CommieJournal News

You and Journaling Sites

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:23:47 GMT

What do you look for in a journaling site? Is it the ability to store lots of user avatars? Or the ability to store pictures? Friends lists? Communities?

We're asking because we're considering a radical change in the code we use. Feel free to comment and tell us what means the most to you in a journaling site. The more, the merrier!

Also, have any of you had any experience with either LifeType or B2Evolution? What did you like/dislike about them? How would you compare them to basic LJ-code functionality (not the code LJ is currently running, which contains lots of things they won't offer open-source - but the code we're running here)?

Yes, we are reviewing both the LifeType package and the B2Evolution package as a possible alternative to this old, tired, hard-to-update LJ code. Both packages are written in PHP and are modules-based: Additional functionality is added on via plug-in modules.

If some of you would be interested in "test driving" one or the other package, let us know in comments, here. Thanks!

YAY!

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 03:04:23 GMT

We have good news!

Thanks to the incredible generosity of sagami we have the October rent covered completely. That means there will not be an interruption of service before our new sponsor takes over.

Let sagami know how much we appreciate him!

ANNOUNCEMENT

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:01:51 GMT

It is time for all of you to read the Front Page.

CJ was shut down for several hours today because users are unsubscribing from the News mailstring and are not reading the front page nor reading posts here.

Now it is time you paid attention.

First and foremost, CJ may have to shut down for October, unless we get sufficient revenue to pay October's server rent of $89.95. We may have help for November, but that doesn't mean everyone should stop paying attention again.

Have any of you read our story or the frequent posts to the News community? CJ is a Community - NOT a Corporation. We have been trying to make CJ self-sufficient for nearly a year. When we started CJ, we did it because a large number of wanted a place to post where they didn't have to worry about blatant censorship, harassment from others, or losing their journals at the whim of a corporation.

Unfortunately, many of those adults chose not to follow after we created CJ. After awhile, we got a large influx of people from GreatestJournal, most of which weren't aware of why CJ existed at all.

Most of that second influx didn't take the time to read the News posts (they're made for YOU, after all), didn't read the story of CJ, and didn't seem to care about any of it.

We then attempted to start a mailstring based upon the emails of registered users, to let them know what was going on. To our surprise, dozens of you decided to unsubscribe almost immediately.

Many of you have had strong reactions to what was posted in this space, earlier - so strong that you did not read. CJ is not shut down for good NOW. CJ was shut down for 24 hours to get your collective attention.

Now we will list what we need from you, the users, to keep CJ going:

Support/Abuse personnel. Volunteers get a permanent account. The duties include: answering tickets, participating in the staff mailstring, taking care of spam reports.
FAQ personnel. Volunteers get a permanent account. The duties include participating in the staff mailstring, making FAQ questions and answers, and maintaining the FAQ database (all done through webpages).
Perl coders. Volunteers get a permanent account. The duties include participating in the staff mailstring, upgrading CJ's installation for new features, seeing how and if the original code can be streamlined.
Folks who can code new styles for journals. Volunteers get a permanent account. The duties include participating in the staff mailstring and coding new public styles.
Graphics personnel, mainly to help spruce up CJ's image. Volunteers get a permanent account. Duties include participation in the staff mailstring and coding new graphics/suggesting new general page layouts.

If you are interested in one of these positions, please send an email here and tell us about your qualifications.

We also need users who are interested in keeping CJ a thriving community of bloggers, artists, roleplayers and the like. That means the consideration of purchasing account time. The fees will be kept low. If account time cannot be afforded (lowest fee is $5/month) then perhaps volunteering time or tossing a dollar CJ's direction. Nothing is "too little".

We need you to tell your friends about CJ. Some advertising is being done, but it's not enough. We may not be big enough now not to ask for help, but we would like to grow so we do not have to constantly ask the user base for a hand.

Any and all "ideas" can be redirected here.

Newsletter!

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:49:11 GMT

If you go to The Main Page you will find something new at the top of the main section - a newsletter link!

If you don't have the time or the wherewithall to come here to the News Community to find out the latest, sign up for the newsletter and the information will be mailed to you.

Budget getting tight

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:31:31 GMT

As all of you from the United States know, things are getting mighty tough, even for those who were doing ok financially. Well, us owners aren't doing so hot financially.

I know some of you are new so this will be the first time you read this.

When we set up CommieJournal in the fall of 2007 (yes, we're almost a year old!) it was in direct response to the apparent censorship being displayed by Live Journal. Fandom was hit especially hard back then, and lots of fandom people said they'd be delighted to move if we put forth the effort to bring a LJ-clone site online.

Well, we did, and there weren't very many people who made the move. Quite a few DID, however, find their way over here from GreatestJournal, which, as far as I know, is still closing down.

A relative minority of folks here have paid and permanent accounts. If that doesn't change, we need to up donations. Even a dollar sent to our P.O. Box would help.

With food and gas prices rising the way they have been, we, the owners, are pinched even tighter at home than we were when the server rent was $169 per month. Now, it's $89.95 per month, and even that is getting hard to come by.

There are two things I'd like everyone to do:

Please consider chipping in to keep CJ going, and
Start telling your friends about CJ so they come over here and sign up. One of our biggest problems is a lack of advertising.

In the meantime, we have no choice but to put advertising on the front page of this site. We don't want to have to run them on the pages of free accounts, but if things don't change pretty soon, we may be looking into that, as a way to keep the site up and running. I know we said we'd never do that when we started the site, but we have no gotten the response we expected to bringing it online and we don't want to desert those who DO have paying accounts.

This is the reality, folks. Feel free to post suggestions if you have any.

A Few Important Changes

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:55:41 GMT

The owners of CommieJournal have become the victims of stalking and harassment elsewhere on the Internet. Some of our staff has likewise had privacy issues. Because of these concerns, anonymous staff "identities" have been created, and will be used to answer support tickets, post to news , and other such official functions.

In addition, I would like to address the subject of online harassment and stalking, and what protections you can expect from CommieJournal.

It has recently come to our attention, on Live Journal, that their abuse staff refuse to pursue reports of harassment or stalking, unless personal identifying details are being used in the act. That means if someone is hiding behind the relative anonymity of their LJ username, they can pretty much say and do whatever they want, and LJ won't touch them.

That is NOT how we will handle things here on CommieJournal.

If someone is harassing you, and you have the links to prove it, submit a support ticket and include as much information as possible. Links to actual posts and comments are considered reliable evidence. Be aware, however, that each case will be evaluated independent of one another.

If you feel your entire household is being targeted then indicate on your ticket that other members have filed tickets of their own. Including the ticket number(s) from your household member(s) is helpful.

If things are serious enough, we may urge you to contact your local authorities.

REMEMBER: DO NOT PUBLICIZE YOUR FULL NAME, ADDRESS, AND TELEPHONE NUMBER ON THE WEB. Doing so is very dangerous.

We will not allow things to escalate to the point where you have a reason to fear for your safety. We will address it before personal information begins to be "outed". You have our guarantee on that.

We need staffers!

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:18:03 GMT

Would you like to help CommieJournal grow and get better? Would you like a permanent account (who wouldn't)? Then consider becoming a CommieJournal Staffer!

We need:

Support/Abuse personnel
Journal Layout creators
Perl coders

If you are interested, send an email to personnel at commiejournal dot com and tell us about yourself and why you feel you'd be qualified.

Looking forward to working with you!

In Case You're Having Troubles

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:25:14 GMT

Just got this from the people hosting our server:

Hi,

Over the past 8 hours our servers have been experiencing package losses due to emergency maintanence work being carried out at the Savvis datacenter.

Our server administrators are in constant touch with the datacenter staff and will keep you updated as soon as the servers connections come back to normal.

Sorry for any inconvinience caused due to the packet losses.

Regards,

SmokyHosts Support Team

ETA 3:03AM EDT:

Hi,

All the packet loss issues have been successfully solved.

Regards,

SmokyHosts Support Team

DOG DAYS SALE!

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:35:48 GMT

DOG DAYS SALE!

From now through September 30, get a paid or permanent account at a special price!

Paid, one year: $15.00

Paid, self-renewing: $12.95

Permanent: $40.00

Click here to get yours, before it's too late!

Virus: CNN News Alert

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:07:58 GMT

E-mails masquerading as CNN News Alerts attempt to lure users into downloading malicious software.

Check the Snopes link above and let others know about this. I've been getting these little fuckers in my G-Mail.

Don't panic LOL!

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:47:57 GMT

This post is just to let you know that I changed my username from shamangirl to this one. I'm the same person bringing you quality service and alla that bunk. :P

I will soon be offering rename tokens in the "Purchase" area of CJ, now that I know how to do it.

Syndicated feeds - fixed

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:20:41 GMT

We had a temporary problem with syndicated feeds, but it is fixed, now. You should see updates on a regular basis.

All moved!

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:24:18 GMT

CJ is all moved in to its new home. Sorry it took an extra day, but the first try didn't transfer the database properly.

Check to see if you are missing any posts. If you saved copies of your posts as advised, you should be able to re-post anything that is missing.

Our server bill is greatly reduced, which makes it less of a burden for all of us. The new cost is $89.95 per month.

Feel free to submit a support ticket if you are having any issues as a result of this move.

CJ IS BEING MOVED

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:28:21 GMT

CJ is being moved to a new server AS WE SPEAK.

If you have made posts since roughly noon EDT (11AM CDT, 10AM MDT, 9AM PDT) - SAVE A COPY OF YOUR POSTS. That is the approximate time the move began.

A new post will be made when the move is complete.

Server Move!

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:37:32 GMT

We are transferring CommieJournal to a new server. This will happen sometime tonight and may go into tomorrow (7/2/2008). All accounts are safe and there should not be a data loss moving the entire package. There may be some downtime as one server is shut down and the other is started up. Please don't panic, it'll all be up in a jiffy!

This will save us all a considerable amount in hosting.

Rumors Still Flying Around

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:20:12 GMT

Recently I got a support request with the following question:

"I heard you guys frown highly upon role players, and you go and clear out their usernames or something like that? Is this true? It's been floating around insanejournal.com"

No, we don't hate roleplayers. The big kerfluffle had to do with old GreatestJournal people coming over and signing up for literally hundreds of usernames, just because they weren't as yet claimed. That situation was over and done with over half a year ago.

Anyone curious can ask anyone who uses CJ: We don't run around deleting accounts out of turn.

In fact a purge hasn't been done for quite a long time and likely won't be done in the near future.

If you see an account that someone has deleted, and you'd like to acquire the name, file a support request and we will see what we can do.

We need support personnel!

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:35:38 GMT

We are running way short of active support personnel. If you would like to apply, please send an email to personnel at commiejournal dot com, with a blurb about yourself and your qualifications. Prior experience is a plus, as is familiarity with Perl or familiarity with setting up public styles.

You will have to be here to answer support requests, clear spam reports, as well as help other people out. If you have Perl experience we have a nice list of stuff we'd like to implement that LJ doesn't pass on with the open-source code. If you have styles experience, we could use some new ones :)

July - we need your help

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:58:42 GMT

Once again I am posting to ask folks to chip in for rent, this time for July. For more information, see the front page.

Quote of The Day

Thu, 15 May 2008 17:05:27 GMT

~Today is shamangirl's birthday. Without her diligent code monkeying, this place would not exist. I'm just the Idea Guy. So please give her your best wishes.

Here Are The Two Principal Camps

Sat, 10 May 2008 19:45:12 GMT

LJELECTS

LJUNITED

We don't have much Drama here on CJ, so we have to import it. ;D

LJ Election Drama Up-Date...

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:53:37 GMT

...because you have a right to know! lol

Nomination Certification Letter

Nomination Certification Letter [up-date]

Def Con 3

Advisory Board Nominations, etc.

My Letter To Marta @ LJ

Note to Jameth et al

There, wasn't that fun! *horks*

Alright, now it's my turn.

Wed, 07 May 2008 15:33:17 GMT

I'm also running for the LJ Advisory Board and my post is here:

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_election_en/16581.html

If you have an LJ, please take the time to vote for me. If you want to spread the word, you can paste the following code to your own LJ:

It looks like this:

LiveJournal Advisory Board Elections

I support shamangirl to be my representative on the Advisory Board.

Show your support at lj_election_en.

Why am I doing this? Partly because I believe that changes may happen from the inside out over there, and partly because those of us who run LJ-like sites should be a part of this as well.

How To Fight Spam in Your Journal

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:43:52 GMT

This post bears repeating, as I just found out there are a slew of spam reports.

The best way to avoid random spam in your comments is to set your journal to accept comments from registered users only. If your friends want to come over from other sites, tell them to either sign up for a free account or use OpenID.

If anyone needs instructions on how to use OpenID, reply here and I'll put them up.

The LJ Elections or “The Revenge of Fandom!”

Wed, 07 May 2008 10:55:50 GMT

~As of this typing, I've only got 95 votes – 5 shy of making it in the door. But I expect I'll be able to scare up those 5. Gaddamit, get yer asses over there and fucking vote!!

However, the two Fandom candidates - jameth with 501 votes and legomymalfoy with 359 votes - appear to be shoo ins...if this whole process is done honestly. Frankly, what exactly The Process will be is still kinda murky from where I'm sitting. As best I can tell, it's A) you get 100 “I supports” and B) then LJ Management chooses from that group. If such is the case, then my cynicism runneth over.

I have no real expectations to get onto the board. I just want to get in the door so I can make my concerns heard...if such a thing will even be possible. Like I said, that nature of The Process is kinda murky.

Vote For Me!

Sheer Madness

Tue, 06 May 2008 09:53:54 GMT

~In a fit of peak this morning, yours truly jumped into the race for positions on the Live Journal Advisory Board. What I hope to accomplish by this I'm not really sure, but, being in it now, I'll do my best to win.

So, here I am in CJ news, whoring for votes from any of you that still have LJ's. Y'all can vote for me here. Even if you don't, my nominating post is good for a giggle.

May I e-kiss your virtual baby? =)