Ljtoys

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The LJ Comments Search

Search comments on any of the threads LJToys is currently watching. This comes in handy when you're looking for something in the comments to a popular post - picking the thing you want out of 4,000 entries is damn near impossible. Use LJToys to search for it instead.

For the geeky: terms are or'ed together in a boolean mysql 'fulltext' search. If you get no results try surrounding words with *asterisks* to broaden the search. 34414 comments currently in the database.

It's relatively easy to get your own big posts added here - just drop me a mail.

LJ-Toys FAQ

FriendList Monitor
Q: Why the 50 user limit?
A: Mainly to stop you indiscriminately adding the whole LJ world. This would create quite a load on LJFM and - worse - make us hammer LiveJournal more than is polite.
Q: Can it deal with communities?
A: No - for some reason LiveJournal's system doesn't report changes to community membership. We could screen-scrape these but I've chosen not to out of politeness.

General Questions
Q: Why did you make this?
A: I haven't the faintest idea. Because it's neat. And then a couple of people suggested opening it up for others to use and it kinda grew from there.
Q: Are you on LiveJournal?
A: yes
Q: Is there a community I can join to follow LJToys news & updates?
A: Yes - predictably it's known as ljtoys.
Q: I lost the paid accounts page. Where did it go?
A: here.

Other Tools
Q: Your version of my livejournal friends list seems out of date. Is this normal?
A: Probably. To avoid hammering LiveJournal's servers we only download your friends list if we haven't already done so in the last 24 hours. Otherwise LJToys uses a saved copy, which can get slightly out of date if you've altered your friendlist.

Readership Monitor (technical stuff)
Q: I don't have a paid livejournal account - can I still use the Readership monitor?
A: Don't be so cheap.
Q: Is there a neat way to make LJToys ignore my own hits to my mood icons? They really clutter up the readers page.
A: Yes but it's quite geeky one. Read this post.
Q: Most of my hits show up okay but one or two people never appear. I'm certain they are hitting my posts - what's wrong?
A: This occasionally happens. There's a number of possible causes - most often because they've set their browser not to load remote images, or because some firewall software is hiding the hit. Not much can be done about it.
Q: I'd like to change my LJ username. Will this break my LJToys account?
A: So long as you go through the readers setup page again for your new LJ account things should work just fine. Don't forget to update your LJ username on the settings page, too.
Q: I logged into my account for the first time in a week and can't see any hits. What gives?
A: LJToys doesn't record hits for free users who haven't logged in during the last few days. This is because there are a large number of 'dead' accounts on the system - people who've tried it out then left the icons setup and forgotten about them. Ignoring their stuff makes LJToys a lot more efficient.

Readership Monitor, the social stuff
Q: Is this a good thing?
A: Depends on your opinion. The important thing is LJToys works with data people's browsers supply whenever they visit a page. Data-gathering techniques like this are nothing new - should anyone feel their privacy threatened there are plenty of ways to circumvent it.
Q: I hate you! Make it stop watching me!
A: You can do this pretty easily yourself; just add the text 'ljt_ignoreme:x' to your browser's useragent string. There's a discussion of how to do it in FireFox on the ljtoys community.
Q: I hate you! Make it stop watching me! (2)
A: (real, straightforward answer) then don't load remote images in web pages. There's a lot of information online about how to do this.

Accounts
Q: I want to stop giving you money. How do I cancel the recurring subscription?
A: There's an unsubscribe button here. For some really old accounts it doesn't work well; in that case login to PayPal and find the most recent payment. Click it, then the link to that sub's details page. On there you'll find an option to kill off the subscription.
Q: How can I delete my LJToys account for good?
A: Just turn off the emails and don't login to it anymore. You can pretend it's been deleted this way. Or try the delete link on your settings page.

DISCLAIMER: READ THIS BEFORE USING LJTOYS!

Standard LJToys Disclaimer

By using LJToys you accept responsibility for everything you do with it. Furthermore none of the information presented is guaranteed to be accurate, reliable or even sane. It's a fun toy for finding out who's been reading your LiveJournal, nothing more.

REALLY COOL STUFF YOU GET WITH A PAID ACCOUNT

  • hosting for proper mood icons - not just 1x1 pixel web bugs
    • more than $not_many checks to your readers page every day
    • previous month's historical data for your hits
    • emailed nightly statistics [real soon now]
    • ability to hide readers hits from your own & other IP's
    • browser statistics
    • bugs for monitoring hits to any web page - not just your livejournal! Try this with MySpace and other profile sites.
    • customizable labels for each of your posts
    • super-neat popups on your readers page detailing everything we know about each of your hits
    • the warm, fuzzy feeling from the knowledge you're helping to support LJToys

More

Custom LJ Mood Icon Setup

Use this page to create a set of specially-hosted mood icons for your LiveJournal. You can then configure LiveJournal to refer to these in each of your posts. Since these icons are all hosted on the LJToys server - and not by LiveJournal - we'll be able to keep tabs on who's been reading your posts :)

Stuff you need to know:

* You'll need a paid livejournal account to access the LJ admin console and configure your own mood icon theme. If you're too poor for that you can still monitor readership with LJToys but you'll need to include a web-bug image specially in every post.
* Some of the 'proper' sets of LiveJournal icons (ie. the icons LJ host themselves) aren't in the public domain. This means swiping a copy of them to use here is naughty, a breach of their copyright and likely to get your LJToys account deleted. Instead try making your own or snag one of the many free sets available online.

Free Users: Setup your custom moodicon theme

Even if you're not geeky this but should be fairly simple. To create a moodicon theme on LJ just pass it our commands to setup a collection of icons. Since all the images are really 1x1 pixel transparent images they won't show up in your posts, but LJToys will still collect details about whoever's read your journal.
Daunted by all this complex stuff? There's a lazier way to get LJToys working. Ignore the steps and just include this invisible image in every post you make and we'll pick up on hits to it:

<img src='http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif' border=0 alt=''>

Step 1: Create a custom mood theme
Open up LiveJournal's account admin console in a new browser window and paste in the following text. The names you use aren't important but must be consistent across the subsequent commands.
moodtheme_create "SuperDuper1" "my super duper mood icons"
Hit 'execute'. LiveJournal's console should return a message saying the command was successful. It'll also return an numeric theme ID for your new theme. Write this down - you'll need it for the next few commands.

Step 2: Add icons to your theme
Return to the LJ admin console and paste in the following commands, replacing THEME_ID with the number you wrote down before. Or enter the theme_id here and we'll do it for you ;)

If you want to add more icons to an existing theme use the LJ console command moodtheme_list [<themeid>] to find its ID.

Theme ID:
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 2 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 25 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 15 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 61 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 87 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 6 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 45 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 130 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 11 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 13 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 48 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 102 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 46 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 30 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1
moodtheme_setpic THEME_ID 88 http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif 1 1

Step 3.1: [Optionally] add a bug to your userinfo page
Want to pickup hits to your user info as well? Insert the following 1x1 pixel bug somewhere in the 'About Me' box on your LJ userinfo page:
<img src="http://desaraev.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif" alt="" border=0 >

Step 4: Change the set of mood icons LJ display for you
Go to LJ's modify journal page and from the "Select mood icon set" dropdown near the bottin if the page choose your new mood icon collection, for example 'SuperDuper1' if you pasted it in from these instructions.

Done! LJToys is now serving mood icons in your posts

Assuming everything worked you now have your own set of blobs hosted on LJToys' webserver and loaded by users whenever they look at one of your posts. Remember to set a mood whenever you post or LiveJournal won't know to include the images!

onwards, to readership page

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