Take the LJ_dev community. When I come to the home page, I have to click on the "User" link of the first item to see the most recent posts. Then, when on the most recent posts page, there's no place to post a new item. I have to go someplace where the Live Journal Menu is displayed at the top and then go to the Journal / Update menu. But, if I am not logged on, I won't see the dialog box that allows me to post to the LJ_dev community instead of to my own journal.
(I'm really not trying to be critical here. But, I need to setup a blogging community and ease of use is extremely important.)
In the documentation, it says that any paid member can do a poll in their own journal or in any community to which they belong. But, I haven't been able to figure out how to post a poll.
The reason I keep pressing these issues is because LJ seems to be a solid system with an active developer community. And, I haven't found another similar community except for Roller (http://www.rollerweblogger.org/page/project), which is a Java system. I can support Java, but am not sure that I want to...
I'll ask this again (it was buried in a comment from a previous post):
I'm still interested in how much of LiveJournal.com is in the base install. Perhaps, you could refer me to some other communities using LJ so that I can see whether they are using the same feature set. I'm happy to report back to this group if anyone has interest in what I find out. (So, if you would like me to do the research and know of some LJ sites I should look at, please let me know :-) !
This does bring up an interesting point: How many of you are running your own LJ sites as opposed to writing hacks and enhancements to be used at LJ.com?