We're not your average 'dot-com' company, we won't ever run this organisation at the enormous losses that other dot-com's do and in that way, while we might not be able to explode the growth the same way other dot-com's do we feel that we will be able to achieve a much more maintainable growth level - ensuring that the sites we provide aren't likely to disappear one day because the bottom fell out of the technology market or something equally bizarre.
Dear Diary came online on October 5th 1999 after approximately one month of development. The original idea to develop an online interactive Diary site came from Matt after having spent about a month trying to update a standard HTML online diary and getting bored and frustrated with it. Approximately a year after that idea is when Matt mentioned to Steve about it and then shortly after that Steve and his wife began to want to write an online diary as well so that their ever growing circle of Internet friends could keep up. With that inspiration set, Matt began writing the first cut of the code that became known as Dear Diary while Steve started looking at some ideas for how the site could look (Matt likes to think of himself as a damn good programmer, but would in no way delude himself into thinking he has any design skills what-so-ever hehehe). Finally after one month of fairly intense development and testing we were ready to go online.
It was during this development period that Matt and Steve had many discussions about a future plan for what we want to do - would we just stick with developing Dear Diary or would we develop other sites as well? It was after we decided that we had many ideas of websites to develop that Atomic Systems IP Ltd was formed. The goal is that Atomic Systems owns all of the websites that we produce, thereby keeping the websites as a completely separate entity and making it a lot easier for others to communicate with 'the websites' (eg banner providers, our Internet hosting provider and so forth).
Update: That was the goal originally. DearDiary has now been seperated off (and Matthew is no longer interested) and is now owned by Kabarty Pty Ltd, which is Steve and Rose
Dear Diary aims to capture the thoughts and feelings of as many people as possible - imagine in 20 years time being able to read for yourself how people reacted to the Millenium? Or how about in 20 years time when the children you have yet to give birth to are grown up and they can read all about the world that existed before they did? Keeping this record of how we are, in our words and not in those of a historian is in our opinion very important.
Spam - Kabarty will not tolerate Spam, all of our emailing systems (such as reader comment notification on Dear Diary) require the receiver to sign up with their email address and then acknowledge via an email that is sent to that address - thus making it impossible for someone to sign up another persons email account without actually having access to their email.
Privacy - We will not give out your personal details, the system keeps two email addresses for you allowing you to keep your 'real' one on the system and at the same time allowing you to store a 'public' one. This ensures that your 'real' (private) email address is available for the system to use but is never given out to users anywhere on the site. We reserve the right to use data such as Country and Age Range for statistical purposes but only in a summary fashion.
Abuse - Most abuse topics are covered in Section 6 of this FAQ, and this answer detail the email address to use. Please note: As much as we would like to help people who are being physically or mentally abused by relatives, work colleagues etc, we are not trained or set up to deal with such things and as such we would strongly recommend that you first contact your local Doctor to seek advice - and do it now don't let the abuse continue.
Freedom of Speech - Again related to Section 6 of this FAQ, Freedom of Speech tends to deal with the flipside of abuse. Do you have the right to say anything you want? This topic is very sensitive and has been an issue on the site more than once to date. Our bottom line is that you agreed to our Terms and Conditions and Acceptable Use Policy when you signed up and as such this forms the basis for your rights on this system, nothing else. If you are within the T&C and AUP then you are free to say what you want. Please note, a prime example of something that you are not permitted to put in your diary would be to name someone and then proceed to defame their character. We deal with each abuse case individually and we keep Freedom of Speech in mind at all times but this site will not become a playground for people engaging in petty name-calling or other such things. If someone is annoying you then say that someone is annoying you, but do you need to name that person? Do you need to add other profanties around their name if you feel the need to specify it? If you aren't sure about how something you want to write will be taken then email support with a copy of what you are going to add in and we'll give you our opinions on it - generally if it is inside the T&C and AUP then we will just warn you if we think people are going to get hopping mad over it, if you then decide to post it and we get any complaints we will be forced to ask you to change the offending parts, remove the offending parts or remove the entire entry altogether (you could just make it a private entry to achieve the same result also. We will respond to all complaints made about anything on this site, we're not doing it to be draconian and we'd much rather not have to deal with it and let you all write whatever you want to :) See this answer for more information on this subject.
Click on the 'Join Us' button and it will ask you for the information required to create your account. Once your account has been created you will be emailed a random password (so make sure that the field marked 'Real Email' does indeed contain your correct email address!). Once you receive this email go back into the system and log in using the password provided.
You can change the password at any time by updating your personal information on the site (eg. on Dear Diary click the 'Personal' link while logged in).
The quickest way to get your password reset is to attempt to login, and instead of entering your username, simply click Cancel. You'll then be taken to a screen that asks for your registered email address. Enter the email address you gave us at registration time and a new password will be mailed to you.
Sometimes that doesn't work, for whatever reason, in which case, please email us at support@deardiary.net
Actually, we hate to say it, but its your system thinking it knows the password already and passing it to us. Except its passing us the wrong one!
Personally we regard this as a significant security threat that should be resolved by Microsoft because automatically sending out passwords without the users authority is the dumbest thing anyone could have come up with.
However, the question here is, how to turn it off! You need to go to your Internet Options (under the Tools menu in Internet Explorer). Choose the Security tab, and then choose Internet. You can probably click the Default Level button, but just in case, choose Custom Level and then scroll to the bottom of the window. You should see User Authentication and under there Logon. The chances are that the line which says Automatic logon with current username and password has the little black dot next to it. Change it so the line with Prompt for username and password has the black dot.
Click OK. (The window will close) and the OK again. Then you should be ready to try to login again, only this time, the system will actually ask for your username and password!
AOL Users: The above procedure may be different for you. We would advise you to contact AOL support if their browser shows the same problem.
No you will not receive Spam, see this answer for
our policies and opinions on Spam!
For our official standpoint on the subject of privacy please see our
Privacy Statement, but to summarise:
None of the information you have given us will be passed on to any other organisations. Details such as your ICQ and AIM identifiers are used by you on your site, nobody else. They are only shown (like your email address) if you configure them to be shown.
We do however reserve the right to use the generalised information such as
Country, Age Range and Gender to produce statistical reports - although we will
ensure there is no way to tie any individual to any of the data on these
reports so anonymity is assured.
We also reserve the right to produce any and all information if required by law
as part of any legal investigation that concerns your data.
There are two email addresses held for you on the system. We have done this for your peace of mind - one address is just a general email address and you can put whatever you like in there. This address is the one that is shown on your diary (if you configure it to be shown) and is not used anywhere else on the system. You can leave this one blank if you like.
The other address is the 'real email address' and this is the one used internally. It is never shown on any web screens, ever. It is never given out to anyone, ever. If we send emails to you we will use the 'Real Email' address and these emails are generally limited to whenever someone has added a comment to an entry on your diary and whenever messages are posted to our system mailing list. If you do not want to be on the mailing list (we strongly advise that you are however) then see this answer for more information.
On the Members Button Bar (only visible while logged in) you can click on 'Personal' to update your information. One of the boxes available here is your agreement to be on the mailing list so if you wish to come off the mailing list then simply clear this box.
We strongly advise against this however as it is extremely low traffic (at most once or twice per month, if that) and the information contained within it is generally very important system news that users of the system would be very interested in (such as a system upgrade or notification of downtime).
Diaries that are not Plus account holders can mark specific entries as Friends Only, but not the whole diary
The bonus of doing it this way rather than typing the complex URL in yourself is that should we change the format of URL's in the future then this will change automatically with it so you won't need to do anything extra.
As stated in this answer we take full system backups and as such should something more permanent happen to the server we should be able to get a completely new machine back up and running within a few hours of us becoming aware of the problem so we do not foresee any kind of outage for any other reason than power, Internet problems and so forth - all of which we are constantly on the case of our Internet Provider for to get them to improve it as far as possible (they're already great, but there's always room for improvement!).
NOTE: Deletion of comments is permanent .
You can specify the default for this checkbox by going into the customiser (Screen Settings, Diary Entries, General Settings) and ticking or clearing the 'Allow Reader Comments' tickbox. If this checkbox is ticked then the checkbox at the bottom of each add/update screen for Allowing Reader Comments will be ticked - this means that if you generally don't want readers to be able to add comments you can come in and clear this checkbox and not have to worry about it anymore, but if you want comments on a particular entry then you can tick the box on that specific entry when you add it (or update it later on).
To change the permissions on a particular entry to allow reader comments on it or not just update it and change the textbox, if you change nothing else on the screen then all that will be changed in the database is the checkbox.
If you want to change the permissions on multiple entries then you can use the customiser (General Diary Options, Manage Reader Comments). This will pop up a window, click 'Control which entries permit Reader Comments' from this screen and you will be shown a screen allowing you to enter in a date/entry range. Once you have entered the range and clicked the button you will then be shown each entry between those dates and whether or not it allows reader comments, simply change the checkboxes as required and then click the button to save the changes.
Please Note: The ability to read reader comments is currently tied to the ability to add reader comments so if you disallow adding Reader Comments to an entry then any comments that entry currently has will be hidden as well (although they won't be deleted).
Removing : Yes, see the question above for more information.
Simply follow the instructions on that page and it will give you the code at the bottom once you have made your choices - then paste that code into your website and we'll take care of the rest. You don't need to worry about downloading the icons or anything either, that's all handled by our server.
If you see a lot of hits from Pending Lookup, this means that the system has not yet converted these numbers into more readable numbers. They will be 'looked up' shortly.
You can also request Notifications by clicking on Manage Friends List from the Members Button Bar when you are logged in to your own diary. Then you must click on 'Add Friends' link and enter the diarists username in the resultant screen. This will add the diarist to your friends list, whereupon you can tick the box to request they notify you.
If you want to publish the image (ie. make it available for others to use as well) then click the Publish button for the image and it will add it to a list and send us an email - we like to verify that all images that are presented for public use are quickly checked to make sure they are not of adult content and do not break copyrights obviously etc etc, it's just a sanity check for everyone's peace of mind.
We do not put a limit to the number of images you can upload but there is a limit to the size of any single image, we will not specify it in this FAQ because it is subject to change - you are however told before you upload the image what the maximum size can be.
Note: You can upload anything you like for your own private use.
If you don't wish to subscribe for a Plus account you will need to find some free web hosting somewhere that allows you to link to your pictures from a remote site (ie, www.deardiary.net) and upload your pictures there. Then you can use an IMG SRC tag to embed the image into your diary page. For example <IMG SRC="http://www.somepicture-host.com/my/picture.jpg">
As a brief overview, the customiser is broken down in to three parts:
If you are stuck for what an option might do please drop us a note and we'll be more than happy to explain it to you.
List - This is a simple list of all of your entries with a format of the full date followed by the title with one line per entry. As a result this format takes up a lot more room than the Calendar format but it is a lot more explanatory. If a day has more than one entry on it then the date is shown and then each entry on that date is listed beneath the date using bullet points.
Entry Numbers - This almost an abstract form of index, it just simply has the month name followed by all of the entry numbers for that month next to it. So for example if you only have your fifth and sixth entries in July it would just say 'July: 5, 6' where you coud click on the 5 or 6 to go to that entry. Again, if you hold your mouse of the the number you will see the entry title in the status bar of your web browser.
Elsewhere in the same screen as you choose the Entry Index Style you can also choose how many months at a time to display on the screen. The only answer here is to try for yourself and see what you like the look of. Generally we'd suggest no more than two or three calendars, one or two in list style and whatever you think looks good in Entry Numbers style - but ultimately it all boils down to what you think your design would look good with.
If you set the background colour to white, then the gradient bar will be that minty looking green. If you want a different colour bar, but white background, you can set the background colour of your diary to your chosen colour, and set the background image to be viivi/whitebg.gif from the list.
At the end of the day the best judge of what your child should be exposed to is you, the parent. We are aiming to put in place a mechanism to aid people in determining the nature of a diary quickly and easily so that you have as much advance knowledge of what you might be 'getting in to' beforehand - although we will under no circumstances censor any diary unless it falls outside of our Acceptable Use Policy / Terms and Conditions .
Sometimes however that isn't a sensible solution, perhaps not reading it won't make the problem go away. We need you to use your judgement here and think of everybody. If someone is breaking the Acceptable Use Policy or Terms and Conditions then you should definitely visit www.deardiary.net/support and let us know.
If you disagree with their religious beliefs then that is not something we can help you with, if you disagree with their sexual preference that is not something we can help you with either.
If you feel a diary that is on the front page (for example in the Most Popular, or Recent Updates) is totally unsuitable (sexually explicit or foul language for example) then we would like to hear about that at the abuse address - Please note that in just about all abuse cases we will not just come down heavy handed.
Resolutions to emails sent to us are generally quite time consuming to resolve because we ideally want everyone to come out of it feeling they are being fairly treated, which rarely happens but we have to make the effort. Generally we'll take the diary that we have been told about and we'll see what our opinions are (and trust me, we're open minded) - if we think something is perhaps a bit strong we will politely request a change, but as always - nothing is required except adherence to the Terms and Conditions and Acceptable Use Policy - so if the diarist decides against any changes and we feel bit more strongly about it then the limit of our actions is to prevent them from appearing on the front screen.
I need to repeat just to make it clear: We will not force censorship on anyone as long as they stay within our Terms and Conditions and Acceptable Use Policy.. However the front screen to Dear Diary is under our jurisdiction and whatever we decide to put on there, or not to put on there, is our final decision.
We are more than happy to discuss issues of 'censorship' with anyone that wants to email us, it is a problem we are faced with occasionally and every time it does we don't find it very pleasant. Sometimes it has worked out very well because everyone has been able to reach a compromise and sometimes it has gotten downright nasty because nobody would budge.
Please note that we deem referring to someone by their online name just as important as their real name.
If you do not have the ability to watch your child while they surf the Internet at all times then we would strongly recommend the use of a filter such as NetNanny*.
There are also a lot of URL's online that are dedicated to providing information about helping to keep your kids safe while they use the Internet - we have found a few and happily present them here for your information:
We do not endorse these sites and accept no responsibility for the content within them as they are outside of our control
Please ensure that your child is fully aware not to give out personal information online and never to mention anyone by name or by anything recognisable in their diary. Perhaps encourage them to write public and private entries so that they can feel free to write their detailed personal thoughts without potentially endangering any lives but still maintain public entries as well. We urge you to educate your child that giving addresses, names, phone numbers and any other kind of information to someone that they do not know and that you have not met is definitely not a good idea.
The CNet article listed above also contains a link to a CNet review of their top five blocking packages.
We would like to also add that using blocking software is no substitute for parental guidance - many blocking packages are not especially clever and there simple algorithms can often be easily circumvented by the average determined child. They also have a habit of preventing the display of perfectly acceptable pages because of the use of a word that is in the ban list (for example, anyone who uses one of the the abbreviated forms of the name Richard on their website would probably not get shown through many blocking packages!).
* This does not represent an endorsement or recommendation of NetNanny, it is merely used as an exampe product that performs this function.
Addendum in 2004: The subscription system has been in place for over three years, and we are renewing more and more members. It seems it won't be causing the death of our site, in fact quite the reverse because we are now actually able to pay for the server (just)! Thank you to all the people who supported us for the last three years!
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