This advice is posted elsewhere on this site, but just to try and make sure that some people see it, here's a swift user guide to using blogs on this platform.... You can now gasp in amazement at my cut and pasting:


 

You have a blog. Now what?
You can use your blog (Journal as Live Journal call it) as your personal soapbox (your own virtual Speakers' Corner, if you will), blog or private diary. It's up to you. Maybe you want to create posts for a select few readers. The LiveJournal platform lets you set privacy settings for individual posts, create custom lists of Friends you want to read your posts, and control almost everything about how your content is viewed and who views it. Here are some basics to get you started:

Post an entry
There are many ways to post an entry to your journal. The simplest is to click on Post at the top of the page under your username. Enter your text, click Preview to read it over, correct any mistakes or typos, and click Post. Done. You can also post entries using downloadable clients, your mobile phone, the LiveJournal app for iPhone and other methods. Check here for all you need to know about posting entries.

Privacy settings
Sometimes you don't want everyone on your Friends list to know what's on your mind. LiveJournal allows you to customise your privacy settings both for your entire journal and for individual entries. You can make an entry public for everyone, limit it to just your Friends, create a list of select Friends to view it, and even post items for your eyes only.

Join a community
Independent Minds features topical communities for discussing politics, shopping, cycling culture, music, and more. You also have access to the thousands of active LiveJournal communities, such as lj_uk, where members discuss LiveJournal and how it works in the U.K. To join a community, go to the community's profile page and click Join to become a member.

Make a comment
Suppose I have a post on his journal that you want to comment on. Simply click "Leave a comment" at the bottom of the post, enter your thoughts in the comment box that appears, and click Post Comment. It works the same way for communities.

Reply to a comment
LiveJournal uses threaded comments, which means you can reply to a comment to a post rather than just commenting on the original post. Threaded comments work the way real conversations do, branching off in many directions and allowing more than one person to join in. To reply to a comment, click Reply in the menu at the bottom of the comment. To view other people's replies to that comment, click Thread. You can reply to other people's replies as well.

Friends page
Your Journal comes with a Friends page that lets you build your own news feed of posts and content from your Friends list, your favorite blogs, and other news sources. When you subscribe to The Independent's feed, for example, articles from The Independent will show up on your Friends page. When you add another user as a Friend, their content will show up on your Friends page. When you join a community, you can see all the posts to that community on your Friends page. It's that simple.

How to make Friends
So you have this Friends page, but you don't have any Friends to fill it up. Adding another user as a Friend is less of a commitment than you might think. When you Friend another user, it simply means that their content can show up on your Friends page. You don't have to be close personal friends with me to add me to your Friends list (though let's not rule that out). Making Friends is easy. Just click Add Friend on a user's Profile page and they'll be added to your Friends list.