FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are some frequently asked questions, and answers, too! Oh boy. Try to read this before you ask a new question. If you know something we should add to this, let us know.

Quick Answers (view all)

• How do I ...

About LiveJournal (view all)

• What is LiveJournal?
• How did LiveJournal get started? Who runs it now?
• How can I help?
• How do I suggest new features or improvements for LiveJournal?
• Which journals are officially sponsored by LiveJournal?
• What are LiveJournal's limitations on data?

Site Navigation Features (view all)

• How do I view LiveJournal in a different language?
• How do I change the appearance of the main LiveJournal pages?
• What is the navigation strip? How do I modify its settings?
• What are my login options?
• How do I view and expire my browser sessions? What is the "Expire All My Sessions" option?
• How do I use LiveJournal with my cell phone, dial-up connection, or screenreader?
• What is the "Memories" feature?
• What is the "Calendar/Archive" feature?
• What is the "to-do list" feature?
• What is the "interests" feature? How do I add or remove interests?
• What is the Schools Directory? How do I find and add my school?
• How do I find people on LiveJournal?

Accounts (view all)

• How do I create an account? How do I get started?
• How do I invite a friend to join LiveJournal?
• Why is my account marked as underage?
• How do I delete/undelete my journal or community?
• How do I validate my email address?
• How do I change my email address?
• How do I change my username?
• How do I change my password?
• How do I retrieve a forgotten username or password?
• Why can't I have a particular username? Can I have the username of an abandoned account?
• What is LiveJournal's policy on account trading? Why shouldn't I accept a traded account?
• How do I choose a secure password and keep my account secure?
• What should I do if someone breaks into my LiveJournal account?
• What is a cluster? Which cluster is my account stored on?

Account Levels (view all)

• What are the different account levels on LiveJournal?
• What are the Paid Account benefits?
• Why are there ads on LiveJournal? How do I switch to or from a Plus account?
• What are the Plus Account benefits?
• How do I set my ad category preferences? How do I give feedback on ads I see?
• How does LiveJournal decide which ads to show me? What information do you share with advertisers?
• What are LiveJournal's guidelines on acceptable ads?
• What happens to my account if it reverts to a Basic Account?

Premium Features (view all)

• How does my LiveJournal email address work?
• What is the "Express Lane"? What benefit does it offer?
• How do I add a poll to my entry? How do I vote in polls or change my vote?
• How do I create a custom mood theme?
• What is the Directory?
• How do I forward my domain to my LiveJournal?
• How can people send me text messages through LiveJournal?
• How do I post by email or text message?
• How do I post pictures from my cell phone to my journal?
• How do I record a voice post to my journal? How do I transcribe a voice post?
• How do I play a voice post? What are Ogg Vorbis files (.ogg)?
• How do I podcast my voice posts?

Account Payments (view all)

• How do I buy a Paid Account?
• How do I buy a Paid Account for somebody else or for a community?
• What items can I buy in the LiveJournal Gift Shop?
• What are Virtual Gifts? How do I purchase or remove them?
• Can I transfer my paid account to another account?
• Why do I receive errors when trying to make a payment?
• What are automatic payments?
• How do I enable automatic payments for my paid account?
• Can I use automatic payments for gifts or communities?
• What happens to my existing paid time if I set up automatic payments? Why are some payments prorated?
• How do I purchase a paid account or add-on without using automatic payments?
• How do I edit or disable my automatic payments?
• How is my next automatic payment amount calculated?

Journal Entries (view all)

• How do I update my journal?
• How do I update my journal using the Rich Text editor?
• How do I alter the appearance of my text? How do I make text bold, italic or centered?
• How do I add images to my journal entries, user bio or comments?
• How do I add a link to another journal or another web site?
• How do I add my current location, mood, and music to my entries? How do I change my mood theme?
• How do I hide part of my entry behind a link? What is an lj-cut?
• What is the "Entry is backdated" option?
• What is the "Auto-Format HTML" option?
• How do I edit or delete my journal entry?
• How do I delete all my journal entries without deleting my account?
• Does LiveJournal delete old journal entries?
• How do I search my journal? How can I find a particular entry or comment?
• How do I download all of my journal entries?
• How do I import my entries from another journaling site to my LiveJournal?
• Can I link my LiveJournals together? How do I update another LiveJournal without logging out?

Troubleshooting (view all)

• Why am I having problems accessing pages on LiveJournal? What is "read-only" mode?
• Why can't I see the most recent version of a page? Why won't my journal or friends page update?
• Why do I receive an "invalid cookies" error? How can I fix it?
• Why am I being logged out of LiveJournal? What can I do to solve this problem?
• Why do I receive errors when logging into LiveJournal?
• Why do I receive errors when I try to validate my email address?
• Why can't I receive email from LiveJournal?
• Why can't I reply to comments in email?
• Why is my IP address detected as an open proxy? Why am I marked as a source of spam?
• Why don't my images display? What is remote loading?
• Why does my journal or Friends page suddenly display incorrectly or require me to scroll?
• Why do I receive an "irreparable invalid markup in entry" error?
• Why do I receive an "incorrect time value" error when I try to update?
• Why don't my journal entries show the correct date or time? Can I use 12-hour time?
• Why don't journal entries show up where they should?
• Why do some of my characters appear as question marks? How do I set my default text encoding?
• Why can't I edit my user bio, interests, or entries?
• Why can't I update with long entries?
• Why does LiveJournal display incorrectly in my browser?
• Why do I receive an error message when using my LiveJournal URL as my OpenID identity?

Userpics (view all)

• What are userpics? How do I upload them?
• What are Loyalty Userpics? How do I get more?
• How do I buy add-on userpic space?
• What are the requirements for uploading a userpic? Why am I getting an error?
• How many userpics can I have?
• How do I delete a userpic? What displays in entries and comments when I delete a userpic?
• How do I use a different userpic? What are keywords?
• What are userpic comments?
• What are the content restrictions for userpics?
• Where can I find userpics? How do I give credit for a userpic?
• What happens if the maximum number of userpics for my account changes?

Tags (view all)

• What are tags? How do I use them?
• Why can't I see tags in my journal? How do I control who can see my tags?
• Can my friends tag my entries for me?
• How do tags work in communities?

Comments (view all)

• What are comments? How do I enable/disable commenting?
• How do I control who can post comments in my journal?
• What is comment screening? How do I set my screening options?
• Can I edit/delete/screen/freeze a comment I posted or that was posted in my journal?
• How do I ban/unban a user from commenting in my journal?
• How do I mark a comment as spam? What does this option do?
• What is Comment IP Logging? What does "this user is logging my IP address" mean?
• Why don't my comments show the correct time? How do I set my time zone?
• What is OpenID commenting? How do I use it?

Friends & Security Levels (view all)

• What is LiveJournal's Friends system? How do I use it?
• How do I control who can read my journal entries? What are security settings?
• What are custom friends groups? How do I use them?
• How do I make all my journal entries Friends-Only, Private, or Public?
• How do I know when my friends have posted new entries?
• What is the "Nudge a Friend" feature? How do I nudge another user or disable nudging?
• How do I track or count people who visit my journal?
• Can I ban someone from reading my public journal entries?
• What can people who Friend me see? Can I remove people from my "Friend Of" list?
• My protected entries are listed as public memories. Who can see them?
• How do I let someone from another site read my Friends-Only entries?

Communities (view all)

• What is a community?
• How do I find a community?
• How do I join a community and read its entries on my Friends page?
• What is "watching" a community? How do I separate them from the rest of my Friends page?
• How do I hide communities that I am a member of?
• How do I leave a community?
• How do I post an entry in a community?
• Why can't I post an entry in a community?
• How do I edit or delete an entry in a community?
• Can I cross-post an entry in multiple journals or communities?

Community Management (view all)

• How do I create and manage a community?
• Who owns a community? What are maintainers and moderators?
• What are the membership and posting settings for my community?
• How do I add users and grant posting access to my community?
• How do I remove, ban, or unban a user from my community?
• How do I make my community Members-only?
• How do I mark a community entry as spam? What does this option do?
• What are moderated communities? How do they work?
• What can I do with a community I no longer want?
• How do I give another user maintainership of my community?
• What can I do if a community maintainer has abandoned their community?

ScrapBook (view all)

• What is ScrapBook? How do I use it?
• How do I upload a ScrapBook picture and add it to my LiveJournal?
• How do I edit my Scrapbook images or adjust thumbnail focus?
• How do I control who can see my ScrapBook pictures?
• What are galleries? How do I change the gallery settings on my pictures?
• How do I customize the appearance of my ScrapBook gallery?
• What happens to my ScrapBook when my Paid Account expires?

Customization (view all)

• How do I customize the look of my journal or community?
• What are S1 and S2? How do I switch my journal to S1 or S2?
• How do I change the appearance of my comment pages or other users' comment pages?
• How do I change what my comment links say?
• How do I change the number of journal entries per page?
• How do I change the font used for my entire journal?
• How do I add a title and subtitle to my journal?
• How do I add background music to my journal?
• How do I see community userpics on my Friends page?
• How do I embed my LiveJournal into my website?
• Why can't I use certain styles or customization options?
• Why can't I use videos, JavaScript, or Flash on LiveJournal?

Style System 1 (view all)

• How do I customize my journal using S1?
• What are overrides? How do they work?
• How do I add a background image in S1?
• Where can I learn more about S1 customization?
• Why won't my overrides work?
• I tried to customize my journal using overrides and now it won't display. Why?
• How do I create a custom S1 style?
• What are the common S1 customizations?

Style System 2 (view all)

• How do I customize my journal using S2?
• Which options are supported by each public S2 layout?
• How do I add a background image in S2?
• How do I edit my journal's "Blurb" or "About This Journal" free text area?
• How do I add or edit a Link List in my S2 style?
• Where can I learn more about advanced S2 customization?
• What are the different S2 layer types?
• How do I create a custom S2 style?
• What are the common S2 customizations?

Syndication (view all)

• What is LiveJournal's syndication feature?
• Where can I get an RSS or Atom feed of my journal? What is FOAF?
• How do I find a syndicated account?
• How do I create a new syndicated account or add an existing one to my Friends list?
• How do I add my friend's journal from a different journal site to my Friends list?
• Why might a syndicated account not update correctly?
• Who owns a syndicated account? Can I edit or delete a syndicated account?
• My content is being syndicated onto LiveJournal and I don't want it there. What can I do?

Client Software (view all)

• What is a downloadable client? Where can I get one?
• Why is my client flashing?
• Why am I receiving a "Cannot contact server" error when I try to use my client?
• Can I update my LiveJournal with a client from another site?
• How do I update my journal using Nokia Lifeblog?

Conflicts with Other Users (view all)

• How do I contact the Abuse Team?
• Someone is harassing me! What steps should I take?
• What should I do if I'm receiving harassing or unwanted comments?
• What kind of material is prohibited on LiveJournal?
• What are the standards of indecency for journals?
• What can I do if someone added me to their Friends list without my permission?
• I'm being stalked or otherwise threatened on LiveJournal. What should I do?
• Someone on LiveJournal is infringing on my copyright. What should I do?
• What are my responsibilities as a maintainer or member of an adult-oriented community?
• What are LiveJournal's policies regarding commercial activity, spam, and other forms of promotion?
• My account has been suspended! How can I get it back?

Working with Other Sites (view all)

• How do I add my journal to my IM profile?
• My content is on a search engine and I don't want it there. What can I do?
• What should I do if a LiveJournal user is using my bandwidth without my permission?
• What is Meetup? Why is LiveJournal linking to it?

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