Entry tags:

weekly announcements

Hi Dreamwidth!

I woke up today with a massive craving for pad thai. If you're having some tonight, think of me! (Actually, think of your pad thai instead. I think that it would appreciate it more.)

This week's update contains:
* We're on a map!
* Code push update
* New styles and themes
* Links and polls around the site (Etsy treasury, nanowrimo tag, German DW meetup, Android client poll)
* Styles poll

We're on a map!

xkcd updated their map of online communities, and Dreamwidth is on it!

azurelunatic made an icon of the Dreamwidth island, for your viewing pleasure: .

Thank you to everyone who sent us links. I grinned like a goof with every comment / entry I saw mentioning us on the map.

Code push update

Code push last weekend went off smoothly, with only a few hiccups. We fixed those as quickly as possible -- thanks to everyone who left us feedback on what things went wrong / what things went right.

We're slowly rolling out keyword renames. To clarify, because there was some confusion about this: you can still add and remove keywords on an icon as usual. What we temporarily disabled (and are now bringing back) is the ability to rename the keyword, so that the keyword in the dropdown changes but old entries and comments do not lose your icon. We're doing it slowly because it involved a major change to our backend, and we're trying to make absolutely sure that nothing goes wrong. Thanks, everyone, for your patience.

Also, if you've been waiting for the ability to rename your journal or a community you own, I'd like to remind you that you can purchase a rename token at the shop. Our FAQ How do I change my username? tells you everything you need to know about renames. (If it doesn't, let us know, and we'll add it to the FAQ ;-)). Shout out to cesy for digging through the comments in our bug tracker and coming out with the initial draft of this FAQ -- thank you!


denise preemptively highlighted the best of the new things that came out with this code push in her last news update, so let me just direct you back to that entry. I've already found two new features that I can't imagine going without anymore: collapse icon at the end of cut tags, and poll submission on the same page.


Go browse through the rest of the list if you're so inclined!

New styles and themes

This week's code push gave us a total of 47 new themes, including two new styles: Compartmentalize, which reminds me a lot of the basic Generator but with a sidebar (Generator was the very first layout I ever tried to customize so I remember it vividly *g*), and Practicality, which feels very clean.

All themes that are new with this code push is in the Featured category for journal themes.


dreamscapes has an update on stats for styles post-codepush (thanks to the ever awesome ninetydegrees!).

Links and polls around the site

• Speaking of awesome Dreamwidth users, here is this week's Dreamwidth users Etsy Treasury. I am quite cheerfully in lust with the items listed there. Enjoy :)
  
  
• Someone suggested in the comments last news post that we add a tag for NaNoWriMo, and that sounded like a great idea, so have a NaNoWriMo tag on the latest page.
  
  Entries tagged "nanowrimo", "writing: nanowrimo", "nanowrimo2010", "nanowrimo10", "nano10", or "nnwm10" will show up on that page, so you can commiserate with everyone who is suffering through the agony of novel-planning in October and novel-writing in November. Best wishes, all. (And don't worry, other people on Dreamwidth are suffering too.)
  
  
• yvi has a poll for Dreamwidth users in Germany who are interested in a meetup.
  
  
• exor674 is making an Android client, and has a poll for Dreamwidth users with Android phones.
  

Styles Poll

We've had Skittlish Dreams: Blue as our default layout for a really long time, and while it is awesome, we have also come out with a lot of new styles and themes since then, so we'd like to ask you to look through all our layouts again, and help us decide what the default should be.

This week, we're polling for the base layout that you all like best. Next week, we'll take the themes from the winning layout and make another poll. From there, we will select a new style which will be the default for new users after they create their account.



(And did I tell you already that when you submit a poll now, you'll stay on the same page? :-D)


That's it for this 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.

denise will have you again for the next couple of weeks. I'll talk to you all again in November :-)