FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are some frequently asked questions, and answers, too! Oh boy. Try to read this before you ask a new question. If you know something we should add to this, let us know.

Quick Answers (view all)

• How do I ...
• How do I deal with spam?

About LiveJournal (view all)

• What is LiveJournal?
• How did LiveJournal get started? Who runs it now?
• How can I help?
• How do I suggest new features or improvements for LiveJournal?
• What are the official LiveJournal communities?
• Where do I go for help using LiveJournal?

LiveJournal Features and Navigation (view all)

• How do I change the appearance of the main LiveJournal pages?
• How do I view LiveJournal in a different language?
• How do I use LiveJournal with my cell phone, dial-up connection, or screenreader?
• What is the Hover Menu? How do I enable or disable it?
• What is Social Capital on LiveJournal?
• How does LiveJournal auto-detect my location? Where do I enter my location?
• What is the "to-do list" feature?
• What is the "Express Lane"? What benefit does it offer?
• How can I see which other users have visited my journal? What is the My Guests feature?
• How can I mark content as inappropriate for minors? What is the adult content setting?
• What is the Ratings feature?
• How do I customize the ratings on the LiveJournal homepage?
• Where can I find the latest entries posted to LiveJournal?

Communication and Notifications (view all)

• What is the Inbox? How do I communicate with other LiveJournal users?
• What is LJ Talk?
• How does my LiveJournal email address work?
• How can people send me text messages through LiveJournal?
• How do I find people on LiveJournal? What is the Directory?
• What is the "Find Your Friends" feature? Can I search for my email contacts on LiveJournal?
• What is the "interests" feature? How do I add or remove interests?
• What is the Schools Directory? How do I find and add my school?
• How do I subscribe to events on LiveJournal and receive notifications? How do I unsubscribe from events?
• Why am I receiving unwanted email from or about LiveJournal?

Accounts (view all)

• How do I create an account? How do I get started?
• What are my login options?
• How do I invite a friend to join LiveJournal?
• Why is my account marked as underage?
• How do I delete or undelete my journal or community? How do I cancel my LiveJournal account?
• What should I do if a LiveJournal user dies? What is "Memorial" status?
• How do I validate my email address?
• How do I change my email address?
• How do I change my username?
• How do I change my password?
• What if I forgot my username or password?
• Why can't I have a particular username? Can I have the username of an abandoned account?
• How do I choose a secure password and keep my account secure?
• What should I do if someone breaks into my LiveJournal account?
• How do I make sure I am completely logged out of LiveJournal?
• What is a secret question and how do I use it?

Account Levels (view all)

• Can I use LiveJournal for free? What are the different account levels on LiveJournal?
• What are the Paid Account benefits?
• Why are there ads on LiveJournal? How do I remove ads from my journal?
• What are the Plus Account benefits? How do I switch to or from a Plus Account?
• How can I try a Paid account for free?
• How can I log in to LiveJournal with Facebook, Twitter, Google, or other accounts?
• How can I log in to LiveJournal with OpenID, Facebook, Twitter, or Google? What is an identity account?
• How do I customize my ad settings?
• How does LiveJournal decide which ads to show me? What information do you share with advertisers?
• What are LiveJournal's guidelines on acceptable ads?
• What happens to my account if my Paid time expires?
• How do I downgrade to Basic? What happens when I downgrade from Plus to Basic?

Account Payments (view all)

• How do I buy a Paid Account?
• How do I buy a Paid Account for somebody else or for a community?
• How do I set up automatic payments for my account?
• How is my next automatic payment amount calculated? Why are some payments prorated?
• Can I transfer my paid account to another account?
• What are Virtual Gifts? How do I purchase, remove, or disable them?
• What items can I buy in the LiveJournal Shop?
• Why do I receive errors when trying to make a payment?

Mobile Access (view all)

• How do I post by email or text message?
• How do I post pictures from my cell phone to my journal?
• How do I record a voice post to my journal?
• How do I play or transcribe a voice post?
• How do I podcast my voice posts?
• What is LiveJournal.app? How do I install it and set it up on my iPhone or iPod Touch?

Journal Entries (view all)

• How do I post an entry to my journal?
• How do I tag my entries? Where can I manage my tags?
• How do I update my Facebook or Twitter when I post to LiveJournal?
• How do I make text bold, italic or centered? What HTML can I use in my entries and comments?
• How do I add images to my entries, comments, or profile?
• What is LJ Give? How can I donate LJ Tokens to another user?
• How can I publish an entry at a particular time in the future? What is a scheduled entry?
• What order do my entries appear in my journal? How do I exclude entries from RSS feeds and friends pages?
• What is a paid repost?
• How do I add a link to another journal or web site?
• How do I embed videos, maps, and other media into my entries, comments, or profile?
• How do I add a poll to my entry? How do I vote in polls or change my vote?
• How do I add my current location, mood, and music to my entries? How do I change my mood theme?
• How do I hide part of my entry behind a link? What is an lj-cut or lj-spoiler tag?
• What is a repost button? How do I add one to an entry?
• What is LJ-Like? How do I use it?
• How do I make an entry stay at the top of my journal? What is a sticky entry?
• What is the "Disable Auto-Formatting" option?
• How do I edit or delete a journal entry?
• How do I delete all my journal entries without deleting my account?
• Does LiveJournal delete my old journal entries?
• How do I search my journal? How can I find a particular entry or comment?
• How do I download all of my journal entries?
• How do I print my journal entries?
• How do I import my entries from another journal or journaling site to my LiveJournal?
• Can I link my LiveJournals together? How do I update another LiveJournal without logging out?
• What is the "Memories" feature?
• What is the "Calendar/Archive" feature?

Troubleshooting (view all)

• Why am I having problems accessing pages on LiveJournal?
• Why can't I see the most recent version of a page? Why won't my journal or friends page update?
• Why am I being logged out of LiveJournal? How can I solve this problem?
• Why do I receive errors when logging into LiveJournal?
• What browsers are officially supported by LiveJournal?
• Why my journal/community/entry do not participate in LiveJournal Ratings?
• Why can't I receive email from LiveJournal?
• Why can't I reply to comments in email?
• Why is my IP address detected as an open proxy? Why am I marked as a source of spam?
• Why don't my images display? What is remote loading?
• Why is my journal or Friends page displaying incorrectly?
• Why do I receive an "irreparable invalid markup in entry" error?
• Why do I receive an "incorrect time value" error when I try to update?
• Why don't my journal entries show the correct date or time? Can I use 12-hour time?
• Why don't journal entries show up where they should?
• Why are there invalid characters in my profile, interests, or entries? Why do I receive a "Bad Unicode Input" or "Invalid Text Encoding" error when I try to edit them?
• Why am I getting a Post Too Large error? What is the maximum entry size?
• Why does LiveJournal display incorrectly in my browser?
• What are cookies? How do I delete LiveJournal cookies from my browser?
• What is the Error Console? How do I open the Error Console in my browser?

Userpics (view all)

• What are userpics? How do I upload them?
• What are the requirements for uploading a userpic? Why am I getting an error?
• How many userpics can I have? How do I get more?
• How do I delete a userpic? What displays in entries and comments when I delete a userpic?
• How do I use a different userpic? What are keywords?
• What are userpic comments?
• What are the content restrictions for userpics?
• Where can I find userpics? How do I give credit for a userpic?
• What happens if the maximum number of userpics for my account changes?

Comments (view all)

• What are comments? How do I enable/disable commenting?
• How do I control who can post comments in my journal?
• What is comment screening? How do I set my screening options?
• Can I edit/delete/screen/freeze a comment I posted or that was posted in my journal?
• How do I ban/unban a user from commenting in my journal?
• How do I help protect myself from receiving spam comments and messages?
• How does the spell checker in the new comment system work?
• How do I mark a comment as spam? What does this option do?
• What is Comment IP Logging? What does "this user is logging my IP address" mean?
• Why don't my comments show the correct time? How do I set my time zone?
• I don't have a LiveJournal account. Can I still comment?
• What are pingbacks?

Friends & Security Levels (view all)

• What are Friends? How do I manage my Friends list?
• How do I control who can read my journal entries? How do I view only journal entries with a certain security level?
• What are custom friends groups? How do I set them up?
• How do I make all my journal entries Friends-Only, Private, or Public?
• Where can I read the entries my Friends post? What is a Friends page?
• Can I ban someone from reading my public journal entries?
• What can people who Friend me see? Can I remove people from my "Friend Of" list?
• How do I let someone from another site read my Friends-Only entries?
• How do I set a nickname for a friend? What is the notes feature?

Communities (view all)

• What is a community?
• How do I find a community?
• How do I join a community and read its entries on my Friends page?
• What is "watching" a community? How do I separate them from the rest of my Friends page?
• How do I hide communities that I am a member of?
• How do I leave a community?
• How do I post an entry in a community?
• Why can't I post an entry in a community?
• How do I edit or delete an entry in a community?
• Can I cross-post an entry in multiple journals or communities?
• What are sponsored communities? How do I set one up?

Community Management (view all)

• How do I create and manage a community?
• Who owns a community?
• What is a community maintainer?
• What is a community moderator?
• What are the membership and posting settings for my community?
• How can I add or remove maintainers in my community?
• How do I add users and grant posting access to my community?
• How do I remove, ban, or unban a user from my community?
• What is a community email? How do I send an email to all community members?
• How do I make my community Members-only?
• How do I mark a community entry as spam? What does this option do?
• What are moderated communities? How do they work?
• What can I do with a community I no longer want?
• How do I give another user ownership of my community?
• What can I do if a community owner has abandoned their community? What if there is spam in a community I read?
• How will other users find my community? What can I do to make my community easy to find?

Scrapbook (view all)

• How do I upload images to Scrapbook?
• How do I manage my Scrapbook images?
• How do I control who can see my Scrapbook pictures?
• How do I post pictures from my Scrapbook to my journal?
• What are albums? How do I create and manage my albums?
• Why can’t I upload an image to Scrapbook?

Journal Customization (view all)

• How do I customize the look of my journal or community?
• What can I easily customize? Which options are supported by each public layout?
• How do I add a background image?
• How do I change the font type or color used for my entire journal?
• How do I add a counter and track visitors to my journal?
• What is a custom userhead? How do I get a custom userhead?
• Where can I buy a unique theme for my journal?
• How do I change the appearance of my comment pages or other users' comment pages?
• How do I add external content/free text/"widgets" to my journal?
• What is a Link List? How do I add one to my journal?
• Why can't I use certain styles or customization options?
• Why can't I use HTML embedding tags, JavaScript, or Flash on LiveJournal?
• What is the navigation strip? How do I modify its settings?

Advanced Journal Customization (view all)

• What are the common advanced customizations?
• How do I create a custom mood theme?
• How do I add background music to my journal?
• How do I create a custom style from scratch?
• What are the different style layer types?
• How do I embed my LiveJournal into my website?
• How do I forward my domain to my LiveJournal?
• Where can I learn more about advanced customization?

Syndication (view all)

• Where can I get RSS, Atom, or other data feeds of my journal?
• How do I watch feeds on my Friends list? What are syndicated accounts?
• Can I edit or delete a syndicated account? Who owns a syndicated account?
• Why might a syndicated account not update correctly?
• How do I read my protected entries via RSS?
• My content is being syndicated onto LiveJournal and I don't want it there. What can I do?

Client Software (view all)

• What is a downloadable client? Where can I get one?
• Why is my client flashing?
• Why am I receiving a "Cannot contact server" error when I try to use my client?
• Can I update my LiveJournal with a client from another site?
• How do I update my journal using Nokia Photos?

Conflicts with Other Users (view all)

• How do I contact the Abuse Prevention Team?
• Someone is harassing me! What steps should I take?
• What should I do if I'm receiving harassing or unwanted comments?
• What kind of material is prohibited on LiveJournal?
• What can I do if someone added me to their Friends list without my permission?
• Common copyright/DMCA questions and misconceptions
• I'm being stalked or otherwise threatened on LiveJournal. What should I do?
• Someone on LiveJournal is infringing on my copyright. What should I do?
• What are my responsibilities as a maintainer of an adult-oriented community?
• What is LiveJournal's policy on account selling or trading?
• What are LiveJournal's policies regarding commercial activity, spam, and other forms of promotion?
• My account has been suspended or placed in read-only mode! How can I get it back?

Working with Other Sites (view all)

• How do I control whether my journal and entries appear in search engines?
• How do I have my Twitter updates imported daily to my journal?
• How do I share my entries on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and other services?
• How do I use my LiveJournal account to log in to another website with OpenID?
• How do I update my MySpace profile when I post entries to LiveJournal?
• How do I notify Weblogs.com about updates to my journal?
• How do I use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools with my journal?
• How do I convert my identity account into a standard LiveJournal account?
• What should I do if a LiveJournal user is using my bandwidth without my permission?
• How do I add my journal to my IM profile?

Cyrillic Services (view all)

• What are Cyrillic Services? How can I opt in or out of these services?
• How could I receive comments notifications by SMS?
• What is LJTimes?
• What is "Domain RF"?
• What is Calendar Promo?
• What is Promo in journals?
• How can I promote my entries in other journals/communities?
• How can I add a Promo slot to my journal or community?
• What is Promo? How can I promote my entries on LiveJournal?