Livejournal replacement?

April 2, 2008 8:53 AM

What's a good replacement for livejournal? Desired features: a modicum of privacy controls and openID authentication for readers.

So in light of the ongoing fiasco that is SUP's ownership of livejournal, I'm considering jumping ship. The problem is, my blog there has mostly been of the kind that works best with the livejournal setup and community. In particular, I'd like to continue to make use of privacy controls, preferably with the ability to authenticate my allowed readers through openID. The idea here being that such a setup would make it easy for my friends on livejournal to continue using that identity to read my blog. Wordpress lets you password protect individual posts, or create an non-openID authentication list for your entire journal; what else is out there? Is there any platform besides livejournal that has this sort of feature set?

posted by Arturus to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Are you discounting LJ clones (deadjournal, blurty, insanejournal, journalfen etc.)? They run on LJ code but never got the groundswell of users so there's not the community aspect. Wherever you do go, unfortunately, you may have to cope with a much smaller userbase. That's what's keeping me from seriously considering a switch.
posted by subbes at 9:13 AM on April 2, 2008

P.S. There are some software solutions for crossposting to lj as well as your alternate journal/blog site. Most work with wordpress and lj clones. If you're looking to bring readers over from your LJ you may need to crosspost to your LJ until your f-list follows you over.
posted by subbes at 9:16 AM on April 2, 2008

Vox isn't half-bad. It's an LJ spinoff, though I don't see SUP devouring and choking on it any time soon.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 9:29 AM on April 2, 2008

Vox is owned by Six Apart, former owners of LiveJournal, who didn't have a great track record with LJ users either. The Vox software is unrelated to the LJ software.

Wordpress has an OpenID plugin. Or do you mean WordPress.com the service?

Blogspot allows OpenID commenting, not sure about privacy settings.
posted by mkb at 9:53 AM on April 2, 2008

blogger allows up to 100 private readers'

and yes, it has OpenID too
posted by subatomiczoo at 10:06 AM on April 2, 2008

I'm also interested in finding an alternative to LJ. I was going to go with Blogger but it lacks privacy settings for individual posts. I'll be watching this question for sure.
posted by Diskeater at 11:08 AM on April 2, 2008

Wordpress.

Here to host on your own server.

Here to have them host a free blog for you.

The first option is more customizable as far as layouts and plugins, but both have the security control you're speaking of, and all built into a WYCIWYG editor. I discovered Wordpress about a year ago and use it for every single site I run, from my band's site to a personal portfolio.

Check it out.
posted by pedmands at 1:23 PM on April 2, 2008

@pedmands, how do you get Wordpress to do customizable friends levels?
posted by electriccynic at 9:36 AM on July 16, 2008