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News

Welcome to LiveJournal news. If you crave more frequent and detailed news, check out the following journals:

userinfonews Infrequent, basic, overall news. (this page) RSS Feed
userinfolj_maintenance Server status and planned downtime announcements. RSS Feed
userinfolj_dev LiveJournal technical development & planning. RSS Feed
userinfochangelog Every little change, as it happens. RSS Feed
userinfolj_test The testing community, for testing the above changes. RSS Feed
userinfofeatureannounce A weekly digest of changelog events and new features. RSS Feed
userinfolj_biz LiveJournal business-related community. RSS Feed


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November News Wrap-Up

Friday, Dec 2nd, 2005 -- 2:35 pm

ljkrissy
It's beginning to look a lot like winter, though you'd never be able to tell by the weather here in San Francisco. We're coming up on the holiday season, so [info]veroz has decorated the site in festive finery. Whichever holiday you're celebrating, we hope you have a good one!

We have a few things to celebrate this season, as we’ve added some members to the LiveJournal staff. [info]crucially joins us as Engineering Manager and [info]jtrevino and [info]henrylyne join us as Software Engineers. We're happy to have them, so please help us give them a warm welcome! And we're extremely sad to bid a fond farewell to [info]mahlon, who is leaving to pursue other opportunities. Since he worked here for over two years, he worked on a little bit of everything, with a focus on mobile posting, captcha sessions, challenge/response logins, gizmo voice posting integration, ScrapBook and more. We wish him the very best of luck and thank him for all his amazing contributions to the site. We'll miss you, Mahlon!

We've Arrived
After weeks of planning, careful preparation, and at least one night when nearly the entire team stayed up until dawn, we're proud to announce that our data center was successfully moved from Seattle to San Francisco. Although our entire team was involved in one way or another, special thanks go out to [info]lisa, [info]matthew and [info]marksmith for sacrificing their sleep in order to keep everything moving smoothly. There have been a few glitches, which we're still working on clearing up, but overall the move was a huge success.

Password Changes
In order to make sure your data and journals are extra safe, we're tightening up our password security. This means that many of you will be prompted in the coming weeks to change your password. We know this is a pain in the neck, but improving our password guidelines will make the entire site safer. Please see the password FAQ for our full guidelines.

The Goat Returns
Frank the Goat is journaling again! And we've made him promise that he's going to remember to update his journal more often. If you'd like to read about the life and times of our mascot, just add [info]frank to your Friends list.

Stay tuned to [info]news. We've got more exciting announcements coming for you in December!

October News

Tuesday, Nov 1st, 2005 -- 5:46 pm

ljkrissy
You probably noticed some changes to the site over the weekend, including a spooky look to the Xcolibur navigation bar. We've been hard at work on some big projects, and you're starting to see just a few of the improvements we have in store for you.

Bigger, Better Data Center
Later this month the servers that host LiveJournal will be making their way from Seattle to San Francisco (with a little help from our trusty sysadmins and some carefully packed moving trucks, of course). Moving our primary data center to San Francisco, where the Six Apart offices are, gives us more access to people, power, bandwidth, and space -- all the stuff we need to keep LiveJournal reliable.

What does this move mean for you? After the dust settles, we plan to pass on the benefits of our greater capacity by increasing limits on resource-hungry things like storage space. We're doing everything we can to make this transition as seamless as possible, but with any large scale infrastructure work there's a chance we'll need to schedule a window of downtime. As we get closer to the move date we will keep you posted in [info]lj_maintenance with more specific information. Thanks for being patient with us during this work!

Share your photos on LiveJournal
Want to share photos of your Halloween costume, or your pet's Halloween costume, with your friends? All LJ users can now insert an image into their post directly from the Journal Update page by using the "Insert" dropdown menu. Free users can insert an image from a URL, and paid users can insert an image from a file on their computer or from one of their ScrapBook galleries.

Paid users, who have access to ScrapBook plus 100MB of storage space, should take note of some additional changes. ScrapBook is now in the navigation bar, and we've added a new style called Positive Contact as well as some really useful tagging features. Watch for more sort and search features to be added to ScrapBook soon. To learn more about using ScrapBook, check out the newest ScrapBook FAQs.

My LJ
Speaking of changes to the navigation bar, [info]revmischa and [info]veroz have been working hard at improving our portal feature which helps you personalize the way you interact with LiveJournal. It's called My LJ (special thanks to members of the [info]feedback community for helping us with the name). Everyone can find a handy link to My LJ on the left hand side of your main navigation bar. For those of you who have already been using My LJ, look for new additions including the Friends Page module, FAQs module, improvements to the Recent Comments module and improved functionality.

Schools
The Schools Directory now contains nearly 70,000 schools, and we're still working on adding more. Our fantastic schools team (do another!) is working 'round the clock to continue refining the directory. If your school name is incorrectly listed, or if you find any other mistakes in the Schools Directory, let us know by opening a Support request. To help us fix the listings as quickly as possible, please include a link to your school in your request. Remember, you can edit your user info page to show your schools to everyone or just to your friends.

For those of you who are participating in NaNoWriMo this month, please tell us about it in [info]lj_spotlight. Have a productive November!

Update: Some of you had questions about Hitbox on LiveJournal. [info]kevink has addressed the subject here.

September News

Tuesday, Oct 4th, 2005 -- 1:47 pm

jproulx
It's finally October; the trees are changing color, the weather is cooling down (unless you're in the southern hemisphere of course), and here in San Francisco we're anticipating the holidays. We're still hiring, so if you want to lend us your talents and become a part of our team, apply today.

Styles
S2, our preferred journal style system, got a lot of love this month, and will continue to receive affection while we work towards offering reasonable default styles. We've added a quirky style contest runner-up from [info]alsatia called "Gradient Strip", which you can select from the customize journal page.

We're in the process of cleaning up our existing S2 styles, re-organizing the existing style options and re-developing the "Customize your journal" pages. In the near future we will be adding a browsable S2 style directory, an area on the site where everyone can view and submit new themes and styles.

Keep an eye out in [info]news for future S2 announcements.

Other News
In new feature news, we've added preliminary timezone support to S2 comment pages. You can now set your timezone in the Edit Information page, and view when comments were made in your local time. We're adding this to most S2 styles, and will be extending it to posts and other information in the future.

Continuing from the Schools announcement, we now have a total of 25,000+ schools listed in our database, with another 30,000+ schools pending approval. If you've recently submitted a school, it might take a little while before it shows up. Also, if you've noticed any errors or duplicates for schools, feel free to open a support request in the "schools directory" category and let us know.

In merchandise news, we've received our shipment of Frank Mosaic Posters and we're getting ready to mail them out to everyone who bought one. We have a limited number in stock and we probably won't order more, so if you're looking to deck your walls Franktastic, purchase one today!

And a reminder to all of you eligible paid members, our bonus paid time promotion is ending October 15, 2005. Don't miss out on your chance to switch to automatic payments and receive 3 bonus months of paid time!

ScrapBook
Those of you using ScrapBook may have noticed new changes to the gallery management pages, amongst other cleanups and tweaks. We're making a lot of improvements to the interface and revamping our tags ("short names") feature, so keep an eye out for ScrapBook changes in the near future.

Have an outstanding October!

It's cool to blog at school

Thursday, Sep 22nd, 2005 -- 3:43 pm

ljkrissy
It's September, which means many LJers are back in school - including some of our staff members! It's a little bit empty around here when [info]whitaker, [info]revmischa, and [info]veroz are away at school. We won't be lonely for long though, because LiveJournal is still hiring, and our parent company, Six Apart, is also looking for engineers. Check out the job listings.

For those of you who are back in hell class, here are a few ways you can bring LJ to school with you:

Use the new Schools feature
With the Schools feature, you can now add schools to the userinfo page for your journal or communities, as well as find other users associated with a school.

And before you ask, no, LiveJournal isn't trying to be some cheesy college yearbook site. LJ is bigger than that. LJ's Schools feature is meant to cover schools of all kinds, from colleges to your old elementary schools. We just wanted to give you one more way to connect with each other.

Visit the Schools Directory to find and add your school. If you don't find yours, you can suggest that it get added. Some of our awesome support volunteers have signed on to help keep growing the schools database. We'll work to keep the list updated as quickly as we can.

Create a school-related community
Want an easy way to communicate with your classmates (notes "comparing," anyone?), dorm neighbors, or school team? Head to [info]lj_spotlight for a few ideas and examples of school-related communities. If you already maintain a school-related community, be sure to add the school to the community's userinfo page.

Spread the word about LiveJournal
We've started a new community for those of you who want to spread the word about LiveJournal. Check out [info]lj_promote, a.k.a. Promote the Goat (we couldn’t leave Frank out of this) to download goodies like LJ logos, nametags and badges. Be sure to share your creative ideas while you're there.

Invite a friend
If you find out that a classmate, roommate, study partner or professor isn't on LJ yet (gasp!) you can use the Invite a Friend feature to introduce them. You'll automatically be added to their friends list, and they can choose from a list of your communities to join.

LJ merchandise is a great icebreaker
Wear your LiveJournal t-shirt around campus or hang your Frank mosaic poster in your dorm room and see what kind of comments you get IRL.

Those are just a few ways to use LJ at school. Share your ideas with us in [info]lj_spotlight and [info]lj_promote, and remember, you can always post those late night study group photos friends-only.

August news

Thursday, Sep 1st, 2005 -- 3:49 pm

ljkrissy
August news
Hi everyone! It’s my first time writing a news post so bear with me. August was a great month for us, partly because the entire staff got together in San Francisco. We also talked [info]technopatra and [info]veroz into joining our staff to work on interaction and design, and the LJ engineers have been busy fixing bugs (for a full list check out [info]featureannounce) and working on site enhancements.

Invite a Friend
We’ve made it easier for you to invite your friends to join LiveJournal. The customized link on our new Invite a Friend page directs your friend to create an account with the option to automatically add you as their friend. They can also choose from a list of your active communities to join. (Please note that this is not a revival of the old invite code system – read more about the new system in the FAQ.)

New S2 Editor
Anybody who's tried to make a custom S2 style knows how frustrating it can be. Not anymore! Thanks to [info]night_watch and Google's Summer of Code, we now have a brand new S2 IDE. If you're an S2 author, go check it out!

Feedback community
If you're interested in sharing your opinions to help improve LJ, don’t forget to add [info]feedback to your friends list. We'll be announcing a couple of Six Apart surveys soon, so be sure to visit.

LJ Spotlight
In our last news post we introduced [info]lj_spotlight, a place where we post about the interesting ways people are using LiveJournal. Thank you for all of your nominations for Spotlight; we’ve gotten some great submissions! To nominate a journal, community or post for Spotlight, read the guidelines in the userinfo.

Frank mosaic posters!
Due to popular demand we’re making a poster out of the Frank mosaic! You can head to the Gift Shop to pre-order your poster, but keep in mind that the posters won’t be ready to ship until the end of September.

As a thank you to our Support volunteers, we're sending a copy of the poster, signed by staff, to our current most-experienced volunteers. Logistics make it impossible to send a copy to every past or present volunteer, but we wanted to say that we appreciate all the help from everyone who's ever given their time and trouble in the volunteer support area. Thanks to all of you from all of us.

Hurricane Katrina
Our latest Spotlight post was about how people are using LJ to communicate their experiences with Hurricane Katrina. People are posting reports in Katrina-related journals and communities, and even after the power went out some users continued to check in with voice posts. Other users have started collecting donations for their LJ friends who have been hit hard by the storm. It really demonstrates how tight-knit our LJ community can be.

Our hearts go out to everyone who has been affected by Katrina, especially all of our LJers in the area. If you'd like to help, there are many ways to donate. LiveJournal will donate 25% of our Gift Shop merchandise sales for the month of September (this includes the Frank poster pre-sale) to the relief efforts.

Stay safe out there!

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