Welcome to LiveJournal news. If you crave more frequent and detailed news, check out the following communities:
![[info]](http://p-rus.ljgate.com/stat/img/newsinfo.gif) news | New features, site changes, overall news. (this page) |
 | ![[info]](http://p-rus.ljgate.com/stat/img/community.gif) lj_maintenance | Server status and planned downtime announcements. |
| | lj_releases | Release info on code updates and new features. |
| | feedback | Provide feedback in staff polls and surveys. |
| | lj_design | Be part of the creative discussion at LiveJournal. |
| | lj_dev | LiveJournal technical development community. |
| | changelog | Every little code change, as it happens. |
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Bookmarklet, Profile Page, Give More, V-Gifts, Research Report, Paid Account Feature, Happy Holidays
Thursday, Dec 18th, 2008 -- 3:45 pm
News Flash---Permanent Account Sale Extended
Wednesday, Dec 10th, 2008 -- 4:17 pm
theljstaff |
Due to popular demand, we're extending the Permanent Account sale. Many of you have written in requesting an extension, noting that a lot of people get paid on Fridays or on the 15th. We're happy to report that your requests have been answered—the sale now ends on December 15, giving you an extra 5 days to head over to the Gift Shop and purchase a Permanent Account.
(We disabled email notification for this news post because we don't want to inundate your inboxes with announcements, but we thought you might want to know about the sale extension.)
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Permanent Account Sale, Give More, india_politics, Global Viewpoints, NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, Themes
Thursday, Dec 4th, 2008 -- 5:32 pm
theljstaff |
In this issue of LJ News:
Permanent Account Sale
Give More
india_politics
Global Viewpoints Community
NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up
NaBloPoMo Update
New Journal Themes
Get More: Permanent Account Sale Starts Today
It's here—the Permanent Account sale for personal journals starts today. For $175, you can have LJ for life. What do you get for $175?
- All the cool features of a Paid Account
- 15GB of storage, the most available on LJ (if you already have a Permanent Account, your storage just got upped to 15GB as of today)
- Oodles of userpics: 150 plus the maximum number of Loyalty Userpics. That's the most userpics available on LJ (and yes, if you already have a Permanent Account, you just got more userpics, too).
- $25 of your purchase price donated to charity. Here's how it works: You purchase a Permanent Account between now and December 6, 12:00 p.m. PST. When you go through the payment process for the Permanent Account, we'll send you an email confirming your Permanent Account status. When the sale ends, we'll send each new Permanent Account holder a link to our charity partner site, razoo.com, where you'll be able to allocate your $25 donation to any of 1.6 million charities. In the future, we plan on further integrations with Razoo.com to make this process a bit less cumbersome, but we know you wanted more control over where your charity money goes, rather than having us choose for you. So, take a look at the razoo.com site and decide on the charity of your choice!
The Permanent Account sale is like a rare and exotic bird—it's seldom sighted and doesn't stay for long when it makes an appearance. The Permanent Account sale flies away on December 10 at 11:59 p.m. PST. So grab your binoculars and get out your life list (and your wallet), because who knows when you'll see it again? Head on over to the Gift Shop and get your Permanent Account today.
Give More
Oh ho ho ho, December is here and so is the Give More sale. Wondering what to get that LJ friend on your gift list? Nothing says friendship like Paid Account time, especially when it comes with a free userpic add-on. For the month of December, any gift of Paid Account time gets an automatic userpic add-on. For example, if you give a friend 12 months of Paid Account time, that friend is automatically upgraded to 100 userpics for those 12 months.
We all know it's better to give than to receive. The Give More offer applies only to gifts purchased for other users, not to paid time you purchase for yourself. Give More ends December 31 at 11:59 p.m. PST. There's never a line at the Gift Shop, so now's the time to give a Friend the gift that gives more.
india_politics
Politics in India are always volatile, and never more so than in the last few weeks. You can get Indian viewpoints on subcontinent politics at our new partner community india_politics, where community members debate the issues and share their reactions to the latest developments in Indian politics. The focus is on India and the Indian perspective, but all are welcome to join and enter the discussion.
New Global Viewpoints Community
Building on the international dialogue created in our ![[info]](http://p-rus.ljgate.com/stat/img/partnercomm.gif) us_election2008 community, where journalists from international newspapers posted questions to LJ users about the U.S. elections, we're taking the discussion to the global level. Journalists from newspapers such as Mint, The Independent, and Gazeta want to hear your thoughts and opinions on international events, from the recent terror attacks in Mumbai to the battle between Labour and the Tories in the U.K. The goal is to encourage lively and spirited debate between LJers and news providers worldwide and also to allow re-publication of comments from this community in print and online media outside of LJ. LiveJournal has a global user base and we want to facilitate cross-border communication and debate on news and events from all over the globe. We live in times in which it's hard not to have an opinion, so let yours be heard at global_view.
NaNoWriMo Comes to an End
Congratulations to all the hardworking LJ novelists who cranked out so many words in the month of November! We promised to give NaNoWriMo's Young Writer's Program $1 for every LJer who completed NaNoWriMo this year (up to $1000) and in recognition of all the crazy plot ninjas, narrative dead-ends, and desperate word count–padding strategies, we've decided to dispense with the counting and give YWP the full $1000.
We also dangled some other incentives in front of hungry novelists, including giving free one-year Paid Accounts to five randomly selected LJers who finished. And the winners are . . . ![[info]](http://p-rus.ljgate.com/stat/img/userinfo.gif) cieria (131,045 words!), oneworldvision (50,116 words!), gnorph (50,048 words!), rintaran (51,615 words!), and nysidra (50,252 words!).
What about all those v-gifts, you might be thinking. We pledged 50% of the proceeds from v-gifts in the encouragement category in the month of November. Our accounting monkeys are still adding up the total, so check the next news post to find out just how encouraging you were in November.
And how did the LJ staffers fare? lyndaellen clocked in at 50,474 and coffeechica, despite a long and painful month involving migraines, codeine, and other trials, finished with 37,520 (many of those written in a heroic, down-to-the-wire effort during the closing days of November).
Thanks for everyone's enthusiasm and support for their fellow novelists. We hope to see you again next November.
NaBloPoMo
Also chaining people to their keyboards in November was National Blog Posting Month. Two brave LJ staffers pldeged to write 30 posts in 30 days. So how'd they do? chasethestars made a daily habit out of updating and marta posted more than she ever has before.
New Themes
The new Minimalism layout scheme has 25 new themes, including (from left to right): Aquatic Moon, Crazy Day, Dark Wood, and Deep Ocean.
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Special Edition News Post, Part 2
Tuesday, Nov 25th, 2008 -- 2:34 pm
theljstaff |
Independent Minds at LiveJournal
We're very pleased to announce that our global footprint just got a little bigger with the launch of Independent Minds, our new partnership with The Independent, one of the UK's leading newspapers. At Independent Minds you can find original journals from the reporters at The Independent, where they discuss their stories, share behind-the-scenes insights, and engage directly with Independent readers and LJ users. Have an opinion about a story? Now you can comment about it directly on the journalist's journal. You can read what The Independent has to say about this new partnership here.
This marks our first attempt to engage on the ground in the UK. In addition to Independent Minds, we have launched lj_uk, a new official community to hear directly from the thousands of LJers in the UK. Our partnership with The Independent is our main area of focus now and we'll have more features to add soon. We look forward to hearing from you about other ideas and suggestions you might have for enhancing LJ in the UK.
Changes to the LiveJournal Privacy Policy
We're amending our Privacy Policy to catch up to our current practices regarding third-party advertising, cookies, and web beacons (including HitBox). Please see this post in lj_biz for a full description of the changes.
Permanent Account Sale
As we mentioned in the last news post, the Permanent Account Sale starts on December 4. For this go-round, the sale applies to personal journals only. For just $175, you can have LJ for life. What's included in $175? All the features of a Paid Account, plus:
- The most storage available on LiveJournal (now a whopping 15GB)
- The most userpics available on LJ (boosted to 150, and that's not even counting Loyalty Userpics, which can add up to another 44 to your 150)
- EDIT: Once the sale begins on December 4, the userpic and storage limits will be increased for all Permanent Accounts.
- $25 of your purchase price donated to charity (look for details about the designated organizations in the December 4 news post).
The Permanent Account Sale is a temporary offer and ends December 10 at 11:59 PST, so be ready to buy when the sale starts on December 4!
Give More Returns
December is almost here, which can only mean one thing—the Give More sale is back! For the month of December, when you give someone a gift of Paid Account time, they'll get the userpic add-on for free! So if, for example, you were a very kind and generous person and gave someone the gift of a 12-month Paid Account, that lucky person would automatically be upgraded to 100 userpics for those 12 months.
Give More starts on December 1 at 12:00 a.m. PST and ends December 31 at 11:59 p.m. PST. The offer only applies to gifts purchased for other users, not to paid time you purchase for yourself. 'Tis the season of giving, after all. Why not give a Friend the gift that gives more?
Head on over to the Gift Shop and get your holiday shopping done early!
And the Laptop Goes to . . .
Congratulations to Tupelo Hassman, winner of the Grand Prize LiveJournal Laptop at the NaNoWriMo Write-a-thon. Tupelo raised over $3000 for NaNo's Young Writers Program and took home a beautiful ruby red Dell Studio laptop to match her lovely red dress. Yay, Tupelo!
All Moved In
The move is over! LJ is happily settled at our new homestead in Montana and we have almost all the bits and bytes unpacked and in their proper places. Congratulations to our awesome Ops team and all the engineers for a job well done. We hope you notice a marked improvement in performance on the site. Here are some recent metrics that show the effects of the move:
- The percentage of people seeing the page load in less than 2 seconds increased from 8.58% to 12.53% (a 46% improvement!)
- The percentage of people seeing the page load in 2 to 8 seconds increased from 66.75% to 72.33% (an 8% improvement!)
These measurements are global averages for full page loads. Points farthest from the continental U.S. (where the servers are), like Japan and Australia, experience longer load times than points that are closer. Thanks for all your patience during the move. We think LJ is going to be very happy in its new home.
IP Address Update
In last week's Special Edition News Post, we told you to update your whitelist with two new IP addresses for LiveJournal, so comments notifications and LJ mail could keep making it to your email inbox. One of them, ahem, was missing an important digit in the address. The two IP addresses should be 208.93.0.128 and 208.93.0.50. We apologize for the mistake. It seems Frank was nibbling on the piece of paper that had the addresses on it.
Notifications
There's another reason you might not be receiving notifications from LJ. Due to the volume of mail that LiveJournal sends out, a few ISPs responded to our change of address by blacklisting our servers. We've been working with them to restore mail delivery for our users. Currently, the main problem still being reported is delivery to Hotmail/MSN addresses, and they have agreed to whitelist us in the next 24 hours or so. Other users might also be experiencing a delay due to our backlog in delivering to Hotmail, and that should also clear up in the next 24 to 48 hours.
The Atom Stream Has Moved
As a result of the server move, our Atom stream is moving. If you know what "Atom stream" means, then you'll probably want to know the new address. The URL for the new Atom stream is: http://atom.services.rus.ljgate.com/atom-stream.xml. For more information about the Atom stream move, check out this post in lj_labs.
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LJ News Special Edition: Server Move, Permanent Account Sale Update, A La Carte Userpics
Sunday, Nov 16th, 2008 -- 11:35 pm
theljstaff |
Welcome to a Very Special Edition of LJ News.
Moving Day and What It Means for You
Moving What Where?
The long-awaited server move takes place this Tuesday, November 18, at 8:00 a.m. PST. We're moving the site from servers based in San Francisco to the servers in our new data center in Montana. A massive data move like this takes a lot of heavy lifting, and to haul all that data from San Francisco to Montana, we have to take the site down, starting at 8:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday morning. We don't think the move will take more than four hours, but there's always the possibility that it could take longer (the best laid plans and all).
What Does This Mean for You?
During the downtime, nothing on LJ will be available—no posting, no Friends page, no LJ mail, nada. When we bring the site back up, we're going to ease into it rather than open up a floodgate of traffic. Posting might not be immediately available or the site could be slow to load for a while.
New servers mean new IP addresses, so it's possible that LJ mail might not reach your email inbox because your email provider or client doesn't recognize the new IP addresses. We're working with email providers to whitelist the new IPs. There are a few things you can do on your end:
- Add these two IP addresses to your "allowed senders" list (or whitelist) and address book in your email client: 208.93.0.18 and 208.93.0.50. These are the new IPs for sending comments notifications and LJ mail to your email inbox.
- Add lj_notify@rus.ljgate.com and webmaster@rus.ljgate.com to your email address book.
If you can't edit the spam or junk filters in your email client, you may need to disable them entirely. Make these changes just before 8:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday morning or shortly after the site comes back up to ensure that your LJ mail makes it to your inbox.
Those of you who use domain aliasing to forward your domain to your LiveJournal will need to create a CNAME record that maps to rus.ljgate.com. Please note that we're no longer supporting the A record. For more information, check the domain forwarding FAQ.
Before the move, you can check lj_maintenance for complete details about the planned downtime. During the move, you can check status.livejournal.org for updates about the site's status.
Permanent Account Sale Delayed
We regret to inform you that due to the server move, the Permanent Account sale has been pushed back to December 4, rather than November 20 as announced in the last news post. After the virtual dust has settled from the move, we'll be able to turn our attention to the Permanent Account sale. Except for the start date, the details remain the same: You have a limited opportunity to purchase LJ for life for only $175. It's a bummer to delay the sale, but on the bright side, you have more time to save up.
But What About A La Carte Userpics?
We know we promised more information about a la carte userpics, and we're sorry that details have not been forthcoming (blame it on the move). We're still planning on having a la carte userpics, but we don’t have any details yet. When the move is over, we'll have more information. We're sorry for the delay.
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