Could someone explain to me how the "Journal" feature works?

[ThomWV]

How does this "Journal" feature of DU work? Do you just post in any section and designate the posting to fall into your Journal. If I want to read the Journal of a fellow member now do I do it?

Do those questions even make sense? You'd be surprised how illiterate I am in all matters of modern electronic communications and all things related.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. No

It always seems like magic to me.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. Yes

You've got it right. little book icon next to a username will take you to their journal.

We're all gonna have to relearn all this for DU3 soon :)

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. OK:

"Do you just post in any section and designate the posting to fall into your Journal."

Yes. The journal entry will show how many replies it got - next to 'Discuss' (which takes you back to the post in its original thread) it says "3 comments", meaning 3 replies - including replies to replies etc.

"If I want to read the Journal of a fellow member now do I do it?"

If you're looking at a post by them, the first small icon by their name is a link to their journal:

If you want to find a person's journal without a post, try going to 'Options' at the top of all DU pages, and then click on 'User Profiles' on the left column. You get a 'search by username' box; type in the first few letters of their username, and you get a list of matches. If they have a journal, that same icon will appear by their name. Or type in your browser's URL box 'http://journals.democraticunderground.com/' followed by their DU username.

I think the idea was to allow a blog-like appearance for people to organise their posts into. Also, at one stage DU wasn't all indexed on Google etc., but the journal entries were, so adding 'good' posts to your journal was a way to get them seen on the internet. But all of DU is now indexed, as far as I know.

[ThomWV]

4. Thank you, that helps a lot.

I don't know what indexed means but I get the idea. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. 'indexed' just means 'searchable on Google'

You can set up your website to tell Google to ignore parts of it, if you want.