into categories because it had gotten so long.

Such great tips, thank you for sharing such a helpful post! I signal boosted it on my journal :)

Thank you! I hope the people who need it will see it :)

I appreciate your hard work making this list. I have linked it on my Twitter Exodus post of resources.

>>I've heard that some people are joining DW and then finding it really difficult to figure out how to find content that they want to see when DW doesn't have an algorithm to suggest things to you. <<

Yeah, I'm doing what I can about that too.

>>1. Establish you're a person<<

Fill out your profile. If you're not sure what to include, grab a friending meme and use that for inspiration what to say. See

friending_memes for some ideas.

>>Now see if there are any communities listed who share that interest. Join any communities which have been active in the last year.<<

This year I have been listing active communities on various themes in my Follow Friday tag, and linked on

followfriday which is also a good place to find recommendations for communities or bloggers.

Communities in my entries are marked with their activity level:
* Highly active with multiple posts per day, daily posts, or too many to count easily
* Active with (one, multiple, many) posts in (current or recent month)
* Somewhat active (latest post within current year, not in last month or few)
* Low traffic (latest post in previous year)
* Dormant (latest post before previous year)
-- Note that some communities are only active during a limited time, or only have gather posts on a certain schedule.

>> By this time your reading page should have quite a lot of posts on it. Now you need to start commenting on people's posts. <<

Community Thursdays is a custom like Follow Friday, although it doesn't have a community of its own yet. This is where folks go out to communities and post or comment there. It helps boost activity. The more people do this, the better. For some folks, setting a specific day for this makes it easier to remember, especially if they make a gather post about what they did.

>>That's all I know! Anyone else got other hints?<<

Most folks on Dreamwidth post between once a day and once a week. A few folks post monthly or less, but then it's hard to grow an audience. A few folks post more than once a day; some readers love this, while others find it overwhelming. (I'm the prolific sort.) It helps to tell people about your frequency, so they can find blogs that match their comfort level.

To maintain activity, many bloggers use recurring posts. Pick one or a few favorite topics and make a point to post about them regularly. It can be daily (my birdfeeding/gardening posts), weekly (my Monday update posts), monthly (my Poetry Fishbowl), or whatever works for you. I listed some common options in the post but there are many other possibilities. Recurring posts tell people what you are really into from your list of interests, and they will follow you for that. Or anything you do frequently; I have friends who use me as a newsfeed because I like to post interesting links.

Thank you for adding all this extra info! I certainly was not aware of friending memes or follow friday - especially not that there were communities of that name! I had also managed to completely forget that it was possible to post to communities as well as to your own journal. I like the idea of having a recurring post, but I think I would struggle to stay that organized. I do try to stick to the tacit understanding that posting at least once a week is best. Thanks for making that implicit understanding explicit. It hadn't even occurred to me to do so.

Also thanks for all the links and ideas which will make this a much more useful post :) I have certainly learned a lot too :)

>> Thank you for adding all this extra info! <<

*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service.

>> I certainly was not aware of friending memes or follow friday - especially not that there were communities of that name! <<

Follow Friday used to be a huge thing on LJ and DW. This year some of us have tried to revive it based on discussions during

snowflake_challenge and I'm hoping it will become more popular again. Friending memes also used to be ubiquitous, but that community is slower now.

>>I had also managed to completely forget that it was possible to post to communities as well as to your own journal.<<

Well, somebody has to make the posts! It varies, though. Some communities have very diverse activities. Places like

gardening and

common_nature really rely on diverse people posting about their own observations. Some communities are structured and only have one or a few people posting, or limited types of posts (e.g. reviews or story recs). A lot of fandom-specific comms are like this.

>> I like the idea of having a recurring post, but I think I would struggle to stay that organized. <<

I write them in my desktop calendar, otherwise I'd never keep them all straight. Plenty of people just do a weekly update, because it's easier to remember. If you like the idea but you're not sure if it's really for you, consider testing it for a month or so. You can always drop it if you hate it or feel bad about forgetting it. But if it works you can keep it.

>>I do try to stick to the tacit understanding that posting at least once a week is best. Thanks for making that implicit understanding explicit. It hadn't even occurred to me to do so.<<

I noticed this because some Add Me communities or friending memes mention post frequency. I've seen enough of those, and ends of the spectrum pegged down with "Aaaa I can't find any active bloggers" to "Aaaaa too many posts," that I worked out a popular range of post frequency. I just happen to be a firehose myself. Some people are into that.

>>Also thanks for all the links and ideas which will make this a much more useful post :) I have certainly learned a lot too :)

Yay!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Profile

galadhir

Beecroft Books

January 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Page Summary

Style Credit

Base style: Abstractia by chiming
Theme: Dusk by nornoriel

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jan. 9th, 2026 04:03 pm

Qualified for Destiny

How to Get Established on Dreamwidth

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags