InsaneJournal

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If you speak English, and this FAQ is displaying in another language, please click here to view this FAQ in English.

InsaneJournal uses your browser settings to determine what language to display.

To set your language preferences for InsaneJournal only, log in and visit the Site Options page. If you have not previously set a language while logged in, this page can also be reached by clicking on the translation icon with a speech bubble under the InsaneJournal logo on all of the main InsaneJournal pages.

After selecting your language preferences, log out of InsaneJournal and then log in once again. This is to ensure that your settings are properly stored.

If you wish to have your browser present you with your native language in all cases, without having to set your default language, you can change the settings in your browser. However, this will affect sites other than InsaneJournal.

Setting your language only affects InsaneJournal system pages; individual journal entries will always appear in the language in which they were entered. Not all system pages are available for translation, and not all the available pages are translated into every available language.

Many InsaneJournal system pages can be viewed in another language by adding "?uselang=XX" to the end of the URL for the page, where "XX" is the standard code for the language you wish to view. To specify English, use "?uselang=en_LJ". If an InsaneJournal system page already has an argument appended to it (for example: http://www.insanejournal.com/update.bml?mode=full), then to view it in English you would need to add "&uselang=en_LJ" to the end of the URL (http://www.insanejournal.com/update.bml?mode=full&uselang=en_LJ), changing the question mark to an ampersand.

You can change the appearance of the InsaneJournal website by choosing one of several site schemes. A site scheme is basically a "style" designed for InsaneJournal system pages (i.e., a page that is not a journal or friends page). There are several different site schemes that are available for use. These site schemes were developed by users and made available for public use.

To change which site scheme you use, click the "Site Options" link from the "Edit your settings" heading on any InsaneJournal system page. (Currently, some of the site schemes do not have this link under the "Edit your settings" heading. If this is true for the site scheme you are currently using, use the following URL to change your scheme: http://www.insanejournal.com/manage/siteopts.bml.)

Once you are at the Browse Preferences screen, select which site scheme you would like to use and click "Switch Scheme". The page should automatically refresh with the new scheme, making it possible to select a different one, if you wish.

Please note that this is not how you change the style for your journal page. For information on how to change your journal style, please see the Customization FAQs: http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqcat=customization.

InsaneJournal sends data in the UTF-8 encoding, which increases support for international users.

If characters in your journal or User Info appear as ? rather than the proper symbol, or if you have ever used special symbols in your journal entries or user bio (such as accented letters, pound signs, or Microsoft Word "SmartQuotes"), you need to set your default encoding. You will not be able to edit your entries until you do so.

To do this, first visit your Personal Info settings (http://www.insanejournal.com/editinfo.bml). Scroll down to the bottom and choose your default text encoding.

Most native speakers of English who are Windows users should choose "Western European (Windows)" as their default encoding. Most native speakers of English who are Macintosh users should choose "Western European (ISO)".

Once you have done this, visit the UTF-8 Conversion Page (http://www.insanejournal.com/utf8convert.bml). Most users can safely select "Yes, mass-convert my information!" If you know that you have ever used a text encoding other than Western European, choose to convert your account area-by-area and test first before converting.

If you experience problems such as extra spaces being added to your entries, characters being added or deleted, or unusual symbols being displayed on your screen, you may need to upgrade your web browser. Many older browsers are not UTF-aware or do not handle the UTF-8 encoding gracefully.

When you log in to InsaneJournal, your browser writes a cookie to your computer that keeps track of certain information, so that you don't have to keep logging in on every page. There are two options that can be stored in this cookie.

The first is the expiration of the cookie. If this option is set to "When browser closes", you will remain logged in until you end your browser session, and your browser will then delete the cookie. If this option is set to "Never", you will remain logged in indefinitely, and when you close and restart your browser, you will not have to log in to InsaneJournal each time. In order to log out, you will need to visit http://www.insanejournal.com/logout.bml (also accessible by clicking "Log out" on the left hand side navigational bar).

The "Bind to IP address" option stores your IP address in the session information for your cookie, so that your cookie only works with that specified address. Please note that this option does not stop you from logging in to InsaneJournal from another computer, but is merely a deterrent to account "hijacking". You can, however, choose to end all currently logged in sessions by using the "Expire all my sessions" option on logout (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=23).

If you have a dialup ISP, your IP address probably changes too frequently for this option to be useful.

The default values for these options are for the login to expire when your browser closes and not be bound to your IP address. You can change these options at any time after logging in by visiting http://www.insanejournal.com/login.bml , selecting your desired options, and clicking "Change Options."

You can also change these options by adding special characters to the end of your username when you log in. Adding the character "!" will set "Expiration" to "Never". Adding the character "<" will set "Bind to IP address" to "Yes". These options can be used alone or in combination.

For example, if the user exampleusername wants to log in, all of the following entries in the "Username" field are possible:
exampleusername (Log in exampleusername, leaving both options set to their default values).
exampleusername! (Log in exampleusername, setting "Expiration" to "Never").
exampleusername< (Log in exampleusername, setting "Bind to IP address" to "Yes").
exampleusername!< or exampleusername

When you log in to InsaneJournal, your browser writes a cookie to your computer that keeps track of certain information, so that you don't have to keep logging in on every page. The "Bind to IP address" option stores your IP address in the session information for your cookie, so that your cookie only works with that specified address.

Please note that this option does not stop you from logging in to InsaneJournal from another computer, but is merely a deterrent to account "hijacking". You can, however, choose to end all currently logged in sessions by using the "Expire all my sessions" option on logout (http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=23).

If you have a dialup ISP, your IP address probably changes too frequently for this option to be useful.

When the "Expire all my sessions" option on the Logout page (http://www.insanejournal.com/logout.bml) appears, it means there is more than one session for you in the database. There are several reasons why this may occur.

One such reason is that you are logged in on another computer. Another is that you have logged in, then you closed your browser (or it crashed), and you restarted it and logged in again less than 36 hours later.

In any case, it is unlikely that this is an indication of a security breach or an account break-in. If you are unsure, do feel free to use this option to expire all sessions, and the option will disappear for the time being.

The following explains in detail how the session handling mechanism works.

When you log in to InsaneJournal, two things happen:

1) A session is created and assigned an authentication code (authcode);

2) As part of the response to the login request, the server asks your browser to set a cookie with your username, a session number and its authcode in it. This mechanism increases security as it means your browser does not need to store the password to your account to allow you to remain logged in.

Since the browser has control over the cookies, it can expire these when it closes. Once the browser is restarted, the cookie no longer exists. However, by the nature of the World Wide Web, the InsaneJournal servers only hear from your browser when it makes a request for a page; there is no way for the InsaneJournal servers to know when you close your browser. This is why sessions on the server may still be active. This is not a security risk because, since your cookie is gone, there no longer exists any copy of the authcode that would allow anyone to use the session.

If you choose to expire your cookies when the browser closes, the sessions that are created will expire after 36 hours of inactivity. (If you chose the option to create a login that never expires, the sessions will time out after 60 days of inactivity.) However, sessions are not automatically deleted when they expire - they may remain dormant on the server, and will only be deleted when someone attempts to use them (and the server then notices that they have expired), or when you choose to delete them by way of the option on the Logout page (http://www.insanejournal.com/logout.bml).

It is therefore possible to have several dormant sessions remaining on the server that have in fact expired. Because they have expired, they are unusable and do not present a security risk.

The memory feature on InsaneJournal allows you to mark your favourite entries from InsaneJournal in an easy-to-use keyword archival system.

The easiest way to set memories for your own account is when your message boards are enabled. On each comment page is a small toolbar set in blue that offers a variety of buttons, one of which is a small red heart. Clicking on this button will take you to the "Add to Memories" page, where you can give the memory a descriptive name and associate with it up to five keywords.

For information on what memories are and how to create them please see [ http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=7&view=full ] Editing memories is easiest if you follow the "Memories" link from your userinfo page, or by visiting the following URL, provided that you are logged in: [ http://www.insanejournal.com/tools/memories.bml ]. To edit a memory, find the memory you want to edit by following the keyword links, and then click on the [edit] link next to the memory itself. From here you can change a memory's description, keywords, security level, or even remove it from your memories.

To delete a memory, simply erase whatever description you have given the memory, and then hit the "submit" button. This will only delete the memory, not the actual entry associated with it.

To remove a deleted entry from your list of memories, you will need to utilize the "multidelete" method; this can be achieved by adding "&multidelete=1" to the URL displayed in your address bar after clicking on the memory's category. After doing so, you will be able to delete multiple memories at once, including those which have been deleted from your journal.

To edit or delete memories from an asylum, choose the asylum journal from the "Work as user" drop-down menu option and click "switch". From here, you can add/edit/delete memories using the above instructions.

The Calendar view (http://www.insanejournal.com/users/exampleusername/calendar/) contained in every user's journal is not meant to keep track of personal schedules like other online calendar services. Rather, it serves as a record of your previous entries. As you post in your journal, each one is archived on your Calendar, according to the date that it is posted, for ease in locating later.

If you have posted on a particular day, the number of posts that you have made in that day will display in the date box, including private or protected posts. The number that displays in the date box will link to a Day page that displays all of the entries you made on that day. However, all of the usual security settings still apply (See http://insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=63), and anyone visiting a Day page on your journal will see only entries that they are normally permitted to view.


Another feature of the Calendar view is the ability to view a list of all the posts, including subjects and number of received comments, that you've made in a given month, arranged by date. The month view is located here: http://www.insanejournal.com/view/?type=month&user=exampleusername . It is also linked from each of the month blocks on the Calendar page. If you are looking for a particular entry, this is often the best way to locate it, particularly if you remember the subject you used for that entry.

Links to posts in a non-current year are shown in the Calendar view. They can also be reached by appending a specific year onto the end of the Calendar view URL (such as http://www.insanejournal.com/users/exampleusername/yyyy/).

In all examples given in this FAQ, replace "exampleusername" with the username of the user whose Calendar view you wish to read.

The limitations on the lengths of various input fields are as follows:

* Comments: 9,000 bytes or 4,300 characters
* Comment Subjects: 100 characters
* Custom Friends Group Names: 30 characters
* Entries: 65,535 bytes or characters
* Entry Properties (Currents): 255 bytes or 100 characters
* Entry Subjects: 255 bytes or 100 characters
* Memory Keywords: 40 characters
* Memory Titles: 80 characters
* User Picture Keywords: 40 characters
* Usernames: 15 characters

Please note that the web client (http://www.insanejournal.com/update.bml or http://www.insanejournal.com/portal/) limits the entry properties so that "Current Mood" can only hold 30 characters and "Current Music" can only hold 60 characters. However, if you use a downloaded client that does not limit the length of these properties, you can fill in the entire 255 bytes or 100 characters. See http://www.livejournal.com/download/ to download a client. (Note that not all LiveJournal clients are supported by InsaneJournal, and that the two sites are not affiliated in any way. InsaneJournal is not responsible for the content or availability of LiveJournal.)

These limitations relate specifically to the Edit Personal Information page (http://www.insanejournal.com/editinfo.bml):

* Name: 50 characters
* E-mail: 50 characters
* Webpage URL: 255 bytes
* Webpage Name: 255 bytes
* AOL IM: 28 characters
* ICQ #: 12 characters (standard)
* Yahoo! ID: 33 characters (standard)
* MSN Messenger: 60 characters
* Jabber Address: 60 characters
* City: 60 characters
* State/Province/Territory: 50 characters
* About You: 65,535 bytes or characters

Interests are also limited, as specified in http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=26 .

Additionally, there are limits imposed upon the earliest and latest dates that you can post on InsaneJournal, using the "Backdate Entry" option (See http://www.insanejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=55). The earliest date posts are allowed to have is 1970-01-01, and the latest date is 2037-12-31.

To keep the load on our database server light, the following limits are currently imposed on the interests list of each user:

* There is an overall limit of 150 interests per journal.
* Although an interest can consist of more than one word, the limit is four words with single spaces between them.
* Whether an interest is one word or multiple words, there is a 50-character limit per interest. If you submit an interest using more than 50 characters, it will not show up on your userinfo page.

Users with "Self-committed" [paid] or Permanently Insane accounts also have the ability to search for journals based on similarity of interest (the number of interests in common with a particular user) at http://www.insanejournal.com/interests.bml?mode=findsim .