LiveJournal Announcement: LiveJournal Major Notes: My Stats, My Guests, Holiday promotion, Yandex search, Whitelisting!

There is a new announcement in news

Get to know My Guests. Want to know who's checking you out? You can now view the 100 most recent, logged-in users who visited your journal during the past 30-day period with My Guests. For those who prefer to fly under the radar, you can update your My Guests privacy setting here.

Introducing My Stats. If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can now see detailed reports on how many people are visiting your journal, friends pages, and entries (wherever they're posted on LiveJournal). You can also view data on comments and RSS requests. My Stats is only available to Paid and Permanent account holders, but you can upgrade anytime. (FYI, an annual subscription costs less than a large pizza with everything on it, PLUS it's rumored to make you lose weight in your sleep!) For additional details on this feature, read this article in paidmembers.

Get ready to check your vital statistics!. To begin, mouse over Journal in the upper nav bar and select My Stats from the dropdown menu (Horizon) or select My Stats under Journal in the side bar (Vertigo). If you're using another design scheme, you can visit My Stats directly. You'll find My Guests on the My Stats tool bar.

Happy holiday promotion!

We're delighted to tell you about our holiday coupons, which will help you share the love with your LiveJournal friends! If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can send up to 10 LiveJournal Basic/Plus users a $10 coupon for an annual paid subscription now through January 15th, 2010. Recipients can upgrade for $9.95 (instead of $19.95) for one year by enrolling in our automatic payment plan or make a manual payment of $15 (instead of $25). Please note that these coupons are not transferable and cannot be used to renew existing paid accounts. If you're a Paid/Permanent user, you can send out your holiday coupons now!

Tweaks and Enhancements

1. The search is on: We've replaced our default search tool with one from Yandex, a leader in search engine technology. This means you'll get smarter, more granular results! To get started, enter your search terms and click the Go button to the left of the Find box on the upper right of the LiveJournal header. This will take you to the search landing page where you can further refine by Entries, Comments, People & communities, and FAQs. You can also access the search page directly.
2. Whitelisting: We've released a new option to help you moderate your busy communities more efficiently. If an entry contains a link to a whitelisted (i.e., trusted) site, it will be posted automatically without need for moderator approval. If a post contains a link that is not on the whitelist, you'll be prompted to approve. To access this option, please visit settings for any community you maintain and select the third option in the Community Moderation box (located in the lower left-hand corner). Click the enable link to custom-edit your community's whitelist, which has been prepopulated with trusted domains. You can manually add or delete URLs in the text box. Please note: If you're the maintainer of an unmoderated community, you may see the radio button for this setting checked, even though it's not active. This is a known issue. Please select whichever option you prefer and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. If you're happy with your current settings, then no need to do anything!
3. TMI, dude: We've added some fun FREE sponsored vgifts! You can send up to 50 TMI vgifts to mutual friends (btw, you cannot send free vgifts to communities). If you're a Paid/Permanent user and you want to view sponsored gifts, click Show sponsored gifts on your homepage or visit the sponsored gift page. These vgifts will only be available through Wednesday, December 23rd.

You can view more awesome user content after the jump!

ljlimericks

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Photos of the week

We're back with more fantastic images from our uber-talented photography community. Congratulations to jadedfrenzy, who will be awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our third contest. Please take our weekly LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

Spotlight community of the week

If you're stuck behind your computer craving the great outdoors, button up your overcoat and navigate your path over to naturesbeauty for a breath of fresh air.

Conquer Writer's Block

Here are excerpts from this week's most popular question of the day:

Do you think society puts too much pressure on people to be in relationships and/or have children? Do you think this ostracizes people who would be perfectly content to remain single and/or child-free? Is this pressure worse around the holidays?

1. Yes. From a child-free standpoint - People (some not all) are downright condescending about me and my husbands decision not to have children. Others are downright boggled, and still others think there must be something biologically or chemically wrong with both of us. Honestly, we both just love our sleep, extra money, playing loud music and movies, spontanious sex, going out on the week-ends without having to find a sitter, etc etc etc. I don't really find it's worse around the holidays. Except for the occasional "Too bad you don't get to see any little kids open gifts on christmas morning" Yes, it really is too bad I had to spend the money that would have gone on useless toys on other things. :)
2. I don't think society puts enough pressure on people to be in a relationship, marry and THEN have kids.Not that this is the only way. But overall, we have a bunch of young kids running around fucking like bunnies, then end up on Maury and go, he might be the daddy, but so could these other 5 guys. Seriously.Society needs to put restrictions on getting pregnant, like a license or something. They also need to teach morals and while they are at it, not bailing the instant they get angry or they realize, men leave the toilet seat up, grunt and scratch.Screw holidays.
3. suck it up buttercup. you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't- you'll be wrong no matter what you do if you listen to "society". stop giving a shit what other people think you should be doing and live your life. if you're stressed out about how other people perceive/judge you, you're going to be miserable your whole life no matter WHAT your choices, from sweater colours to spirituality to restaurants.
4. Yes, definitely. I'm asexual and aromantic and my eldest brother is the same; the only one who isn't is our other brother in the middle, who only thinks with his other head. Louis and I really just don't care (although I think I care less than he does, seeing as he often goes "Ahh, maybe it's about time I get a girlfriend" and the like) and we're not fond of kids either. In fact, small children downright frighten me....
5. In a way, I can see where there'd be a 'pressure' or something, but perhaps I'm just not seeing what you're seeing. It's more of a natural human desire to have someone else there. A partner. Someone who is always there for you. Holidays just worsen that alone feeling. Not sure if there's 'pressure' there, but just.. meh. hen again, I can't really think about taking care of a relationship, when I can barely take care of myself. *sigh*
6. The short answers to this question are yes, yes to a degree and I think sometimes it is, yes. I have friends from all across the spectrum. It was only when I got heavily involved in supporting and educating women who are either pregnant, trying to get pregnant or who had just had babies that my perspective on societal pressures began to shift.... It pulls on my heart strings when I have friends who aren't happy in their lives because they're unhappy in their relationship or they want to be in a relationship but aren't. But I also understand that happiness comes in different packages for everyone and so respect and honour those who are happiest without a relationship and perhaps even children. Striking a balance is a never ending process though, not a final state. I can only hope that society at large will find some kind of balance too.
7. HELL YES! Whenever I'm at any family functions this time of the year and the rest of my generation are there with all their kids I either get pitying looks or the question of "When are you gonna settle down with a husband and give your parents some grandkids to spoil?" I don't WANT to get married, too many of my friends have been married and divorced thank you very much, and sides, they DO have grandkids to spoil...they just happen to have four legs and fur...
8. I cannot express how I got sick to death of hearing people in Bible college tell me that I "couldn't teach the men" but maybe I could marry a youth pastor or have my own children to teach without having any idea that I was divorced and am incapable of having children without divine intervention. In fact, one girl somehow got it in her mind that I had a son and no matter how much I protested to the contrary would continually ask me about him until I finally turned around and said, "My husband left me after he got his girlfriend pregnant. I can't have kids. STOP IT...What it does mean is that I have a scope of compassion and understanding for other women who have been hurt, abandoned, wounded and feel so very keenly the strange sting of childlessness that our society tells us we should be several decades beyond feeling shameful about but some how... Knowing one's body cannot do what it was designed for is oddly ... demeaning (Even more so because logic says that such a feeling is not true not true not true and something the womanly brain should be able to rationally disregard as a product of past societal expectations.)
9. I could expound upon the reasons why, but I fear it would be extremely rambly and rather pointless, as I make little sense when I start to ramble. So, to summarize: - Some women do not want children. This does not invalidate their existence or worth as people. - Since the driving force behind most relationships and the pressure to be in them is directly related to how much sex you should (or should not) be having, those of us who don't want it (yeah, hi, this corner over here) doubtless feel that we are somehow inferior...
10. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes. Personally, I don't want kids. Who knows? Maybe someday I'd like to adopt a child. One. As in singular. Having siblings is all sorts of bad in my opinion. I learned that as a kid. I'm not one of those people who wants 10 kids and a white picket fence. My fence will be rainbow, dammit! And my house will be obnoxious and fun and there will always be music going. =)...

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Until next time, stay snug!

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