Tumblr themes? Oh my!

Hello there all my tumblr readers! I'm back with an all new tumblr tutorial that will doll up your every day. Now this new information on themes might be old for many, but sometimes--if you're like me--you won't try the new thing until you've heard it won't crash your computer. Well, I'm here to tell you that after a 4 hour debate with my computer/internet educated brother and constant use at work, that themes are just dandy: for Firefox and Tumblr.

First things first -- if you want your tumblr dashboard to look like the above, you need to be using either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. (Download it here.) I use Firefox, so that's what we're stickin' with for this tutorial. If you haven't tried this type of internet web browser, its basically like Internet Explorer, but allows more creative freedom (basically, you can make it really pretty). As my brother warns, just be careful if you're going to search strange and varied regions of the internet. There's nothing wrong with Firefox, but Internet Explorer has some heightened security features that connect to you Windows System and work really well if surfing the web. 

 

As you can tell by my screencaps, Firefox itself allows you to select pretty themes for the top of your web browser, so your tumblr will be in very good company.. I'm not covering that today though, we're going to install a Firefox "Add On" called Stylish and turn your tumblr from blue to brilliant! 

Step 1: Open Firefox/Chrome and visit the Stylish Page. Once on userstyles.org, select download Stylish for Firefox.

Follow the download process which will take you to an authorized Mozilla page to download the add on. It will load and ask you to restart Firefox.

  

Step 2: Now that you've downloaded stylish, you can now go back to userstyles.org and download different tumblr themes. Install as many themes are you like. Go on, you know you'll want to change your dash theme more than you change socks. 

Step 3: Now you'll want to enable only 1 theme and disable all the others you've downloaded. To do this, go to Tools > Add Ons. You're Add Ons Manager will pop up in a new tab at the top. Select "User Styles". 

As you can see, I have 6 tumblr themes installed. On the right you have buttons to Edit, Enable/Disable, and Discard. At any one time, you should have 1 theme enabled. At this moment, I'm rocking "Wood Dash". To change your theme, just disable "Wood Dash" and enable a different one by clicking the enable/disable button. 

That's its! And now the next time you login to tumblr your dashboard will look like this: 

Another way to change your theme, and I think this is super easy, is to have the "Add-On Bar" enabled for Mozilla Firefox. That means this: 

Pros - You see your dash more than you ever see your actual layout for tumblr, and I love that I can make it a little different to fit my mood. You can also create your own, and while I haven't tried it yet, the process seems easy. If you can edit a webpage or change your blogger theme, I think you've got stylish nailed. 

Cons- Not all the pages are going to load right. For example, some of the buttons or boxes will always be tumblr blue. A good example is the last screencap, where it should be a lighter purple box, they are classic blue. The themes might take a moment to load and can be sluggish.

Overall, I think Themes and the use of Stylish just jazzes up my internet experience and when you spend as much time as I do on tumblr, its refreshing to see a new look!

Queue it Up! tumblr and its queue

That's right! More explanation tumblr is on the way! I can't believe the first two posts have been doing so well, and I keep thinking that there is still so much more to explain. Well, highlight; and so here's a part 3. Now I like to be SUPER clear. I hate nothing more than explanation posts where I'm still confused at the end. That's why I'll be going into some serious detail. If your still struggling with how tumblr functions as a site, this will hopefully still be clear for you. Today I'll going to be discussing the Queue -- what it's for and how to use it.

What is the Queue

The Queue, I think, is one of THE BEST features of tumblr (besides the ability to upload high resolution photos AND seriously easy usability). First: a queue, for all my American readers who didn't watch Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or catch much British tv, is basically a line. For example, if you waited in line to see Harry Potter at midnight, you queued up to see Harry Potter.

This (above) is the how the queue looks. As you can see, the queue does not look different whether your using it for a personal blog or an fyeah (and it looks a lot like the regular dash). On the left is my personal queue; on the right is the anything period queue. To get to your queue page, click on the title of your tumblr (at the top by Dashboard) and then look on the sidebar to your right. Queue is the button with the little clock before it. When you click on that button it will turn green and bring you the queue page (seen above in duel view). If you have any posts already queued, the amount will show up on the right. Confused? See the image below: 

I've already clicked on "a lovely girl" so I can get to my sidebar with the queue button. As you can see I have 143 posts/reblogs queued up. If I clicked on the button, it would bring me to my queue page (which you've already seen in the top example image).

The tumblr queue allows to you spread out posts over a given period of time (tumblr time is set in days). So, say you only have 1 day a week to search tumblr and upload/post/reblog interesting things. With the queue you can take everything you find on a Sunday and set it to post throughout the week. This is what I do for anything period and it seriously frees up my everyday. Also, with the queue you're able to pick which day you want a specific post to be published and if you want 1 or more posts published on the same day.

(Sidenote: There is also a wonderful feature like the queue that allows you to specifically time when you want a post to be published. This feature can be found when actually on the upload post page to the right. I can see this feature being amazing if you use tumblr as a blog. Say you write a blog post recapping what happened in season 1 of Game of Thrones. You could set that blog post to be published a week before season 2 begins to air. Talk about blog planning. This thing is like set it and forget it.)  

Why use the Queue

For a photo blog like anything period use of the queue is indispensable. I'm able to set up photo posts for weeks and the blog blogs itself. Its all about consistency for me. With the help of the queue I'm able to provide a new photo(s) every day without having to upload, tag, and post them everyday. This is an even better option for anything period because very rarely do I reblog other people's photos and my timeline is not set around the airing of episodes. So, if I find a jackpot of costume pictures, I can upload them all in one shot and not have to worry about looking for new ones on a daily basis.

For a personal blog, the queue might seem silly. But actually this is the real reason I'm writing this installment of explanation tumblr. A few days ago I went looking for a photo that came through on my dash. I knew I'd had either reblogged it or faved it, but couldn't remember which. When I didn't find it on my archive page, I knew it had to be in my mess of a favs page. At that time, I had over 600 posts faved. Now the fav page is much like your regular dash stream or queue page. You have to scroll through ALL of them. You don't have the luxury of the mass photo wall that the archive has (on blogged/reblogged posts) or the ability to search by tag in the fav stream. To find the picture I wanted, it took 3 hours to go through my favorites. I knew I had to do something.

So, I started going through the images/posts I had faved and started putting ones I really liked in the queue and unfaving ones I didn't like anymore. In another 3 hours, I had cut my favs list in 2/3rds. Now I use the fav function for ideas/images I will want to use as inspiration later. Everything else, will either be reblogged or queued and eventually end up in on my archive wall for an easy find.

How to Queue a Post

Uploading some original content/queuing from a faved post/or a reblog -- its all the same: you start by selecting what you're going to upload (main dash, queue dash -- its all the same, and looks like below) or reblog from your dash.

 Now, it doesn't matter how you get there, the point is once you're on the upload/reblog an item page, you'll get to something that looks like this:

And we'll mess around with the information on the right side (look at the red above). Note the button at the bottom that says (check!) Reblog Post. This is a reblog page. We went over posting in explanation tumblr part 1, so if you're confused about how to reblog/post something, head over there to read about it.  As you can see, "publish now" is circled in red. It is a drop down menu. And in the drop down menu, you'll see the queue option:

Select it to queue the post. Then, remember we noted the (check!)Reblog Post button...well its turned into (check!)Queue Post!

Now the post you've just added to your queue will show up on your queue page. All the way. At the very bottom. So this Spotless Mind photo is now #144 in my queue line up. BANG! You've just utilized your queue.

Moving Queue Posts Around

Is VERY user friendly...unless you have 144 like I do in my personal queue. Its still doable, but I would not do it. The load time would be INSANE. So, to show you moving queue posts, I'm returning the anything period queue page.  

As you can see, I have it set that a photo from Chicago will be posted on Sunday @ 7:30 and a photo from The Sound of Music will post on Monday @ 7:30. But I want to change this. I want The Sound of Music photo to be published first. (Whatever is higher up(or first) on your queue is what will be posting first.) All you have to do it click on the sound of music post (the white part) and drag the photo up. Try it. Go ahead. I know it sounds like it won't work, but it does:

See, I'm dragging. This works either way. You can also drag down.

And hello! There are the VonTrapps at the top!

Problems, Issues, Shortfalls

There have been times where the tumblr server has posted EVERYTHING is a user's queue. This happened a few month back actually, and people who had over 300 items in their queue had a huge meltdown. While this can happen, and is inconvenient all around, the glitch seems to have been taken care of.

Load time to move pictures around can take forever. Dragging pictures in the queue takes a lot of gusto for tumblr. Load times are always something that try my patience.

Setting the number of posts you want to auto publish can sometimes have a glitch. I can't tell you the number of times I've changed that little drop down from 1 to 4 and it NEVER SAVES. This is an issue in the tumblr code that has yet to be addressed. Eventually, if you're persistent (or get really lucky), it will save. (This happens once for every four to six times I change posting amounts.) 

Your queue images are not searchable or easily found until they've been published. The queue is basically like the fav page, only with the promise of the post being published at a later date. So, while it will eventually solve my problem, it is not an immediate fix.

Sometimes the queue goes crazy and the block to the left of your queued post (that tells you when it will be published) will have the wrong date and time. Eventually, tumblr knows what you mean and will fix it, but it has spazed on me for about 5-6 hours at a time. Likewise, if your loading your queue with 7 or more images back to back, expect to get an error loading page 3-4 times. The queue was not really built for fast-past or high volume tumbling.

Wrap it Up!

There you have it. An EXTREMELY long post about queuing on tumblr! Its actually one of the more complicated things you can do on this easy to use site (unless you're making layouts, and if you are, God help you because that crap is confusing). All in all, I hope this has been a one-stop-shop for you and that the info about the queue is helpful. Enjoy!

If you have any further tumblr questions, or would like a feature or piece of tumblr explained, please feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment below. I'll try to help the best I can!

Explanation Tumblr - take 2

Well dear reader, it really is just my luck that the day after I try to post a helpful blog entry, tumblr changes the whole dang site on me. Thus, I'm attempting to bring you explanation tumblr a second time, and maybe -- this time-- it will last a little longer than 24 hours.

I would first, read Explanation Tumblr take 1. I'm going to be doing a little bit more compare and contrast here. So, to get the basic terms and all, I would check out that first entry. Posting is still the same; so is reblogging and liking. At least the basics are consistent right?

The biggest, and in fact most visible change to tumblr, is the new dashboard. The appearance is much more clean with larger negative space in relation to type and images. Something I was able to capture today that I didn't in the last entry is the red think box. (The little red box above "dashboard".) This box will have a number and that number is the amount of photos/quotes/text posted since you last refreshed your dash. Short version: You see that little red number, click on your dash, and you'll see new posts from the blogs you follow. Now lets do a dashboard side-by-side comparison:

Alright! So, if we compare, you can see the sidebar has the greatest changes. The new sidebar on the main dashboard screen now just has a link to the peeps you follow and the posts you've liked. To get to your own lists of posts/reblogs/likes, your messages, and queue you now need to click on your blog's name up at the top near "dashboard".

As you can see I have 2 blogs. A lovely girl, which is my personal tumblr, and anything period, better known as fuckyeahcostumedrama. For this howto, so that I can show you what other people reblogging and liking your posts looks like, I'm going to click on anything period.

And now we can see all our old sidebar information! To your left, you see that your posts with the amount is right on top (well after open your layout, customize, and settings, but its up there!) followed by those following your blog, members-if you have a 2nd blog after your main one, messages, drafts, and queue. Not too different after all, is it?

Really, what the new tumblr dash is doing, is highlighting features that were already in place, but under-used. With more and more people joing tumblr every day, I think the website team is focusing more on friendly usability and streamlining features. Hopefully, we'll see a lot less error messages now.

What is great about this second blog post, is I get to highlight how others liking/reblogging/friending your posts/reblogs look. Actually, it will look like the list highlighted in the above screencap. FYCD is kind of a special example. Because I only post 1-2 photos day, and it has lots of members, it looks slightly different than your average dash. Normally, you're posts will be mixed in with the likes/reblogs like this:

No, the previous screencap did not have to be that large, but your welcome for the surprise Fassy on this entry ;D. As you can see, the fantastic steerpike liked a photo I posted in between the time I reblogged iamonlyamaid and bohemea. It all falls together seamlessly once you see it in action, I promise. 

Hopefully, this adds to the helpfulness of explanation tumblr part 1. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Explanation Tumblr

A way to a girl's heart is through, well...its complicated. But for this girl, its definately through beautiful photos. So when I stumbled on Tumblr, a micro-blogger as powerful as they come, about a year ago I was instantly in love. So I thought, what better than a blog post explaining one of my favorites and what its used for?! I'll even hit my 3 favorite features at the end.

What is tumblr?

Tumblr is a "mirco blogger". This means most tumblr posts are under 300 words or 1 photo. Unlike other blogging platforms *cough cough* tumblr allows you to post a wide range of media quickly and easily.

The interface (or dashboard) of tumblr is what most users will interact with on a daily basis. For example, there was a 4 month period I didn't even know what my personal blog layout was because I didn't ever look at it. The main dashboard is where all your photos show up and the photos of other people you follow as well. Its also super easy to see how many people you follow (highlighted in green), photos you've liked, photos/posts you reblog (number of posts), people following you, and how many posts you have in your queue.

It might sound like a lot now, but really, its a VERY user friendly site. Now a layout, layouts look more like this:

As you can see, there is a huge difference between the dashboard and your actual layout. Now, for me, I use tumblr more like a social page, rebloging my favorite photos, or posts, and not at all like a traditional blog. That's what Rusty is here, so I'm more interactive with the dashboard. If you wanted to use tumblr to make your blog, however, it is possible and there are tons of blogger-friendly layouts you can utilize.

Posting/Reposting

For easy use purposes I'm highlighting how to post a photo. First, have a photo you would like to post. Then, click on the Photo button on the top dash. It will bring you to this page below: 

Click Browse to upload the photo from your computer. Of course you can add a caption and links to websites or sources if you'd like to. And then there's tags. Tags are one of my favorite things on tumblr. Of course, you can do what I do on fycd: if the photo is of Persuasion, the tag is #persuasion. Or you can do what people call "the hipster" tags like: #OMG I'd marry him or #I can't breathe looking at that hotness or #I will live there some day. You can use as many tags as you want, but if people reblog you, your tags do not follow your photo.

Reposting is a little different. This is when you find a post on tumblr you really love and want to post on your own blog. You start by clicking the reblog link:

You will then be taken to a page that looks just like the post a photo page. Add your own caption and tags and post! And its that easy for anything you'd wish to post.

The Queue

The Queue is another one of my absolutely favorite things. When you post a photo, you can select if you want to post it now or add it to the queue. For fycd, I use the queue religiously.  

The queue automatically posts for you as many times during the day as you'd like. For a blog like fycd, which is centered around daily posts about costume drama, the queue offers the freedom and flexibility to run a photo-centered blog. As you can see, I publish 1 post a day between 7am and 8am. And I have 13 posts yet to publish.  

I realized this is not the concise all about Tumblr; I think of it more like a highlight reel, but hopefully, it proves a useful get to know you about my favorite blogging site. Twitter's wonderful, Blogger's been invaluable, but Tumblr...tumblr's my guilty pleasure. I hope you've enjoyed!

EDIT * As of 6-8-2011 Tumblr has updated their site design. Good timing on my part, I know. New blog post, maybe? Follow to Explanation Tumblr -- take 2 to see how the new layout works.