296 lines
14 KiB
XML
Executable File
296 lines
14 KiB
XML
Executable File
<chapter id="lj.intro.why_use">
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<title>Why Use LiveJournal?</title>
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<para>
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LiveJournal is an open source software project, with many uses
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limited only by the imagination. Use LiveJournal to start your
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own weblogging community, or just about any site with a community
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focus. You can use the features such as the support system and
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feedback technology, that comes bundled with LiveJournal, to run
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your own online business site.
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</para>
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<para>
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LiveJournal has many intra-office uses as well, with its easy
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update and polling features. Use LiveJournal for:
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<variablelist>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Work journals</term>
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<listitem><para>
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Record what you're working on, or scribble notes for future reference.
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</para></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Project logs</term>
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<listitem><para>
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Multiple members of a project team to record
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their work, post meeting minutes, and discuss ideas.
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</para></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Announcement pages</term>
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<listitem><para>
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Recording status updates to projects or
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systems on a single page, while notifying interested users.
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</para></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Discussion boards</term>
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<listitem><para>
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Brainstorming ideas or soliciting opinions
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with a group, in a persistent but nonintrusive medium.
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</para></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Weblogs</term>
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<listitem><para>
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Posting links to web content of interest to a particular group.
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</para></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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</variablelist>
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</para>
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<para>
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There are many benefits of using LiveJournal
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem><para>
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Enhances personal productivity by providing a convenient way to
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record notes in a searchable, web-accessible medium
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</para></listitem>
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<listitem><para>
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Provides visibility between departments or geographically separate offices
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</para></listitem>
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<listitem><para>
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Encourages communication by making it easy to share thoughts and comments
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</para></listitem>
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<listitem><para>
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Encourages people to get knowledge out of their heads and notebooks
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and into a visible, searchable, central location
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</para></listitem>
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<listitem><para>
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Provides more powerful tools for creating and accessing content than
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are available for ad-hoc log-structured web pages
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</para></listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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</para>
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<section id="lj.intro.why_use.features">
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<para>A LiveJournal installation comes with many configurable features available
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<quote>out of the box</quote>, including but not limited to:</para>
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<title>Features</title>
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<variablelist>
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<title>Journal related</title>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Journaling service</term>
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<listitem><simpara>LiveJournal's core function. Users are able to submit journal
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entries and "publish" them on their account's journal page.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Community journals</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Journals that many users can post top-level entries to. This allows
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for more long-term and public discussion than comments in a user's journal.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Friends list aggregation</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users are able to add other users to their <quote>friends list</quote>, which
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permits them to view all journal entries from their friends in an aggregate form.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Friends filters</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can view a subset of their friends lists at any given time.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Calendar view</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can see a record of all of their posts in the past, and
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choose to view those posts by a specific day (allowing easy access to old posts).</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Message boards</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can enable or disable message boards for individual
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entries or journals as a whole. Users can choose to allow anyone,
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registered users only, or friends only to post. Users can choose to
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<quote>screen</quote> comments — make them visible only to the owner of the journal —
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and choose to set certain levels of comments to be automatically screened
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until approved (such as a user who may choose to screen all comments by
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non-friends until they are approved).</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Email notification of comments</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can choose to receive an email
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notification when someone comments on one of their posts (in the user's
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personal journal or in a community journal) or replies to one of their
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comments (in the user's personal journal, a friend's journal, or a
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community journal).</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Security levels</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can specify who can read their journal entries.
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Entries can be public (all can read), private (only the user can read),
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protected (only the user's named "friends" can read), or custom. Custom
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security allows a user to specify up to 30 subgroups of their friends who
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can read the entries.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>RSS feeds</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Your installation publishes all public journal content as a RSS feed for
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syndication on other sites. LiveJournal allows users to syndicate external RSS
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feeds onto LiveJournal, to read on users' Friends page. (Adding RSS feeds to user's
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friends list needs "syndication points", and each feed costs a certain
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number of points based on how many users are watching the feed).</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Moods</term><term>mood icons</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Each entry can be given a <quote>mood</quote>, to
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describe what the user is feeling at that time. Users can choose to add a
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<quote>mood icon</quote>, which is a small picture to depict that mood. Users can
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create their own <quote>mood icon</quote> themes for use in their journal.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Polls</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can create different types of polls, to get opinions,
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information, or thoughts from readers.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>User picture icons</term>
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<listitem><simpara>The ability to upload small "avatars" that
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represent the user throughout the site.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Personalized subdomain</term>
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<listitem><simpara>If configured, users can view their journals at
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http://username.<replaceable>domain</replaceable>.com, as well as
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http://www.<replaceable>domain</replaceable>.com/users/username and
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http://www.<replaceable>domain</replaceable>.com/~username.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Customizing the display of the journal page</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can create journal "styles" from scratch and have
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precise control over appearance of their journals.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Friends of Friends feature</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users are able to see a list of entries by
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the users who are named as a friend by their friends, but not by
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the user.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Downloaded clients</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can download a program to make journal entries
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(and perform some other actions on the site) from their computer, rather
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than from the website.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Tell a Friend</term>
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<listitem><simpara>With one click on the <quote>read entry</quote> page, users can send an
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email to someone else about an entry, calling the recipient's attention to
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it.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Export feature</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can download their journal month-by-month, in XML or
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CSV format.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>meme tracking</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can view a list of URLs that have been most
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referenced in journal entries site-wide. Users can also check to see where
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those URLs are being referenced. (By some slight alteration, users can
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also see if anyone on your installation is linking to a specific URL, and where.)</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Random feature</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can view a random journal from a subset of users who
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have updated in the past 24 hours.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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</variablelist>
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<variablelist>
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<title>Account related</title>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>User bio</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can provide information about themselves, which is
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displayed on a page that can be viewed by visitors to their journal (the
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<quote>user bio</quote>). Users can specify contact and location information (email,
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AIM username, Yahoo! ID, ICQ #, MSN Messenger username, Jabber address,
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city, state, country, etc) and specify the security level of that
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information (public, private, protected)</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Site search</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can search by contact information — finding other
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users by email address, AIM username, Yahoo ID, ICQ #, MSN Messenger
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username, Jabber address, etc — to locate people on your installation.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Interests</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can list up to 150 one to four-word interests in their
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user bio, which other users can search for.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Similar interest search</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can see a list of those users whose
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interests match most closely to their own, based on an index that weights
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both number of interests in common and rarity of interests in common.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Popular with friends search</term>
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<listitem><simpara>The ability to see a list of the users who
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are named most often as a friend by the user's friends, but not by the
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user.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Domain forwarding</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can forward their domain to their LiveJournal (so that, for example, http://journal.example.com would
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forward to the user's LiveJournal at http://www.<replaceable>domain</replaceable>.com/users/username)</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Journal embedding</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can <quote>embed</quote> their journal into their home pages,
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displaying their journal as part of an external home page. (This is
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different from domain forwarding; with domain forwarding, the content is
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served from the LiveJournal installation; with embedding, the content is first pulled
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onto the user's server and then re-presented.)</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Text messaging</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can specify their text message information and
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display an option on their user bio page to allow others to text message
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them. (This allows users to receive text messages without having to make
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their information public.)</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Memory list</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can name any post on the service as a <quote>memory</quote> — a LiveJournal
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version of bookmarking. Memories can be categorized with different
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keywords, so that users can more easily sort their memories.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>To-do list</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can create their own <quote>to-do</quote> list — reminders or
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important things to do — and track percentage complete and progress on
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each item.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Birthday list</term>
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<lsititem><simpara>Users can see a list of all of their friends who are having
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an upcoming birthday (assuming the user has provided his or her birthday).</simpara></lsititem>
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</varlistentry>
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</variablelist>
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<variablelist>
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<title>Site related</title>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Directory</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users have access to the directory of users, where they
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can search by location, age, interest, etc.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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<varlistentry>
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<term>Portal</term>
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<listitem><simpara>Users can use a more complex update page, which includes "boxes"
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of several other features, such as statistics and birthdays, on the same
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page as the update page.</simpara></listitem>
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</varlistentry>
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</variablelist>
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</section>
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</chapter>
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