I made an assumption about how Dreamwidth posts worked and was wrong.

[rebarabbit]

As I've been editing the stories I'm transferring over from cohost to post on dreamwidth, I've been setting up the post ahead of time and filling in all of the tags and other info, saving the post as private, and then going back to edit and do stuff with markdown before actually posting publicly (changing it to public instead of private). I was wrongly thinking that switching a post that had always been private to public, when the editing was finished, would put it on the reading list at the present time, like it was a draft function. Obviously this isn't how it works and it keeps the timestamp of when it was initially saved privately, and shows up back on the reading list at that point in time as well. This isn't a complaint btw, I just made an assumption and it was incorrect.

Making this post to ensure others don't make the same mistake. Also of note; there's an "Update Date" button near the bottom of the post editor which updates the post's listed date and where the post falls on your MAIN page, but does not change where the post falls on the reading page (it stays locked at the date and time it was originally created with). This is good as otherwise people could spam update their posts to fill everyone's reading page.

Hope this has been useful to folks. Happy posting everyone! ^u^

Comments

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I really appreciate you taking the time to share this here. I'm sure it will save chosters a lot of trouble, when so many folks are copying their content from Cohost to Dreamwidth.

Re: Thank you!

[rebarabbit]

No prob! ^u^

[heya_baru]

Ah, I see I'm not the only person who was writing fiction on cohost and then moved it over here. In my case the headache was converting everything from markdown to HTML, which I just did automatically with pandoc (and a bit of tweaking).

[rebarabbit]

Ohh, I'd never heard of pandoc! I'm so bad at even understanding what's markdown and what's html XD I just try things out until something works and then use whatever amalgamation of formatting stuff results ^-^; Wishing you luck getting things moved over!

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Ah, I see I'm not the only person who was writing fiction on cohost and then moved it over here. <<

Many people are doing that. It's easier to find if they use the tag "Cohost" because then you can view Latest Things: Cohost to view the most recent re-releases. Using the Cohost Interest will instead find you all the people who have listed that in their profile.

>> In my case the headache was converting everything from markdown to HTML, which I just did automatically with pandoc (and a bit of tweaking). <<

Might you be willing to write a post about that on newcomers? I'm sure that lots of other Cohost users would find it helpful.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

You're not alone. I can barely do the most common HTML for things like italics or links in comments.

Dreamwidth does give the option of working in either HTML or Markdown, but from what I've heard, the default is HTML and you have to put a code for switching to Markup.

There are resources for using both in Dreamwidth:

HTML Primer

Guide to HTML / CSS by girlrock

Explore Markdown


I suggest picking one thing at a time to work on until you understand it comfortably. Start with something you use all the time, or want to, like making a link. Once you have that down, move on to something new. That way, you build up skills over time, without overwhelming yourself by trying to "learn HTML" or Markup or whatever.

Re: Yes ...

[heya_baru]

Ah,nice. I'm still figuring out how interests work, so...that's probably an excuse to figure it out

I actually thought of making a newcomers post about pandoc, but then someone else said that there's a beta feature somewhere to enable markdown formatting? But I also don't see a post on newcomers about that either, so perhaps it's worth a post either way.

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Ah,nice. I'm still figuring out how interests work, so...that's probably an excuse to figure it out <<

Interests appear on your Profile page. You can use whatever words and phrases you want to describe what you like. These are searchable via the Interests page. This post has a section about Interests.

>> I actually thought of making a newcomers post about pandoc, but then someone else said that there's a beta feature somewhere to enable markdown formatting? But I also don't see a post on newcomers about that either, so perhaps it's worth a post either way. <<

Either or both would be welcome. Feel free to share what you're learning. It doesn't have to be all at once; you can talk about what you've discovered today, or whatever.