Below the cut is LJ to DW transition information: How to import your LJ at DW, and how to set up cross-posting.

If you don't have an account at Dreamwidth, you can create one here. There are both free and paid accounts like on LJ. I went ahead and got a paid account so that I could import all of my icons over as I have a paid account at LJ for more icon space, and I didn't want to have to upload them one at a time on DW or cull them down to 15, the allotment for free DW journals. To see the differences in free vs paid accounts on DW, go here.

After you have an account, go here to the Import Journal page.

Click on the Start Import button at the bottom of the page.

Choose Livejournal from the list of services to import from.

Enter your username and password for Livejournal. (This gives DW access to your LJ to import the data.)

Click Continue.

Now, click on the pieces of data you'd like to import. Your options are: Profile data, Friends, Custom Security Groups (automatically chosen if you chose Friends), Journal entries, Journal comments, Tags, Icons. I recommend choosing Profile data, Journal entries, Journal comments and Tags, at the very least.

Click Continue. Now, you should see a status page that will tell you how many things are in the queue ahead of you. There was something like 1 comment and 100 entries ahead of me when I did this last night, and it took about 15 -20 minutes to import my entire LJ (roughly 12 years of entries and comments). You can refresh this page to see the progress. I recommend doing this at least until the login information is accepted (mine failed on the first try last night and DW didn't let me know). All notifications are done through the DW inbox, so check there for a status and, they'll also let you know when the import is completed.

You can come back to the Import Journal page and do other imports to pull in comments and tags (or update tags) since your last import. This will help keep your DW up to date while still using LJ.

Cross-posting

Now, if you want to cross-post to LJ from DW, you need to enable that ability. If you're looking at your Dreamwidth journal, click on Settings in the upper left of your browser window. If you're on any other page at DW, click on Account Settings in the upper right of the window.

Click on the Other Sites tab, and then click on Add New Account (I think this is the name of the link as I've already linked my accounts). Enter your LJ login information, and make sure the Crosspost by Default and Save Password settings are checked. I mostly post Public entries, so I set the LJ-XMLRPC options Minimum Security to Public.

Now you'll want to make any journal entry post on DW, and it'll automatically post to Livejournal as well.

Editing to add elrhiarhodan's fantastic info from the comments - I don't want it to be missed.

1 - You can have a message at the bottom of each LJ crosspost stating where the original link came from

2 - You can have a link on your DW post about where it is cross-posted to.

3 - You can also lock comments on the LJ crosspost and refer people back to the DW original with a message about where to comment.

Elr also noted that the DW support team is very responsive and also that if you want to import your LJ style, you can find instructions here. I'm going to have to work on that this evening.

eta: I didn't realize DW was notifying me through the DW inbox during the import process. Updated the info above to include that.


I hope that helps!

In other news, holy crap, I've had my LJ for 12 years. O_O