INTRODUCING SANITY

SO, WHY THE HECK DID I MAKE THIS?

I created Sanity because—actually, let’s back up. This story actually starts with a different extension, and my growing frustration with being a web designer on a very outdated site. A little over a year ago I decided to pick through the site’s style and create a skin to mask everything, using Stylebot to execute it.

It was… okay. It was really just a day project for myself that I wound up letting a few friends have copies of. I even considered fine tuning it and selling it in my shop! But…

Surely I could do better, right…?

And that’s really where Sanity started. I’ve worked on this project for months to create a self-contained extension specifically for IJ, that not only updates the site’s CSS, but repairs and adds as many features as I can work in—with more to come!

If you’re like me, you feel at home using IJ. It’s familiar, and it’s comfortable; we feel at home because it is a home. But if you’re really like me, then you’re also getting tired of feeling like you’re stepping back in time when you use it, and you’re itching for more up to date features to be implemented so that we can have the same level of comfort and ease that we do on all of the other sites we use. Because why wouldn’t we want our home to be as functional as possible?

And that, my friends, is where Sanity would like to step in.
WHAT DOES SANITY DO?

FINALLY, THE FEATURES YOU NEED

From an updated look to repaired and completely new site features, Sanity’s ultimate goal is to give users the things they need. It’s 2018, and the internet is a very different place than it was ten—or even five!—years ago. The evolution of the internet means sites need to evolve with it or get left in the dust.

Unfortunately (but understandably), a lot of the tools we love to use for our journaling sites have long since been abandoned, so I decided to create an extension with the hopes of breathing new life into Insanejournal, both in appearance and function. You can read more about what Sanity does on the Features page!

Whether you’re a roleplayer, a personal blogger, or you post fanfiction or resources, Sanity’s here to help make your experience better. Sanity doesn’t focus on one type of site user so much as all of us! While the majority of us are here to roleplay and/or create related resources for the hobby, all the tools I’ve integrated into the Sanity extension are here to fit any need!
AND THAT’S NOT ALL!

THERE’S LOTS MORE TO COME

I built the initial release of Sanity with the intention of expanding and adding more robust features as I learn and grow as a programmer—I won’t be setting and forgetting until I’ve done as much as I possibly can for our user experience on Insanejournal! I have big plans and high hopes for the future of this extension over the next year, and I’m excited to add more features! From an IJ-specific thread unfolder to an integrated login toggler and live notifications, Sanity will only get even better from here.

Holy carp, never has IJ looked so good. I can’t get over what a difference Sanity makes. I usually use Dreamwidth for all my journaling needs, because what they lack in icon space they make up for in aesthetics, but with Sanity installed, I’ve been using IJ more and more. It’s so crisp, so clean, and pleasing to use. I could never go back to a life without Sanity!Was this review helpful?YesNo

I absolutely love what this extension has done for the site. Having gone from Livejournal to Insanejournal one of the things I find so frustrating about the IJ is the looks exactly the way it did when I first signed up. Sanity gives it a fresh look, and I love the added features that resolve long-standing site issues. The overhaul of “My IJ” and the functioning character counter on comments? Love it so much. As someone who runs a game on the site, I will be promoting it for my user group and hope it overall enhances everyone’s time on IJ.

What do you do when you’re already supplying the cleanest, most user-friendly layouts and in-entry codes on IJ? Apparently you move on to making the site itself cleaner and more user-friendly! This extension gives me pretty much everything I’ve wished for from IJ over the years I’ve been using it, and some features that I didn’t even realize I needed (character counts!!!). Even better, it’s all for less than you’d pay for a single permanent account. And, with it being a Tessisamess product, you know you’re going to get the best support for it that it’s possible for a single person to give. If you use IJ extensively, you need this extension. Period. It’s going to change your life. I already don’t want to imagine going back to using IJ without it!