"Swapping" the names of two journals
Note: Due to peculiarities of how journal renaming works, in order to swap the names of two journals, you will need a third journal that has a name you don't want to keep. All three journals must be individual accounts, rather than communities, shared, or syndicated accounts.
Let's assume that you want to swap the names of the journals FIRST and SECOND, and that you have another journal that you do not want to keep called SPARE. (When creating a journal to use as a spare, please be polite and use a name that nobody will want.)
Each of the 'Rename' steps (in bold above) would follow the steps in the How do I change my username? FAQ, and would cost US $15 / 1,500 LJ Tokens each.
Attempting to swap the journals directly will fail, because once you surrender one of the names you won't be able to reclaim it.
contributed by
nicked_metal
Let's assume that you want to swap the names of the journals FIRST and SECOND, and that you have another journal that you do not want to keep called SPARE. (When creating a journal to use as a spare, please be polite and use a name that nobody will want.)
- Set the e-mail address (How can I change the e-mail address that LiveJournal uses?) and password (How do I change my password?) for each journal to the same address, and the same password. This tells the LiveJournal server that all of the journals are owned by the same person.
- Add each journal to the friends list of the other journals. During the renaming process, the journals will have a random number added to their names. Adding them to a friends list under your control will allow you to find them again. (See How do I manage my Friends list?, for information regarding how to add a user to your friends list.) Make sure that you don't remove these journals from the friends lists until you have completed this process.
- Rename the SPARE journal to the name of the FIRST journal. This will allow you to retain control over the name of the FIRST journal.
- The FIRST journal will automatically be renamed to ex_FIRSTxxx (FIRST being the original name, and xxx being a random 3-digit number). You can find out the new name by looking at the friends list of one of the other journals.
- Rename ex_FIRSTxxx to the name of the SECOND journal. SECOND will be automatically renamed ex_SECONDxxx (SECOND being the original name, and xxx being a random 3-digit number).
- Rename ex_SECONDxxx to FIRST, completing the swap. The SPARE journal (which is currently named FIRST) will be automatically renamed to ex_FIRSTxxx (most likely a different number to last time), and can now be deleted if you like.
Each of the 'Rename' steps (in bold above) would follow the steps in the How do I change my username? FAQ, and would cost US $15 / 1,500 LJ Tokens each.
Attempting to swap the journals directly will fail, because once you surrender one of the names you won't be able to reclaim it.
contributed by
nicked_metal