A community is journal that, most often, allows more than one person with a shared interest in something to post in a central location. Those posts can then show up on members friends list without the member having to friend each and ever other person who shares that interest. It also allows the member to post in one place that may be seen by the five hundred even if they don't all have the member's personal journal friended.

Example: A community dedicated to discussing and sharing topics related to a specific television show might have over five hundred members. Instead of friending all five hundred and having each and every post those five hundred make show on your friends list, you can simply friend the community. This way you can read posts by other members that only pertain to your mutual interest instead of reading each and every post those five hundred people made in their personal journals which may or may not be on topic.

A community owner/maintainer refers to the personal journal name of someone who has the power to change the way a community operates (whether it has open/closed membership, moderated posts, etc.).

A community moderator is a personal journal that has been given the power (by a maintainer) to approve posts in a moderated community.

You can do a search by interest here:

http://www.journalfen.net/interests.bml

Communities will be listed on top, followed by a list of other LJ users who have specified an interest in the same thing on their user info page.

To join a community, go to the community Info Page. Click on the link at the top of the page the that says "join this community".

**If the community has open membership you'll see this message:

Press the button below to join the (community name) community. Uncheck the box below if you want to join the community without seeing community entries on your friends page.

(Box appears here) Add "Test Community" to friends list.

If you do NOT want the community entries to show on your friends page, be sure to uncheck the box.

**If the community has moderated membership, you'll see this message:

Request to Join
The (community name) community does not have open membership. Please verify that you wish to join this community by clicking below.

Once clicked you'll see:

Join Request Submitted
Your request to join has been submitted to the maintainers:

*(community maintainer name(s)

**If the community's membership is closed, you'll see this message:

Sorry
This community is closed to new members. If you wish to join, please contact one of the following maintainers:

* (community maintainer name(s)

Check the info page for the community or the community maintainer's journal to see if there are circumstances in which new members are admitted or to check for contact information.