Weekly Update: 26 August

[denise]

Hello, Dreamwidth! We've got a quick update this week, so in the interest of not making the intro longer than the update, I will get right to it.

Development

Development this week brings us an exciting new bunch of themes -- we added 12 new themes for 4 different layouts. We also did a bunch of backend fixes and code cleanup, plus committed the ability to rename communities in addition to the ability to rename personal accounts. A full list can be found in this week's code tour.

All of these fixes won't be live until the next code push.

Accessibility

One of the things DW really tries to keep as a major priority is accessibility for people with disabilities and people who use assistive technology. We have a project team devoted solely to accessibility, with their own project community: dw_accessibility.

Every single study we've seen, however, says that there's no One True Way that assistive technology users work. Therefore, we need as many perspectives as we can find. If you have accessibility needs, or access DW through assistive technology (screenreaders are the most obvious example, but there are many other forms of assistive tech), please consider joining or watching dw_accessibility. The more perspectives and ideas we hear in the community, the more we are able to make DW accessible and useful for everyone.

Our developers care very deeply about universal and accessible design, and we want to make sure that the site is useful and usable by everyone. If you have a few minutes a week that you can use to give feedback on how you use your assistive tech, or what methods you would find most useful for your own personal needs, please give us a hand.

Community Promo

On that note, this week's community promo theme is disability-related communities:

* cookability: A community focused around accessible cooking, including sharing tips and recipes on how to feed yourself on a limited energy budget.

* disability: A general community for discussing disability and providing support.

* fucking_meds: A community for kvetching and griping about your medication, with bonus side benefit of sharing what works for you (and what doesn't).

Got a good disability-related community? Share it in the comments.

Payments

We've had a few people ask recently if we accept VISA gift cards for payments, or let us know that they've had problems while paying via VISA gift card. We do accept them! When you're filling out the form, you'll still need to add a name, address, and phone number in order for the payment to be processed, but gift cards do work the same as regular credit cards.

As always, if you have any payment-related problems or questions, you can contact the Account Payments department (aka, me) by opening a support request in the Account Payments category.

*

That's it for us for another week! As always, if you're having problems with Dreamwidth, Support can help you; for notices of site problems and downtime, check the Twitter status page; if you've got an idea to make the site better, you can make a suggestion.

We'll see you next week for our next update.

Comments

Communities

[rydra_wong]

On this theme, I will rec access_fandom (discussing issues of disability in fandom and in fannish sources, currently running Festibility), and depression (just what it says on the tin).

There's also fucking_meds's cousin, fucking_docs (for when it's the medical professionals you need to kvetch and gripe about).

[thblackflame]

I don't have any ideas or recs since I'm new to DW, but I wanted to say that DW's awesomeness just went through the roof after reading this update. The fact that you are taking these things into consideration when trying to make the site better is beyond wonderful. It might sound silly, but I try to recognize when people do something awesome and say something about it because so often things that should be said are not. If this just sounds weird, well, I am weird, but I thought that it should be said. ^____^

[softestbullet]

Awwwww. :) Ditto.

[unixronin]

Seconded. You folks are really doing it right. My primary journal is on LJ, simply because most of my readers and those I read are over there, but I post here first and autocrosspost it to LJ, and I'm leaning increasingly towards maintaining just an unpaid mirror on LJ. I'd upgrade my account here to a paid account if I could spare the money, but, well, it's tough with the economy in the crapper. (It's paid temporarily right now because a friend just gave me a month.)

[iridesce]

Greetings,

I began at lj as my son and his fiancee are there. I am also a supporter of community supported sites. With lj's increasingly reliant demonstrations of their desire to cozy up to big corporate cookies, I can't support them. Not slamming them, just not my idea of how a site should be run.

I also am a big fan of open source and dreamwidth's demonstration of their support of it made me a fan of them.

So, I let my lj paid subscription lapse and bought a paid subscription here. As you said I also cross post to lj, so those in that community still get to see and comment on my stuff.

Good luck in getting the paid subscription amount together. Don't be surprised if the funds show up, the universe is funny like that.

[highlander_ii]

Regarding VISA giftcards (or other giftcards that look like creditcards) - many times what the user will need to do is register the giftcard online (through VISA, etc) to give the card a name and address - much like credit card billing information - which should resolve some of the issues people have been having.

Cards like that were initially intended for 'swipe' use, not online, so the registration process was developed b/c most online retailers have fraud prevention software that validates billing information against the bank's data.

Which is probably more data than you need about them, but I work for a retailer that has an online presence and we have to answer this question all the time.

[denise]

Oh, thank you! That is helpful.

So far we've had luck with people putting in just any old address and phone -- I think the system is smart enough to know that it's a gift card and not verify too hard. But if people have problems, I will totally know what to do, now.

[highlander_ii]

you're welcome! glad i could help! *g*

[yvi]

Well, I created arthritis, but it hasn't had much action so far :)

[justjenny]

wow, I used to suffer from arthritis. I hope you will get members soon :)

[pauamma]

News update on a Thursday? The sky is falling! The sky is falling!</Chicken Little>

[yvi]

Well, it was supposed to be on Wednesdays :D

[denise]

It was still Wednesday when I opened the update window. *g*

questions?

[cellio]

Hi. Not sure where I'm supposed to go with questions (not a problem requiring support, didn't find in the FAQ). Sorry if this isn't the right place, and please redirect me. Thanks.

Is there a way to import a journal from LiveJournal without compromising the LJ password? (I understand that you will use that password only for good, but I'd be compromising the locked posts of everyone who has given me access and that's not my decision to make.) Is there some tool I can use to export from LJ and then import here in two steps, so no passwords need be shared? Thanks.

Re: questions?

[denise]

The easiest way to do that is to change your LJ password, import, and then change it again. There's no way to get your data without authentication, and because of the possibility for people to edit the datafiles (and attribute people's comments, etc, to others or to change/edit them) we don't allow people to download their data to their computer and then reupload it.

Re: questions?

[cellio]

Ah, I hadn't considered the opportunity for spoofing. Thanks for the quick reply and explanation!

Re: questions?

[denise]

NP! I can promise you, we aren't using passwords for anything other than the purpose of import and/or crosspost (it's in our privacy policy, even), but I totally understand being nervous, especially since you don't know us and we haven't had tons of time to earn your trust. (I mean, I can tell you that the idea of violating someone's privacy like that makes me need to go take a shower, it makes me feel so unclean, but anybody could say that!) If you are at all concerned, it's best to change your password to a throwaway pw, run the import, wait until you get the 'success' message in your inbox (that's important; if you change it mid-run, subsequent steps will fail), and then change it back or change it to something new.

Welcome back to DW, by the way!

Re: questions?

[cellio]

Thanks. I really appreciate the prompt and thorough replies, especially now that I've noticed that I should have been asking these questions in the getting-started community.

I don't know yet if I'm moving here or cross-posting or what. The challenge with importing my journal is not whether I trust you, but whether it is proper for me to temporarily compromise the security of everyone who has granted me access to locked posts. And it's not just about whether you're trustworthy; you could already read locked DW posts if you wanted to, after all, but I don't think you would. But what if someone were to compromise your security? It's not likely, but I automatically play out what-if scenarios when other people's property, privacy, etc are at risk -- they aren't mine to risk, if you see what I mean. So it probably means that if I do move here I won't import and that'll be fine too. The main reason I popped up again here is actually that I'm trying to bring a small community over (so if they agree I'll be asking for some invite codes). But more and more of my friends are setting up shop here, so I'll be paying more attention here. Reading two subscription pages instead of one isn't that big a deal, right? :-)

Re: questions?

[madfilkentist]

This is the one feature of Dreamwidth that seriously bothers me. No one should be giving out third-party passwords to anyone but their most closely trusted circle of people (and then only at need), and no responsible website should solicit passwords. This is a feature which should not exist, and its existence diminishes my trust of Dreamwidth even though I'd never use it.

Shelfari, Quechup, and probably other sites which I don't know about used the feature to suck in people's entire address books and spam them. Others could be hanging on to passwords for subtler purposes. You people at Dreamwidth may be totally trustworthy, but I don't know that, and asking for information which you shouldn't ask for makes you look less trustworthy.