newcomers | Oct. 9th, 2024

One of the major differences I've seen between dreamwidth and cohost is that the barrier to entry for interaction is much higher here. On cohost there was the option to "like" a post with a single click; some people turned notifications for those off, but even so it was very common to like something that you resonated with or appreciated if you didn't have anything to say about it.

That system doesn't exist here - there are comments, but that's it. And from what I've seen other former cohost users post, people feel awkward about leaving comments which they don't feel add anything constructive or make for conversation. At the same time, however, it feels far quieter and (for lack of a better word) "lonelier" on dreamwidth without the little pings letting you know that people saw and enjoyed what you posted. So, elaborating on a suggestion from kossai, here is a way to actively invite people to post "low content" comments to express their approval:

👍 Leave a Like! ❤️

Don't have much to say, but want to show appreciation? Feel free to leave a single-emoji comment (🙂, 👍, ❤️, or whatever!) to let me know you like what you see!

I left the base colors as black and white for text and background, but you can absolutely customize them (as well as the border color) if you so desire. The base code is as follows:

≪div style="color: black; text-align: center; width: 75%; border: 10px ridge; border-radius: 5px; padding: 10px; background: white;"≫≪p style="font-size: 1.5em; font-weight: bold; margin: 0;"≫👍 Leave a Like! ❤️≪/p≫Don't have much to say, but want to show appreciation? Feel free to leave a single-emoji comment (🙂, 👍, ❤️, or whatever!) to let me know you like what you see!≪/div≫

(Of course, you'll need to replace the "≪" and "≫" symbols with the appropriate "<" and ">" versions - but this way you can see what the code is.)