Things to post about on Dreamwidth

[soc_puppet]

Putting together a post for Tumblr, but I figure I'll probably want to back it up here, so I'm typing it here first to make copy-pasting easier 😂

[Edit] Now rebloggable on Tumblr! [/Edit]

[Edit 2] Added a few more things to this version! I'll be copy-pasting it to newcomers, the_great_tumblr_purge, and the new Dreamwidth Sharing community on Tumblr shortly. [/edit]

----

There's a question that may be on a lot of minds right now, that some people may be afraid to ask. Or you might not even think to ask it until after you're in deep enough that you'll feel silly for doing so. So let's get it out of the way ASAP.

"But what do I even post on Dreamwidth? Don't all posts there need to be super long and thoughtful?"

Not even a little bit! As with any social media site, posting is the blood that keeps social interactions going. Comments are also vital, but they don't happen without posts to comment on. Unfortunately, with the (I'm sorry to say) sub-par image hosting interface on Dreamwidth (that will hopefully be fixed someday, but probably is at least several years out, I'm even sorrier to say), people who are used to an image-heavy social media site might be a bit daunted by Dreamwidth's text-heavy interface. So here's some ideas of things you can post:

Shitposts. It is entirely fine, okay, and even wonderful to make shitposts on Dreamwidth! Since Dreamwidth isn't a content aggregation site and doesn't have built-in reblogging, you probably shouldn't expect them to go very far (unless a member of metaquotes sees them and wants to share), but they're still welcome 👍

GIPs, or, Gratuitous Icon Posts! Free users get a total of 15 icons to use like reaction images and gifs, and sometimes when you upload one, you just want to share it with everyone right away! That's when you make a Gratuitous Icon Post. You can literally just make a post using that icon, and then put GIP in the text field, and boom! You're done.

Steal some prompts from sunshine_challenge, snowflake_challenge, or thefridayfive. While you can also do any of these challenges in real time, there's nothing stopping you from doing them whenever you want, and The Friday Five has a huge number of back-posts to dig through. Just go back a few pages on the main community page, pick a day with questions you like the look of, and post those (with your answers) to your journal!

Another good place to steal some prompts is Questions and Questionnaires for 3weeks4dreamwidth; Three Weeks for Dreamwidth is the annual celebration of Dreamwidth's birthday, and a lot of people come up with fun things to do for it that you can do at any time.

Check out allbingo as well! While a lot of the bingo cards are made with fests in mind, there's no reason you can't pick or make a random bingo card and use the squares to come up with topics to post about. Money says the community would be down to celebrate a posting bingo with you, too!

Do you have a pet? Or more than one? Post about what they're doing right this second. Someone's bound to be interested in that!

To-do lists. Not only can it be helpful to have these actually written out, some of your followers may chime in to root for you to do them!

Media reviews in three sentences or less. Of course you can make them longer if you want, but if you're just looking to get a quick post out, this one might be pretty fun.

Something you're looking forward to! It doesn't have to be a big thing, even something like, "I can't wait for my next afternoon nap!" or "I just bought a new book and I'm really looking forward to reading it!" or "I wanna go home so I can pet my dog so bad!" Any of those would be a fine post.

Three (or more) Things Make a List: If you've got at least three things you've been meaning to post about, but don't have a lot to say about any of them, jumble them all together in the same post! Pretty sure this tradition dates back farther than Dreamwidth, though damned if I could say where it started.

Reoccurring posts are great for if you want to share something regularly and prompt discussion. Just come up with a few quick lines that you can copy-paste and share whenever, and boom! Solid posting strategy right there. There's a number of communities where this approach is fairly common, in addition to individual users.

It may not seem like these ideas have a lot in common, but one thing they're all good for is starting a conversation with your followers. And that's at least half the fun of Dreamwidth, IMO.

There's more ideas out there, but these should at least get you started. And if you keep it up, you'll have the hang of Dreamwidth in no time 😉

(With thanks to ysabetwordsmith for some of these suggestions 💖)

Comments

[conuly]

If you have very basic HTML skills, enough to use the img src tag (or to google it and then copy and paste), you can always upload your pictures to imgur or wherever and then add them to posts manually.

Wait, can the RTE handle images? I bet it can, and that's even easier if people can't do basic basic HTML.

[soc_puppet]

Oh, definitely; though I really do need to check the RTE options, since I never have it on here 😂 There's also posting by email, where attached images can be automatically included in your post.

That said, my goal with this post was to answer the question, "What do I post when I can't think of anything to post about?" and/or otherwise make text-heavy posting less intimidating; I think the question of posting images on Dreamwidth deserves a whole post on its own.

[teres]

I'd say that does deserve a post of its own! It's certainly complex enough for that.

Edit: I did find a quite recent post on that, but it might be worth it anyway!

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I have added that link to my reference list.

Re: Thank you!

[teres]

Ooh, that's nice to hear!

[soc_puppet]

That looks like a good tutorial, thank you! I'll start thinking about how to share it around and if I want to incorporate it in a larger post or not.

[teres]

Glad to be of help!

[teres]

Yes, it can! If you click the picture icon, you get this window (English rather than Dutch, I presume):

And here you can paste the link, set alt text, and the size. (The other tab's to put a link on it, as is probably obvious.)

[soc_puppet]

Oh, excellent! That's actually a lot less work than I was expecting it to be. Thank you!

[teres]

Yeah, the RTE's got some nice functionalities; the trouble comes with sorting out their various bugs (maybe I could do a post about circumventing those?).

[soc_puppet]

That would be incredible! I have the impression that a lot of Tumblr users default to RTE (I know I do over there, since they don't have a 'light HTML' option), so having a resource I can point them to to let them know what to expect would be super useful.

[teres]

I'll see what I can do! I'm a bit busy at the moment, and I'm also afraid I can only cover the more basic stuff; for the more advanced functionality, I tend to use HTML.

[soc_puppet]

That's still more information than I can share! I'm strictly a "light HTML" person over here. Thank you very much!

[teres]

Here you go!

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Might you be willing to crosspost this over on newcomers ...? It would be super useful there. I linked to it from a couple of resource posts, but an actual copy of it would be even better.

>> "But what do I even post on Dreamwidth? Don't all posts there need to be super long and thoughtful?" <<

If you like short-form blogging, you are not alone! Many people have come from other platforms and carried along their customs. So there are Twitter refugees who just post a line or two, Cohost refugees with a particular approach to prompts (see the awesome eggbug_writes for examples), and so on. You can watch for other short-form bloggers and subscribe to them.

Another option is recurring posts. Some of these are short things that you just copy-paste periodically to prompt discussion. Many communities and individual blogs use this technique. It makes an easy way to maintain activity, invite interaction, and keep people updated with what's going on.

>> people who are used to an image-heavy social media site might be a bit daunted by Dreamwidth's text-heavy interface. <<

While the platform leans toward a text interface, there are multiple communities that are mostly or entirely about posting images. You can find them in places like:

Follow Friday 3-31-23: Art
Arts and Crafts -- March 4, 2022
Follow Friday 7-5-24: Drawing
Follow Friday 2-14-25: Gardening
Follow Friday 7-15-22: Graphics
Follow Friday 4-11-25: Graphic Design
Follow Friday 9-23-22: Photography

If you're into fandom, watch fandomcalendar for image-based events.


>> To-do lists. Not only can it be helpful to have these actually written out, some of your followers may chime in to root for you to do them! <<

There are several communities that focus on such things, like goals_on_dw, 101in1001, do_it, etc. awesomeers takes the opposite approach where you cheer whatever you accomplished, no list required.


>> Media reviews in three sentences or less. Of course you can make them longer if you want, but if you're just looking to get a quick post out, this one might be pretty fun. <<

There are comms for this too:

Follow Friday 11-11-22: Reviews


>>It may not seem like these ideas have a lot in common, but one thing they're all good for is starting a conversation with your followers. And that's at least half the fun of Dreamwidth, IMO.<<

You might also like:

How to Do Online Profiles or Introductions with Less Stress

Also there's a ton of discussion material here that you can copy and use:
Questions and Questionnaires for Three Weeks for Dreamwidth

Re: Thoughts

[soc_puppet]

>> Might you be willing to crosspost this over on newcomers ...? It would be super useful there. I linked to it from a couple of resource posts, but an actual copy of it would be even better.

Sure thing! I'll probably do that tomorrow, after I incorporate some (a lot) of the resources you've provided me here 😃

I'm mostly thinking of a comment or two I saw in one of the "Welcome, refugees from another platform!" posts, where someone mentioned that a lot of their cohort were thinking that long, thoughtful posts were a cultural norm on Dreamwidth, and that shorter, sillier posts wouldn't be welcome. And one person on Tumblr specifically asked me if shitposts were a thing on Dreamwidth. Plus, I'm betting that there's a non-zero number of former LJ users who have forgotten a lot of how they used to post on LJ back in the day, and thought it might be another obstacle for them getting back into Dreamwidth-style stuff. So I was mostly putting this post together with that contingent in mind, and reassuring them that posts here don't always have to be long, serious affairs. We like fun and silly things on Dreamwidth, too!

Meanwhile, posting with images has significantly more barriers than text posting; it's still quite possible to do, but compared to sharing images at Tumblr, it'd probably be easier for a lot of people to just make text posts here. So that's why I focused on text post ideas. One of my life philosophies is, "If you want someone to do something, make it easy for them to do." I can't do a whole lot to make posting images to Dreamwidth easier, but I might be able to make posting to Dreamwidth at all easier!

...I might be talking in circles now 😅 My "laying down for a while" turned into an actual nap, which is a little closer to bed time than I usually like to do that. Probably part of why I'm still tired! (Why do I not have a "sleepy" icon, I should make or upload one tomorrow. Maybe as a reward for doing Dreamwidth-and-Tumblr-related organizational stuff...)

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Sure thing! I'll probably do that tomorrow, after I incorporate some (a lot) of the resources you've provided me here <<

Thank you!

>> a lot of their cohort were thinking that long, thoughtful posts were a cultural norm on Dreamwidth,<<

I would say that it's common here, because the platform is designed to support it, which later platforms actively work against.

>> and that shorter, sillier posts wouldn't be welcome. <<

Length tends to vary. Some comms have a rigid template that all posts have to follow, making them close in length. But most aren't like that. So if you look at a community, or individual blog, you'll often see a wide range of sizes.

Here's an example of diversity that you can use if you need one:

Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 1: The Importance of Fanifestos
This is an anchor post, actually part of a lengthy series that I did for marchmetamatterschallenge. Anchor posts often form the backbone of a blog or community. But it's rarely the only content, because they take a lot of time and work to produce. It just gives you some meaty stuff to put in your links or resources section to attract readers.

The Return of the Dire Wolf
This is another of my long-form modes, where I make lots of quotes from a crunchy article and discuss it in detail.

Photos: House Yard
This is another common type of long-form post for me, a photo-essay. I make these on LiveJournal and copy-paste the code here because DW has shitty image hosting.

How Cats Broke The Game
On the short side, I often post a link to something cool, and maybe a comment about why I think it is cool.

Good News
This is one of my recurring posts. Copy-paste-done. The other two in the set are Hard Things and Cuddle Party. They invite community interaction, and in fact, I created them for that purpose after Suzette Haden Elgin mentioned that relationships are fraying and online ones can't always pick up the slack. Sure they can, but you have to cultivate that, and I knew how so I made these. Anyone can copy them or use them as inspiration, so there are several variations floating around now.

Birdfeeding tag
If you scroll through these, you'll see that they vary widely from short to long. A person can pick any daily activity that interests them and log it -- I've seen pages written, books read, cooking, gaming, etc.


As for silliness, that's about tone rather than length, and is entirely a matter of taste. There are completely serious comms and blogs as well as completely absurd ones. Whatever your taste, you can find some to match, or make your own as you please.


>> Plus, I'm betting that there's a non-zero number of former LJ users who have forgotten a lot of how they used to post on LJ back in the day, and thought it might be another obstacle for them getting back into Dreamwidth-style stuff. <<

I've definitely heard people say that. It's a key reason why I've made so many "how to" posts for DW.

>>So I was mostly putting this post together with that contingent in mind, and reassuring them that posts here don't always have to be long, serious affairs. We like fun and silly things on Dreamwidth, too!<<

Well played.

>>Meanwhile, posting with images has significantly more barriers than text posting; it's still quite possible to do, but compared to sharing images at Tumblr, it'd probably be easier for a lot of people to just make text posts here.<<

Yeah, it's a lot easier to find a different site for image hosting and setup, then copy-paste the code here. There are some other blog platforms around but I don't know which ones currently have compatible code.


>> One of my life philosophies is, "If you want someone to do something, make it easy for them to do." <<

Absolutely. A couple of mine:

"Make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing." (animal training)

"Find a way to make it do what you want it to do while letting it do what it wants to do." (engineering)

>> I can't do a whole lot to make posting images to Dreamwidth easier, but I might be able to make posting to Dreamwidth at all easier! <<

You might want to highlight the "insert image" tool. That one is easy to use inside a post -- if you already have images elsewhere or you just want to paste in one picture from another site. I wouldn't want to build a photo-essay that way, but if what people want is a fast way to make a short post that is just one picture -- like a funny meme they found -- then it can work.

>>(Why do I not have a "sleepy" icon, I should make or upload one tomorrow. Maybe as a reward for doing Dreamwidth-and-Tumblr-related organizational stuff...)<<

Good idea.