And now, the meat of the guide. Obviously, there would be no LiveJournal if it weren't for people posting-- in their journals, in their friends' journals, in communities... you get the picture. But how do you post an entry?
#1 - Your posting options. If you manage multiple accounts, you can Post as another user. You can also choose what journal you want to Post to. For example, you can post to your journal, the journal of a community you manage, or the journal of a community you're a member of (provided members have posting access). You can also change the date of your entry (for example, if you're adding entries from another journal, from a long time ago).
#2 - Change what Userpic you want that entry matched with. If you can't remember what a userpic looks like based on the keywords you assigned to it, you can always click on View Thumbnails to change how the drop-down menu of userpics displays. This change only takes effect for that particular entry. When you upload userpics, you assign them with a keyword (or keywords), which appear in this menu. If you use multiple keywords, each keyword will display in this menu.
#3 - The subject line of your entry. Be creative. What's your entry about?
#4 - Formatting. You can choose to disable auto-formatting (for example, starting a new paragraph every time you hit enter). You can also choose to use a Rich Text Editor, or the standard HTML Editor. A Rich Text editor acts much like your word processor-- you can click buttons to underline, italicize, or bold your text. If you know HTML code, use HTML mode for more control over your entries. Even if you don't use any HTML in your entries, the HTML mode tends to be the most reliable.
#5 - If you want to include an image or a video (from Google Video, YouTube, and many other places), you can do that by clicking on the two links above your entry box. Make sure if you post a large picture or video, you enclose it in an LJ-CUT:
<lj-cut>Text text your video or image here text text</lj-cut>
By default, someone viewing that entry would see ( Read More... ) on their Friends Page, or on your Journal. If you want to specify the text, type:
<lj-cut text="Your text here!">text text your video or image here text text</lj-cut>
And it will appear like this: ( Your text here! )
Make sure to include ALL the hyphens and quotes, or it won't work!
#6 - Your entry. Type a storm!
#7 - Your entry options. You can add tags (things that help organize your entries and help you and other users find them in the future. They're also helpful for discovering what you write about the most), specify your mood, tell us your location (which will then be linked to Google Maps; you don't have to put anything here, and you don't have to be completely specific; cities are okay too. Some people even make things up!), say what kind of music you're listening to (most clients have an "automatic detection" feature for this, so you don't have to type anything unless you want), and say whether you want to allow comments for that entry or screen comments (make them invisible until you reply to them, or unscreen them). You can also preview and spell check your entry!
#8 - You can set the security preferences for your entry. Do you want anyone who visits your journal to be able to read it, regardless of if they're a LiveJournal member or not? Set it to Everyone (Public). If you only want friends to read it, choose Friends Only. If only YOU want to see it (for example, a private journal entry, an idea you want to "scribble" down but don't have paper for... etc.), then set it to Just Me (Private). You can also choose one of your Custom friends groups if you choose the last option.
Then all you have to do is click Post to username and your entry will appear!
#9 - You can post to LiveJournal in many ways-- using a downloaded client (such as Semagic or Phoenix), a post through LJTalk, LiveJournal's instant messaging client, a voice post using a phone call (calls under 3 minutes will be automatically transcribed so people can choose to listen to the audio file or not!), or a mobile post (using web access or text messaging to post). Paid Members can also add Polls to their entries.
And that's it for this guide... if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to message me on LiveJournal-- I'm the_sweet, as you could probably tell from the entries above. Also, be sure to check out the LJ FAQ for more thorough explanations and answers to more vague questions!