Newcomers to Dreamwidth

I've covered What to post about on Dreamwidth, but now that I think of it, that may have been putting the cart before the horse! That sort of thing is good to know, but harder to do if you don't know how to post on Dreamwidth.

When it comes to actually posting, you'll want to pick a text format to use. I personally use Casual HTML, since it's what I was used to on LiveJournal before Dreamwidth, but I know a lot of Tumblr users are going to be more familiar with Rich Text Entry (RTE); if you want to know more about the RTE options, teres wrote a great breakdown right over here. To find out what HTML you can use on Dreamwidth, check out this FAQ page.

Once you have that done, the first thing I'm going to recommend you do is to turn on the Beta "Create Entries" page. Why? Because Dreamwidth is going to make it the default sometime soon, and it'll be better to get used to it sooner rather than later. Also, it's just superior to the original Create Entries page in a lot of ways! I'll go into more detail on that in a moment.

To turn on the Beta "Create Entries" page, first go to the Organize tab. At the bottom of the drop-down menu is the option, "Test Beta Features". On that page, you have the ability to opt in to helping test five different beta features. At the top of that list is the Beta Create Entries page. Click to Opt In on that, and you should be good to go! (I also recommend opting in on the beta Inbox page.)

Now comes some of the fun: If you go visit the Create Entries page now, you'll notice some different features. At the very top, right above the subject line, is the option "Rearrange Panels". Surprise! You can now decide, with some limitations, how you want the Create Entry page to look!

(With thanks to teres for the reminder: There are some animations built into this process; if you want those to go away or to be minimized, that is the final option to click in the Rearrange Panels field.)

( Let's get into the nitty gritty of that )

One field that won't move is the field where you select whether to post and what privacy level to post at; you can find it right below the text entry field. There you will find one or two drop-down menus. The first menu will allow you to choose the privacy level of the post, be it public (anyone can read it), access-locked (only people you grant access to can read it), access-locked to a specific subset of your access list (a custom access filter), or private (only you can read it).

The second drop-down menu is for whether you're posting to your own journal or to any communities you may be a member of that allow you to post. The default option from both the "Create: Post Entry" drop-down and the "Post" option on the left-hand side of the navigation strip at the top of various Dreamwidth pages is to your own journal, but if you are visiting a community and click the "Post" option on the right-hand side of the navigation strip, it will select that community for you instead. If you post using that method, you will not have a drop-down menu to choose another location from.

And those are the basics of the beta Create Entries page! If I missed anything, or if you have any questions, please feel free to comment and let me know, and I'll do my best to clear things up.

Edit: Shoot, I forgot to talk about cut tags. Next post, maybe?

Edit 2: With thanks to teres for suggestions to make this post better!