IN CASE OF LJ DEATH

[johnridley]

There are rumors around today of LJ's imminent death.

I'm not sure I put much stock in it, because honestly, LJ could probably continue just fine with hardly any employees, just because they're laying off employees doesn't mean they're folding soon.

Nonetheless, I'm thinking about what could replace it.

Unfortunately, AFAIK there aren't any real alternatives that do the same thing that LJ does.

I'm currently running "LiveJournal Backup" to grab my entries and comments. If you want to do the same, here's the URL:
http://ljbackup.yamnet.co.uk/

Caveat: I've never tried to restore from this. The data does seem to all be there though.

If LJ does die, does anyone have ideas on where to move to?

I'd be willing to set up something on my web page, there's a lot of blogging software available, perhaps with the ability to restore LJ backups to an archive, if there isn't anywhere else to go that offers similar functionality. I don't know if anything similar can be built by configuring existing software, but we can try.

Obviously I don't have the bandwidth to replace LJ, but I could easily accomodate GT/PFRC, for instance.

[EDIT] - as an alternative to a replacement for LJ, has anyone come across any blog aggregators? If one exists or could be built, that would have a similar functionality to a friends-list. I suppose you could do it with an RSS feed, but it might be nice to have a one-stop aggregator, even if it simply put out an RSS feed.

It still wouldn't handle friends-only post filtering, etc.

Comments

[bloggingchick.livejournal.com]

A few people I know as well as other lj users have been migrating over to <a href="http://www.insanejournal.com/>insanejournal</a>. Most people are keeping journals at both lj & ij. ij is pretty the same as lj, free accounts have ads which I personally am not thrilled with. There is another one linked to Insanejournal but I can't think of the name. I just know it isn't deadjournal.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll just maintain LJ myself, and if it becomes necessary to move, I'll write something to repost all my prior messages from backup to IJ.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I went ahead and created my account so no other JohnRidley grabs it first. Looks pretty familiar over there.

[madtechie2718.livejournal.com]

Good plan, I've just done the same. thanks for the pointer!

[bloggingchick.livejournal.com]

It's a little late in the game but the other journal site is greatestjournal (http://www.greatestjournal.com/) although when trying to create one I got this:

Create New Journal

GJ's servers are currently overloaded - we recommend joining InsaneJournal instead.

Maybe because it says it's ad free but one of the FAQ says you can set the journal to not display the ads so idk.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Looks like they've decided to fold instead of trying to handle the load.

IJ says up front that they intend to handle whatever load comes along.

[jennlk]

That's not new. GJ essentially folded a few months ago. AAIUI, they had some server/database problems, and rather than solve the problem, they threw up their hands and said "bugger this. we're done. Anything lost is lost, so sad."

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

The downloader doesn't seem to work. I am getting the ""Data sent from LJ was corrupt" error message" that the ReadMe file says has been fixed. Um, maybe not...

What other options are available?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Weird, I ran it myself here at work just now. I wonder if there's something in your particular journal that it doesn't like?

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

I found an ljsm tool. perl script and windows wrapper. Makes html files locally. http://www.offtopia.net/ljsm/index_en.html

It looks pretty good so far.

There's also LJBook, but they're swamped right now.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I'm playing about right now - it looks like it won't be much work to write a perl script to grab entries from LJ and move them to InsaneJournal - they have the same interfaces. I think I can write a script to do this quickly, and then just run it to sync my entries occasionally.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

The downloader/migration tool I linked to this morning:
http://antennapedia.livejournal.com/266462.html

may work better, though it's a Python script and I don't know if you have Python installed. If nothing else, it's less cryptic; it keeps your stuff on the local drive in straightforward XML so other tools could be gotten or written to work with them. Also I think it can pull to local hard drive, then publish to InsaneJournal or somewhere else later, AFTER any possible LJ death.

[min8ive.livejournal.com]

HA!

I already backed all mine up last month.

And you scoffed me. Smarty pants!

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I didn't scoff backing up, I back up myself though not often. I just don't know why someone would keep a journal and then trash old entries.

[min8ive.livejournal.com]

Um, how about, in case the company goes belly up?

I feel better know all that stuff isn't "out there" anymore.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm pretty sure if they had any intention of doing anything you wouldn't like with it (and I'm not saying they do or don't), there's still a copy there whether you "deleted" it or not. If nothing else, I'm sure they have historical backups, if they have any sense, going back a year at least. Where I work, we keep daily incrementals and biweekly fulls, and we keep I think beginning of month full backups for 2 years.

I do post stuff to myself here, but if it's anything I don't want out there, I post it DES encrypted.

There's only one solution for keeping stuff from being out there, and that's to never put it out there in the first place.

[c0nsumer.livejournal.com]

What about just using Google Reader as an aggregator? It's web-based, works very well, and even supports Gears so you can do offline reading with it.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

It's a possibility. It's still not a replacement.

Actually since InsaneJournal has been brought up, it's the answer. It's actually exactly the same thing as LJ, just hasn't sold out to 6A.

[c0nsumer.livejournal.com]

Yep, it'd just require a critical mass to move there.

That said, I've reserved my username just in case.

[erikvolson.livejournal.com]

Grabbed my username just now.

[nicegeek.livejournal.com]

The LiveJournal software is open-source (perl), so someone could always put up a new (possibly invite-only) site.

[mbcrui.livejournal.com]

I looked at CrazyLife, which is also the same open source software as LJ. It looks good too. I used to use blogger, which is fine and has some nice posting features.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

I glommed onto both Greatest and Insane in 08/2007 when there was a hoo-hah over here and I wasn't sure that a lot of folks wouldn't bail. Haven't checked recently to see if my IDs are still alive, but I've not been notified that they're not.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Most good blogs simply provide RSS or ATOM feeds. That's good enough for most things.

I'm using netnewswire but I don't think that will help you.