Cohost Is Closing

[ysabetwordsmith]

Cohost is closing. Registration shut down on September 9 when the closure was announced. It will go read-only on October 1, 2024 and disappear entirely at the end of 2024. See "Cohost News" for more on this topic and what you can do about it. Use the "Introduction / Friending Meme" to say hello and meet new people or find your Cohost friends here. A mourning post is here.

If you are on Cohost, you may find Dreamwidth a viable replacement. Scroll down for more resources about this.

For people on any other service, this is an opportunity to scoop new users. Listen to why people liked Cohost and say they will miss it. Does your favorite service meet any of those needs? If so, encourage people to move there instead. Gathering more of your friends together will make any service more fun to use.

For example, people have described Cohost as friendly, creative, innovative, user-expressive, community-oriented, with good features and moral developers. Dreamwidth has free, paid, and premium levels so you can choose the package that suits your needs. It offers private blogs, themed communities, and pretty robust moderation tools that let you delete comments you don't want on your blog or block people so they can't bother you. It's easy to find bloggers you like and nurture a sense of community. You can make short posts, carry long conversations, share images, and so on. Want a hate-free online space? It's not that hard to make one. Want to make a Cohost-like experience on Dreamwidth? Consider starting a community or using feeds. Looking for communities on your favorite topics to replace the Cohost accounts that you used to enjoy? Check out followfriday for suggestions, or watch dw_community_promo. You can also use the search box in your blog header or the Interests page. Community Thursdays is just a custom of folks posting what they've done in communities recently, whether posting or commenting.


Here are some resources that you can share or reblog for new users to find...

Communities

* Follow Friday: Primers and Guides
This post lists communities for newcomers, and a bunch of links to individual posts about using Dreamwidth and its communities.

* getting_started
This comm is intended to help new Dreamwidth users find their way around during the beta stage. Links to helpful introductory posts, useful features of the site, and basic questions about where things are or how they work are all welcome here.

* eggbug_club
The New Cohost Global Feed
Community Description: A little community for cohost users.

* eggbug_writes
From Cohost, a little community to post writing prompts to and see stories.

* fandomcalendar
This place is your bulletin board. You can use it to mention challenges, memes, cons, charity drives, zines, challenge communities and any other event of interest to the fan community, upcoming and ongoing, whenever and wherever they take place.

* followfriday
Find new communities and bloggers to read here. Each Friday, a gather post goes up where people can comment with their recommendations.

* the_great_tumblr_purge
Reconnecting through Dreamwidth.

* newcomers
A community for people who have come to Dreamwidth from any other service. Search for your friends here and get tips on using Dreamwidth.

* reddit_refugees
A community for people who have come to Dreamwidth from Reddit. Find your Reddit friends here and get tips on using Dreamwidth.

* tumblrmigration
Friending Memes and Resources. A place to find new and old friends from tumblr, started after the December 2018 policy change.

* Activating Communities by ysabetwordsmith

* Follow Friday Master Post by ysabetwordsmith
Links to lists of active communities by topic and other useful resources.

* Improving Communities on Dreamwidth by ysabetwordsmith


Basic Information on Dreamwidth

* About Dreamwidth

* Dreamwidth for Tumblr Users Tutorial Compilation by soc_puppet

* Helpful Tips for Former Cohost Users (like myself) by onlyknownothing

* Basic Dreamwidth for Tumblr users by staranise

* dreamwidth 101: the (sort of) fast version by tofuhouse

* Dreamwidth tips and links by mindstalk

* Dreamwidth Tips and Tricks! by sylvaine

* Dreamwidth Manual of Style

* Dreamwidth tips tag by vriddy

* Getting Started on DW (from LiveJournal)

* How to Dreamwidth: a linkspam by theladyscribe

* how to dreamwidth: a primer

* How to Get Established on Dreamwidth by galadhir

* Links on using/navigating/settling in on Dreamwidth by umadoshi

* New to Dreamwidth?

* Resources and Helpful Information by paradisediner (including Kpop)

* So you're into BNHA and just created a Dreamwidth account by vriddy

* What to post about on Dreamwidth by soc_puppet

* A Tumblr User's Guide to Dreamwidth

* Using Dreamwidth by silvercat17


How to Do the Things on Dreamwidth

* Dreamwidth FAQ

* Anatomy of a Dreamwidth Post

* commenter’s block: the lesser known cousin of writer’s block
This is actually on AO3, but includes some ideas that work for commenting on Dreamwidth and other venues.

* The Create Entries Page by soc_puppet

* Dreamwidth Alternatives to Talking in the Tags by soc_puppet

* Dreamwidth Banning and Tumblr Blocking by Veteransystem

* Dreamwidth Layouts by bluedreaming

* How to Do Online Profiles or Introductions with Less Stress by ysabetwordsmith

* How to Link to Other Users on Dreamwidth and Elsewhere

* How To Make Discussion Happen On DW by melannen

* How to Make Dreamwidth Mobile-Friendly

* How to Make Sticky / Pinned Posts

* How to Make Text Area by vexed_wench on allbingo

* Images on Dreamwidth by ysabetwordsmith

* Post by email (including a GPG option)

* A Quick Guide to Mood Themes by soc_puppet

* A quick introduction to Dreamwidth's Rich Text Editor by teres

* A Remedy for the new Dreamwidth inbox by regshoe

* Spoiler Tags That Work in the Comments Too by falena

* tutorial: Uploading Images by in_sufficientdata


Dreamwidth Code

* See communities dreamcodes and fancoded for information on CSS, which you can use to customize your journal style.

* Bingo Card Generator
This page automatically generates a bingo table from 2x2 to 7x7 squares, and gives you both HTML and BBC code options to display it. For Dreamwidth you want HTML. To use it, open a post making window, click the HTML view tab, and paste your code in that window.

* Dev Getting Started (for the code)

* Dev Style Guide

* Explore Markdown

* Guest Lecture - On Fiction Organisation by amiserablepileofwords
Create a beginning / previous / next link box for your serials.

* HTML Primer

* HTML tags on Dreamwidth?

* Guide to HTML / CSS by girlrock

* Icon Table Generator by Chlor
Instantly generate HTML you can copy and paste to display your icons/graphics in a nice, neat, numbered customizable table in a Dreamwidth post or anywhere.

* Photoset Code for Dreamwidth by midnightchills

* Warnings & How To Do 'Em by amadi (making a graybar)


Find More Friends on Dreamwidth

* Follow Friday: Add Me Communities
These communities invite you to post an introduction, and read other people's introductions, so you can find like-minded friends on Dreamwidth.

* Back to School Friending Meme by silviarambles

* friending_memes hosts intermittent events with different themes. You can also copy old friending memes from there and use them in your blog.

* allbingo has "meet and greet" posts for some fest themes. See examples for Valentines and for Games and Entertainment. There should be one for the November theme of "Sleepytime Bear." October will have the "Fall Fest." September is running People with Disabilities Drabble Fest and Piracy Fest.

* Common times when clusters of friending memes often appear on Dreamwidth include the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season, snowflake_challenge (January), Valentine's Day (February), Three Weeks for Dreamwidth (April-May), and sunshine_challenge (July).

* "How to Hack the Snowflake Challenge" by ysabetwordsmith

* "Finding people on Dreamwidth" by vriddy

* "Helping an Online Friend in Difficult Times" by ysabetwordsmith -- This may be useful if your friends are stressed over the Twitter situation.

* "How to Boost Your Audience" by ysabetwordsmith -- This was written for crowdfunding but generalizes well to other concepts.

* "Improving Community in Fandom" by ysabetwordsmith -- This post offers ideas for making and maintaining connections with other folks.

* "Let Your Freak Flag Fly" by ysabetwordsmith -- You are not alone. There are plenty of nerds, freaks, geeks, and weirdos on Dreamwidth.

* List of Add Me friending communities by ysabetwordsmith from Follow Friday tag

* Making Friends on Dreamwidth

* "Membership Retention" by ysabetwordsmith for helping folks attract and keep people in groups such as communities or a blog audience.

* Post a Transformative Works Policy aka Blanket Statement if you are into fanworks. This tells people whether and how it's okay for them to do things with what you've created, which can help make connections. You can also search for other people's TWP if you like making fanvids, podfics, translations, or such.

* When reading a blog or community, look at the people posting comments. If you spot something interesting, check that person's blog to see if you want to read or subscribe to that blog too.


More Advanced Ideas

* "Big Bangs: Yes! You can run one, too!" by pendulumscale
This actually covers various sizes and styles of fanwork challenges.

* "Creating a Dreamwidth Community Masterpost" by vriddy
Use this if you cannot find a community with the theme you want, or the only ones you find seem dormant or dead. Creating a community on DW is easy, although maintaining activity is more challenging; successful ones often start with a few friends.

* "Different Types of Events" by vriddy
Describes several options for fanwork events.

* Host a fest on allbingo. There is at least one new fest each month, occasionally stacking a repeated fest and a new fest. You can volunteer to run one for any fandom or other theme you love. We've even had a few that encouraged non-writing fills like artwork, photography, or crafts. Instructions for hosting a fest are in the community calendar of upcoming fests. A new calendar is posted for each year, so the 2025 calendar will appear some time late in 2024.

* "How to Run a Fandom Event Through Dreamwidth" by ysabetwordsmith
Learn how to organize small or large activities here.

* "How to Run a Successful (online AMV) Event" by violet_skies
Host a video editing activity.

* "Recurring Posts" by ysabetwordsmith
A guide to posts that repeat on a daily, weekly, monthly, or intermittent cycle; these can be short and tweet-like or more involved, depending what you want.

* "Sites and services that allow legal fannish adult content" by yudil
These are based on United States of America laws. They are useful if you enjoy creating or consuming mature content, particularly art since Dreamwidth's image support is poor (just a photostream, no organization).


Switching Platforms

Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities

Welcome to Dreamwidth for our new Redditor friends!


I have not seen many Dreamwidth guides for Cohost users, so if you know of one, please share the URL so I can link to it. Other guides are welcome too.

If you are concerned about the monetization and enshittification of online platforms, be aware that Dreamwidth offers free, basic paid, and premium paid accounts depending what features you want (e.g. polls and extra icons are paid options), plus the chance to buy Dreamwidth points that you can spend on various things. The platform is free if that's what you want, but if you love it, then you have ways to support it and help it survive.