Update: Seed Account Re-sale, Free Users + Custom Styles

[mark]

Two things for you today!


Thing the first:

We have not been able to finish and fully test the new site functionality that enables people to purchase accounts without a PayPal account. Instead of finishing it up an hour before the first sale is scheduled and crossing our fingers that it works, we've decided to push the sale off another week.

The new time of the Seed Account re-sale is Thursday, May 14th, 9PM EDT and again at Friday, May 15th, 9AM EDT. In total 200 accounts will be available.


Thing the second:

People with free accounts have probably noticed that a few days ago we took away the Advanced Customization area of the site. (The pages that let you make a custom style.) We had never intended for it to be available unless you paid, and having it on was an oversight on our part. After we turned it off, we got to hear a lot of really good comments from people and we reevaluated the original decision.

We've turned it back on, but gave free users a pretty low limit on the number of styles you can create (1 custom style, up to 5 layers). Short story: you can once again go back to customizing and importing styles from other sites. Sorry for the trouble!

Comments

[ai]

"but gave free users a pretty low limit on the number of styles you can create (1 custom style, up to 5 layers)"

Does this mean we're able to use custom styles on communities that are free accounts as well?

Also, the obligatory "you guys rock, thanks for the response, thanks for looking out for the userbase's concerns" comments.

[denise]

Indeed it does!

[saoirse]

I attempted to create a layer using an imported layout, but it had errors, so I deleted it. Now my journal will not let me choose one of my old layouts but says there is a problem. I have no style at this time. It looks awful.:(

[ex_antagonist554]

Er, I can tell you how to fix this one!

Go here and delete what's enabled, that should get rid of the "There is a problem." message. :)

[skiba]

This is awesome. I hope that more users do think about paying if things keep up this way. It would be a shame to lose such a responsive team of people on a site like this for once.

[tyffi]

Yay for making the Advanced Customization "public". It certainly is one of the best features and likely will make more people move to DW - and eventually pay for the service. ;)

Thanks so much for this. And now, I have to pull a bank job because I'd like to buy a seed account. xD

[charon]

Custom style for free accounts? Pretty awesome ... now I just need to remember how that works *lol*

[foxfirefey]

To be honest, for most stuff you shouldn't really need to use it unless you're importing a style from LJ based on core1 or know specifically what in the style you want to change.

In two weeks there's going to be a lot more CSS customized layouts based on a style called Tabula Rasa, which is in the last stages of finalization. In two months there's going to be more themes than you can shake a stick out.

Check out dreamwidthlayouts for people displaying themes they've already made to share.

[shanaqui]

You guys are really amazing. I bought a paid premium account yesterday mostly to support you guys, since I'm still largely using LiveJournal, and I'm so glad I did. ♥

(Not that I'm not taking advantage of it. Mm, icons.)

[jolantru]

You guys are fantastic! Thank you for your hard work! :)

[brighid]

Thank you in advance for allowing us to purchase an account without PayPal. I'd rather avoid using it if I can as it's been a real bother lately.

I admit that a Seed Account is tempting (I am not at all a fan of monthly payments) but it's beyond my budget at the moment.

I guess I should throw in thanks of my own to you all for allowing us to create our own style. I'd never gotten into that sort of thing on LiveJournal, but since everyone is making such a fuss about it, I'll be sure to try it out.

Just a general "thank you" now to all of you at Dreamwidth - I've been loving this site thus far and I always love seeing developers communicating actively with their customers. I hope that doesn't ever change. <3

[kaki]

This sounds like a very reasonable compromise for the people who complained about it being taken away.

*keeps on waiting (im?)patiently for the payment stuff to get fixed* Why does paying you Americans from here have to be so difficult? :<

[supernova]

Thank you so much, I honestly didn't expect this to happen. You just made a lot of people happy :D

[rozarka]

Good to know credit card purchases w/o PayPal are coming up within a week. :)

Offering limited, advanced customisation back to basic users is a really nice gesture of good will on your part, and as such it just makes me happier to support DW by getting a paid account.

[worldstosee]

Is there somewhere where I can get the default style sheets for the layouts so I try making my own layout?

[sofiaviolet]

There's the layer browser, which is where I usually turn.

[shaela]

Oh, wow. I’d thought about getting a temporary paid account, just to get my journal set up. But this—y’all are willing to gamble that treating your users well will pay off in the end. That sounds like a good reason to go all in, once I’m more financially stable. Thank you.

[bleary]

thank you so much, the layers option gives me yet another reason to shift here permanently! ♥

[elanor_pam]

Oh thank you.

[stormy]

Chiming in with my thanks about style layers, even if I do have a paid account - this helps out my communities so much! ♥

Late to party: Price?

[sheta_kaey]

I've been searching for the last 20 minutes and I can't find any mention of the price for seed accounts. How much do they cost?

Thanks.

Re: Late to party: Price?

[the_shoshanna]

They're US$200.

[sofiaviolet]

... people use more than one style at a time? (Says the seed account holder, lol.)

I guess people who change their layouts from time to time like to have backups or keep their old ones around or something.

[piscinarii]

I've got three or four right now haha. I switch often though.

[ouija]

That is such a great feature to give to free users. I always love to see a site actually care about their free users, and not just the paid users. Thanks for your great work!

[nlfrederick]

Awesome, thanks for the limited style creation! Any chance of maybe limited mood theme creation, as well? You could probably limit us to being able to create one custom mood theme and that work pretty well...I know I've got more than that on my LJ, with my paid account there (although I'm definitely considering paid Dreamwidth when I have the money to do so), but one would be pretty appropriate, even if only during a trial run to see if you guys liked the idea.

And another question I've had is whether or not you'd be implementing the "Schools" feature. That's probably one of my favorite features on LJ, because it helps me find people I go or have gone to school with, and especially now, in the early stages of Dreamwidth, I think that would be a great feature to have because it might help us in finding people we know already.

[triadruid]

I think since most people only use one mood theme at a time, making them free wouldn't be a good incentive for paid accounts.

[ashtoreth]

We've turned it back on, but gave free users a pretty low limit on the number of styles you can create (1 custom style, up to 5 layers). Short story: you can once again go back to customizing and importing styles from other sites. Sorry for the trouble!

[Unknown site tag], That is an awesome and totally cool decision. Thank you for that. I've already made one of my accounts paid and plan on making this one paid in the autumn... staggering the outlay helps and I'm really happy to be able to support Dreamwidth now and in future.

[gwenhyffar]

Right, so far, I like DW. I wasn't too sure at first, because I have 4 years of posts up on LJ and although I stopped giving them my money when they started going wonky, there was no other site I looked at that had the features I wanted (i.e. be able to simultaneously post to LJ so as to keep up with the friends I've made there over the years whilst I entice them to come elsewhere).

I'm not giving you guys my money yet (wonkey LJ has made me a bit wary of sites making promises and then not keeping them), but so far, if you keep going the way you've started, then you have a supporter in me.

I have friends clamoring for invite codes at the moment, most of them with the same idea I have: check this site out first before giving it money. Many of them used to have paid accounts on LJ and let them lapse when all the promises started being broken. So I'd be happy with some more invite codes so I can lure them all here :)

[zvi]

If you're out of invite codes, the proper method by which to request codes is http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/circle/invite.bml

Also, your friends should check out dw-codesharing.dreamwidth.org to see if someone else might give them a code.

[ashtoreth]

We've turned it back on, but gave free users a pretty low limit on the number of styles you can create (1 custom style, up to 5 layers). Short story: you can once again go back to customizing and importing styles from other sites. Sorry for the trouble!

mark, That is an awesome and totally cool decision. Thank you for that. I've already made one of my accounts paid and plan on making this one paid in the autumn... staggering the outlay helps and I'm really happy to be able to support Dreamwidth now and in future.

[ex_trafalgar217]

Oh wow. Thank you so much!

[nandamai]

Not related to this post, but this is as good a place to post it as anywhere: thank you for making the Expand Comments feature actually work in Safari. I'm sure I'm not the only Mac user who appreciates it.

[denise]

That was one of the first bugs that I demanded we fix, and now that we've had a week of not getting bitten by the bug, it looks like our fix (which was kind of a shot in the dark) actually did resolve the problem! (I've actually even requested that the patch be taken upstream at LJ, because I run into that problem on LJ about ten times a week.)