Most of the Dreamwidth site skins include a search box on all main pages. Enter the text you're searching for in the text box, select the area of the site you want to search from the menu, and then choose "Go". If you're using a site skin that doesn't include a search box, you can use the Search Dreamwidth page instead.

Another way to search for people or communities is by using the Directory.

The Directory is a set of advanced search areas that lets you search for people or communities by creating a search with very specific requirements. For instance, you may want to find a community that lists "books" as a interest and has been updated in the last week, or for a person who lists "music" as an interest and who lives in Australia.

You can search for people on the Directory Search page and communities on the Community Search page.

We have a number of official (site sponsored and site run) communities on Dreamwidth. We use them for a number of purposes, from discussing how to use the site to sharing information about its day-to-day running with you. Which of them you follow are entirely up to you, but we strongly suggest that everyone should follow both dw_news and dw_maintenance in order to keep informed of things you'll need to know (for instance, planned downtime) and things you'll want to know (for instance, the release of new features).

You can recognise our official communities easily, since they're preceeded by rather than but for easier reference here is a list of official Dreamwidth communities and a short description of their focus.

Announcements

dw_news — General news and information about Dreamwidth Studios, LLC.
dw_maintenance — Information about planned maintenance and scheduled or unscheduled downtime.
dw_biz — Information and discussion about Dreamwidth Studios, LLC as a business.
changelog — A list of all changes that get made to our code. This is high-volume and highly technical.

General Interest

dw_suggestions — For making new suggestions about how to improve Dreamwidth.
dw_codesharing — For requesting invite codes or offering your spares.
dw_community_promo — A place to promote your Dreamwidth communities.
dw_feed_promo — A place to promote interesting feeds you're watching.
dw_meetups — For organizing face-to-face meetings of people involved with Dreamwidth.
dw_nifty — For the ingenious things you can do with Dreamwidth that you might not know about.

Volunteering

dw_volunteers — Information useful to people wanting to volunteer with us.
dw_docs — Discussion of our documentation.
dw_docs_training — Training community for those who want to help write documentation.
dw_styles — Discussion about styles and our style system.
dreamscapes — Community focused on the development of themes for Tabula Rasa on Dreamwidth.
dw_design — Discussion of both visual design and usability design.
dw_dev — Technical community for developers.
dw_dev_training — Training community for people taking their first steps in writing code for us.
dw_support — Information-sharing for people volunteering in Dreamwidth support.
dw_support_training — A training community for people who are getting started with Dreamwidth support.
dw_accessibility — Discussion of accessibility issues on Dreamwidth.
dw_antispam — Closed community for use by the Antispam team. Occasional public posts announcing antispam-related news.
dw_wiki — Community for discussion of Dreamwidth's wiki.
dw_beta — Beta testing coordination and planning.
dw_mobile — For planning and improving the mobile version of Dreamwidth.