Over on LiveJournal, I heard about a new blogging service called Dreamwidth in beta testing. Some of my LJ friends had gotten invites and in the usual hysteria over LJ (will it be sold again? complaints about the current owners. complaints about ads and things not working?. annoyed with changes.), people are looking to this new service as a backup/place to go if they leave LJ. Before Dreamwidth, many LJers went to Insane Journal as a backup/just in case blog.
LiveJournal is an Open Source, and both Dreamwidth and InsaneJournal use its code, with some tweaking, so it's almost like being on LJ. I tried IJ, but since it was so similar to LJ and I have more faith in LJ than the people prone to panic or who hate change, I don't use it.
But I got curious about Dreamwidth because it's new and they're trying to be ad-free by making money from paid accounts (there is a free version) and it is fun to get in on the ground floor. So, I scored an invite from a friend (and no, I don't have invites yet to give out) and got started, going for a paid account at the limited time frame discount rate. And am less than impressed. They really aren't ready yet for prime time.
There are 4 templates with no themes, although you can customize the colors. If you want to do your own style sheet, you can, but unlike Blogger, but like LJ, you don't work in the actual template code, which I always found confusing in LJ. I can play with colors and such, but really changing a design, even just moving the sidebar, is not something I've been able to figure out. So I need to wait for more templates in the hopes of getting something I like.
They don't have a logged in version of the home page yet. To actually read my own journal, I have to snag the url and bookmark it, wait til I post to get the link to view my journal, or go to my Reading List (a la LJ's Friends' Page) and get the link from the navbar there. There's a choice of color scheme for the site once logged in and neither appealed to me. Both have color combinations that are hard for me to read.
This might be a great blogging platform someday, but they've got a way to go. And I hope they do some serious tweaing/revising of the code. When sites look alike, I get bored. Sure, better service would be a good thing, but I also like sites to distinguish themselves from each other. LJ and other sites using their code should not look like clones. There should be some real differences. Otherwise, why bother.
Oh, right. The people ticked off by LJ need a place to go.
Now I just need to figure out what to do with my Dreamwidth journal.
~~~o0o~~~
