Mirroring and Cross-Posting 101
22 Dec 2011 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
promethia_tenkI wrote out a basic guide to mirroring and cross-posting between LJ and DW for someone on my flist, and figured since I'd gone to the trouble, I might as well share with anyone else who's interested in mirroring their journals but scratching their heads over how to go about it. There is a small learning curve on cross-posting, but once you know what you're doing it's all exceptionally easy and doesn't really take any more time than simply posting on LJ.
1) You'll probably want to start by importing your contents from LJ over to DW. Go here (that is: Home ---> Organize menu ---> Import Content), give them your login info, and then tell them what you want them to bring over. You can import almost everything: entries, tags, comments, friends, filters, icons, profile info, etc . . . Sometimes it's a bit slow or LJ gives them problems and you'll have to try again, but they're good about giving you notices about what's worked and what's not, and once your request does go through, I've not had any problems with losing data or my formatting getting all messed up or anything like that. The one big exception would be if you host your images on LJ's scrapbook--those will not transfer over.
2) After your initial import, you will have to periodically re-import your comments from LJ if you continue to accept comments on LJ and want them backed up on DW too. Just go to the same page and request a new import.
3) To automatically cross-post your entries, go into your DW settings here (Settings ---> Other Sites tab). Under "accounts" click the "crosspost by default" box next to your LJ account. To get a link at the bottom of your DW entry linking to its LJ counterpart, click the "display crosspost link" box. If you want a link at the bottom of your LJ post to the DW post, scroll down to the "footer" section and change the drop-down menu beside "add the footer" to "always." Underneath that, they give you some html options for customizing that footer, if you want, and a preview of what your footer will look like. I like the option that shows the number of comments you have on DW, so people know if it's worth clicking over to read those.
4) To cross-post a new entry, you need to post from DW. This has its advantages: all those problems people were having with the LJ posting fields? Bad formatting? Couldn't make cuts work? There were no issues if you posted from DW. Just write your entry in DW the same way you would in LJ, and it will show up on both sites by default. If you want to not cross-post an individual entry, there are check boxes at the bottom of the posting dialogue box to temporarily turn it off or to change the comment settings on LJ, etc. Each time you edit your entry on DW, it will make the changes on LJ too. If you want an entry only on LJ but not your DW, just post from LJ.
5) As with importing your content, sometimes the crosspost will be slow or fail because of problems on LJ's end, but you will get a message if your post hasn't worked and you can try again later by editing and re-saving your post. Frankly, I have had extremely few issues with this, myself. The![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_maintenance people are also very good about keeping everyone informed about site-wide problems (you should be automatically subscribed to them on your reading page).
6) You can't currently import or mirror communities from LJ, but apparently you may be able to do so very soon!
7) How to link to users on different sites: The link account button on DW's rich text editor automatically creates a link to DW users, not LJ ones. Fortunately they make it very easy to get those different userheads for different sites. Click over to the html editor and link like this--just replace the brackets [ ] with carrots < >:
promethia_tenk is [user name=promethia_tenk]
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
promethia_tenk is [user name=promethia_tenk site=livejournal.com]
This trick works for usernames on a number of other sites too (like AO3). See a list here. DW will automatically detect if you're liking to an individual or a community and change the userhead accordingly.
Good luck! Hope this helps someone. Feel free to ask me if you're having any issues or let me know if I've screwed something up here : )
1) You'll probably want to start by importing your contents from LJ over to DW. Go here (that is: Home ---> Organize menu ---> Import Content), give them your login info, and then tell them what you want them to bring over. You can import almost everything: entries, tags, comments, friends, filters, icons, profile info, etc . . . Sometimes it's a bit slow or LJ gives them problems and you'll have to try again, but they're good about giving you notices about what's worked and what's not, and once your request does go through, I've not had any problems with losing data or my formatting getting all messed up or anything like that. The one big exception would be if you host your images on LJ's scrapbook--those will not transfer over.
2) After your initial import, you will have to periodically re-import your comments from LJ if you continue to accept comments on LJ and want them backed up on DW too. Just go to the same page and request a new import.
3) To automatically cross-post your entries, go into your DW settings here (Settings ---> Other Sites tab). Under "accounts" click the "crosspost by default" box next to your LJ account. To get a link at the bottom of your DW entry linking to its LJ counterpart, click the "display crosspost link" box. If you want a link at the bottom of your LJ post to the DW post, scroll down to the "footer" section and change the drop-down menu beside "add the footer" to "always." Underneath that, they give you some html options for customizing that footer, if you want, and a preview of what your footer will look like. I like the option that shows the number of comments you have on DW, so people know if it's worth clicking over to read those.
4) To cross-post a new entry, you need to post from DW. This has its advantages: all those problems people were having with the LJ posting fields? Bad formatting? Couldn't make cuts work? There were no issues if you posted from DW. Just write your entry in DW the same way you would in LJ, and it will show up on both sites by default. If you want to not cross-post an individual entry, there are check boxes at the bottom of the posting dialogue box to temporarily turn it off or to change the comment settings on LJ, etc. Each time you edit your entry on DW, it will make the changes on LJ too. If you want an entry only on LJ but not your DW, just post from LJ.
5) As with importing your content, sometimes the crosspost will be slow or fail because of problems on LJ's end, but you will get a message if your post hasn't worked and you can try again later by editing and re-saving your post. Frankly, I have had extremely few issues with this, myself. The
dw_maintenance people are also very good about keeping everyone informed about site-wide problems (you should be automatically subscribed to them on your reading page).6) You can't currently import or mirror communities from LJ, but apparently you may be able to do so very soon!
7) How to link to users on different sites: The link account button on DW's rich text editor automatically creates a link to DW users, not LJ ones. Fortunately they make it very easy to get those different userheads for different sites. Click over to the html editor and link like this--just replace the brackets [ ] with carrots < >:
promethia_tenk is [user name=promethia_tenk]promethia_tenk is [user name=promethia_tenk site=livejournal.com]This trick works for usernames on a number of other sites too (like AO3). See a list here. DW will automatically detect if you're liking to an individual or a community and change the userhead accordingly.
Good luck! Hope this helps someone. Feel free to ask me if you're having any issues or let me know if I've screwed something up here : )
