I’m leaving Livejournal: what should I take with me?

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I’m moving my blog from LiveJournal to my new personal website at Skyfaller.net, following in the steps of Nick. The rumors about LiveJournal being in danger of shutting down certainly triggered this move, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, to have more control over my own data.

I would like my loyal LJ readers to follow me to my new site, and to achieve that I’d like to make sure that my new blog has all of the features of LiveJournal that my readers find important. Why do you use LiveJournal? What makes it a good experience for you? What features of LiveJournal do you think are useful, and distinguish it from other blogging sites? I have already added a number of features to my blog that LiveJournal has:

  • Threaded commenting – This is included by default in WordPress 2.7 but not all WordPress themes have been updated to use it yet. You also have to turn it on in Settings->Discussion->Other Comment Settings->Enable threaded (nested) comments, it isn’t on by default.
  • Reply notifications by e-mail – Below the comment field is a checkbox labeled “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail”. If you check that box, you’ll get an e-mail when someone replies to your comment (if you’ve filled out the e-mail field). I’m using the Subscribe to Comments plugin.
  • Not having to enter identifying info every time – I’ve enabled OpenID using this plugin, so all you have to do is enter in your LiveJournal URL in the website field and it will accept your comment. No need to fill in your name and e-mail each time.

What else should I do? Please let me know in the comments.

6 thoughts on “I’m leaving Livejournal: what should I take with me?”

  1. I tend to use it because it aggregates all my friends’ posts, including locked ones. I would be happy to add an rss feed for you, since I am guessing you’re not password protecting your posts?

    I also like to use WordPress’ blog surfer – I think this works for all blogs powered by WordPress, so I think I may not have to worry about rss.

  2. bah, apparently only wordpress.com urls show up on blog surfer. Oh well, I guess it’s RSS for me!

    • I think WordPress.com may be actively trying to set itself up as a Livejournal replacement, and it may be getting relatively close. My main problem with it is that it doesn’t seem to have the same integration with WordPress blogs not hosted on WordPress.com. I hope that they fix that!

  3. I’m not sure I can give you a useful answer — I mean, I’ll add it on RSS, but I tend not to comment on things I read in my RSS reader, so I’m likely to become more of a passive reader. In LJ, I’m logged in always (which I can achieve by logging into your site and staying logged in, for the most part), I can comment without a new tab opening up (not possible in the RSS reader, as far as I can tell) and all of my friends are in one place. I can tell you that if I hadn’t started using an RSS reader you’d be very likely to lose me, because adding a new site to the ones I remember to check is almost impossible.

    So, if you’re off LJ, at this point, I’ll continue reading, but I can’t think of a way to suggest to you to help me/people who internet like me to be more participatory.

  4. Nick did a nice job by making it easy for LJ-only people to continue reading his blog. I really don’t care what the features of your site are as long as I can still comment, and somebody’s set up an RSS feed on LJ. (Or Nick’s fancy dual-post trick, but I have no idea how that works.)

  5. That I can read the flock’d posts of others and others can read mine — all on one page.

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