thiliaarchive | Entries tagged with tutorials

Now, using Tumblr without any apps or extensions is okay BUT if you want the REAL Tumblr experience, you have to use the browser extension "X-Kit". Seriously. You won't regret it. Whether you use Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or ~~Safari~~ (discontinued :c), X-Kit will make your Tumblr experience much, much easier and enjoyable.

Here is just a small list of things X-Kit does to make Tumblr so much better and easier to use.

- it allows you to reblog post without ever actually "entering" a post to reblog it
- it has a blacklist feature
- it allows you to change the colours of your dashboard
- and much, much more.

So in short: If you want to really love Tumblr, you need X-Kit.

I'm gonna take you through the few easy steps to install X-Kit and show you how to use it - AND I'll try to show you what every step does to your dashboard/blog.

Step 1 - Installing X-Kit

Go to google.com and type in "X Kit".

Click the link that says "Download X-Kit" (the second one). That will take you to this page:

Find the download/install button; usually, it recognizes which browser you're using, so you don't have to worry about that. Once you've installed (and allowed the installation), you can always delete/disable the extension in your Settings/Extensions here:

Now go to your dashboard and learn to use (and love) X-Kit.

Step 2 - The basics

After a brief installation process, you'll notice a new icon at the top of the page.

Click the X-Kit icon to access your extensions. I do believe that the first time you use X-Kit, there's a "wizard" that you can use to acquaint yourself with the extension. If not, just keep reading this post. :) After you've clicked the X-Kit icon, this pop-up will open.

Here you can tick/untick all the extensions you want or need, and customize X-Kit to make it awesome for you.

On the left side of the "my x-kit" tab, you can scroll through the extensions you have installed.

When you click one of those, the page will open on the right side and show you a bunch of options that you can choose to use, or not use.

To find extensions, click "get extensions" at the bottom of the pop-up, which will take you to the extension gallery.

Here you can find different extensions you can add to your X-Kit.

Every extension has a tiny popup with information about the extension, and when you hit install, and go back to "my X-Kit", you can costumize the extension.

Step 3 - X-Kit extensions explained

All right, so let's go through the extensions I have installed. I don't use all of them because I just don't need some of them, but I have quite a few that I can take you through. :)

Xinbox

Xinbox allows you to:

- show a notification when you receive a new ask/fan mail on the left side of your dashboard. This is useful when you've scrolled all the way down on your dashboard and wouldn't see a new message until you've scrolled back to the top. This gives you real-time notifications about messages you get.

- add tags to published messages right away without having to edit the post later.

- show a reply button on private answers you receive (like I said in my previous post, otherwise you would have to go back to the person's blog to send a reply)

- search messages in your inbox.

- mass-edit/delete messages.

among other things.

One-Click Postage

One-Click Postage allows you to:

- reblog posts straight from your dashboard without ever leaving it. It shows a little pop-up box like this:

where you can choose which blog to reblog it to, tag, add a caption, etc. all without actually going to the 'reblog page". SUPER USEFUL AND FAST! I cannot live without it anymore.

- turn the reblog-button green on a post when you've already reblogged that post.

among other things.

One-Click Reply

One-Click Reply allows you to:

- reply to reply notifications on your dashboard (when they've been made by someone you follow). I don't have a screencap example for this unfortunately...

- customize what those replies look like in your post (because replying to a reply to one of your posts creates a new post).

- be notified when someone mentions you in a post (experimental feature).

among other things.

Tweaks

Tweaks allows you to:

- wrap tags for easier reading (with "basic Tumblr", tags aren't all displayed when someone has a lot of long ones).

- hide the 'share on Twitter/Facebook' icons on posts on your dashboard.

- hide a bunch of other things you don't necessarily need.

- change the look of quote and chat posts (because Tumblr changed the look of those posts a while ago).

- move the edit/remove buttons out of the gear menu:

- hide blog suggestions in the search bar.

- removes the "web search" button from the search bar and shows a "new" bubble when one of your tracked tags has a new post.

- hide blog suggestions/Tumblr radar/find blogs on the sidebar.

among many other things.

This is what my sidebar looks like right now - no annoying blog suggestions or highlighted posts.

Go-To-Dash

When you're on someone's blog (someone you're following) and go into a post, this allows you to view this post on your dashboard, which can be useful if you'd like to use some of the other X-Kit features, such as looking at other people's tags or... whatever.

Tags on Sidebar

This shows your tracked tags in the dashboard sidebar. You can choose whether you always want it there, or if you only want them to show up when there's a post you haven't seen yet.

I track these two tags right now:

Timestamps

Tumblr posts don't have a date and time on your dashboard. This adds those things, which can be useful. Let's say you remember last checking your dashboard at 5 pm. Now it's 7 pm. So when there are timestamps on the posts, you can tell when you've reached the last post you saw earlier.

Classic Search

Remember the section about the tag search in the first post? This allows you to see the actual tag automatically, rather than Tumblr's crowded new search page! Very useful if you check tags a lot.

No blog suggestions; just posts tagged with whatever you're looking for.

Reblog Yourself

Useful when you've made an announcement and you want to reblog it again a couple of hours later or just if you want to bring an old post back for some reason.

Audio Downloader

This adds a download button to audio posts. Awesome if you see a song you like and want to... well, download it. >:)))

Bonus: The X-Kit guy (as the creator of this awesome extension is commonly referred to on Tumblr) has added sassy messages that pop up whenever you download something.

Notifications+

This allows you to tweak the notifications on your dashboard. You can, for example

- highlight dashboard notifications from people you follow.

- show the number of notes when you hover over a notification.

among other things.

Read More Now

Tumblr's version of the LJ-cut is called "read more". This allows you to open read mores on your dashboard - if it's the original post. If you're not following the original poster, you still have to go to their blog to read the rest of the post. But this can be very helpful when someone has a theme with a tiny font that's hard to read.

Reblog as Text

This is also very important! Tumblr tends to reblog long text posts as links. This looks ugly on your blog and is also very impractical because people who want to read the post need to go to the person you reblogged it from's blog to read the rest of the post. If that person deleted their blog in the meantime, they'd never get to read the post. If you install this, Tumblr will reblog any long text posts as... well, text posts.

User Menus+

This will add a small options button when you hover over someone's icon on your dash, which shows, among other things,

- a link to their ask

- a link to their likes

among other things.

Glowing Follow

When you visit someone's blog and you're not following them but they're following you, this will make their follow button glow.

Open In Tabs

This will open all dashboard links in tabs. Which can be very useful when you've scrolled far down on your dashboard. If you clicked a link and forgot to open it in a new tab manually, you would leave your dashboard and you'd have to scroll all the way back down again later. Which sucks. So this is very useful.

Outbox

This saves the 50 last asks you've answered privately. Other than this, Tumblr has no outbox.

PostBlock

This allows you to block a post. There are a few "chain" posts like, "everyone who sees this picture dies" or something like that. When you're a little superstitious, it can be quite annoying to see this post on your dashboard. If you block the post, you'll never have to see it again. Same goes for other posts as well, obviously.

Read Posts

VERY useful. This dims the posts on your dashboard that you've already seen on previous page loads. So if you like always going all the way back to the last post you saw, this is great because you don't have to remember what time you were online before, and can just scroll back to the first dimmed post.

Tag Viewer

This allows you to look at tags that other people have left on posts. Since Tumblr often uses tags to express their feelings/opinions, this can be fun to look at on some posts.

Profiler

This allows you to give people a nickname that only you will see. Very useful when you follow a lot of people with similar blog names, or when someone changes their URL and you want to remember their previous one as well.

Convert Links

Links do not work in asks. When you want to send someone a link, Tumblr won't allow you to send it. So when someone wants to send you a link, they have to change it to something like hello(.)tumblr(.)com to be able to send their ask. And when you want to copy/paste this into your address bar, it takes some time. This turns these links into clickable ones.

Reply Viewer

Similar extension as Tag Viewer, this allows you to see any replies, answers and additional content that have been added to reblogs on any post.

View My Tags

This lets you see a list of all the tags you've used.

Tag Replacer

This allows you to mass-change your tags. Let's say you've tagged all your Teen Wolf posts "teen wolf", but want to change it to "tv show: teen wolf"? This allows you to do that without having to go back and retag every single post individually.

No Recommended

Tumblr has this new thing where it puts random posts on your dash that they think might interest you. This hides those.

Post Limit Checker

Tumblr lets you make/reblog 250 posts per 24 hours. I've hit post limit twice in two years - and it's really hard to get there. But this extension lets you see how many posts you've already made today.

Step 4 - Themes+

This extension gets its own category. You can easily change your dashboard colours with it to get rid of that boring blue. :)))

Tadaaaaaaaaaa! :D

Step 5 - Blacklist

And finally - the most important feature: The blacklist.

Once you've installed it, it allows you to blacklist or whitelist certain words and all the posts that contain that word or are tagged as such will be hidden from your dashboard. This is also great when you want to avoid spoilers for a book/movie/tv show and people you're following are considerate enough to tag their posts. So yeah, this is why it's so important to tag posts.

Anyway, how does the blacklist work?

Let's say you're not interested in Guardians of the Galaxy. You add the words to your blacklist...

And when a post containing that title appears on your dashboard, X-Kit hides it for you.

You can also choose to have blacklisted posts not show up at all.

It's also crazily easy to add things to your blacklist. You can either go to the X-Kit menu and add them manually, or use a keyboard combination to make the box pop up. You can also just highlight words on your dashboard, and click them while holding down Alt, which is awesome because people sometimes have very specific tags for things.

There are many, many more awesome features that X-Kit offers you but I'd be at this forever if I showed you all of them. So just... trust me when I say that X-Kit facilitates your life on Tumblr and that you won't regret installing it.

Add to that the fact that the X-Kit guy is suuuuuuuuuuuuper nice, and... there's no reason not to use it.

Hope this was helpful, and if you ever have any questions, just ask. :)

There will be a third post at some point (though not now) with some other handy Tumblr tips and tricks that no one tells you about and that aren't that easy to figure out on your own, but... yeah. Some other time. :)

I told a couple of people I would make a "how to use Tumblr" post, so let's do this. I'm not entirely sure how to go about it, however, because I've been using the site for over two years now, so some things that might be really easy and obvious to me might make no sense to people who've never really used it before.

I've decided to make a new account for this purpose, just so I don't miss any of the basics cause if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it properly ;) Later, I kind of switched back and forth between the new blog and my regular one, so... just so you know.

So, let's do this!

Step 1 - Signing up

The first step is to go to tumblr.com and sign up - duh. You will see this page.

Tumblr doesn't need a ton of information about you; all you need to enter is your email address, an 8-character password, and - obviously - the URL/username you want to use - which you can change at any time. When you click sign up, you will be asked to enter your age and confirm that you've read the terms & conditions, so do that, and you'll have your Tumblr account. You will get an email to verify your account, so do that as well, and you can start using Tumblr.

The first page you will see is this:

Here you can enter your blog title (which will appear on your blog, depending on which theme/layout you use and in the 'title' of your tab when you open your blog), a brief description, and choose your icon. All of this can be changed at any time.

When you click "make it", Tumblr will take you to your dashboard where it'll want to make you follow random blogs. To skip this step for now, just reenter tumblr.com at the top.

Then you will finally be on your dashboard.

Hit "No, thanks" for now cause we're going to follow blogs later.

Then you will see posts from the Tumblr staff blog on your dashboard because you're following it automatically.

If you want to unfollow it, like me, click "Following 1 blog" in the sidebar, which will take you to this page, where later, you will see everyone you follow.

To unfollow the staff blog, just click the "unfollow" button next to it.

When you go back to your dashboard now, which you can do by clicking the giant Tumblr logo at the top, the little house icon at the top, or by simply re-entering tumblr.com in your address bar, it's nice and empty and ready for you to start doing stuff.

Step 2 - The settings

Now, you will see several little icons and stuff in the sidebar, so let me briefly explain what everything is.

The sidebar right now is full of random blogs that Tumblr suggests to you. When you start actually posting and reblogging posts, these recommendations will change and Tumblr will show you blogs that post things you're interested in. Let's ignore the sidebar for now and focus on the things at the top. The little house is your dashboard. The envelope takes you to your messages, the question mark is the help, support and FAQ section, the next sign is the settings, and the "off" button logs you out of your account.

Let's go into the 'settings' section.

Here you can change your basic blog information. When you scroll down, you will see more options...

Here, you can change your URL/username, open your askbox, allow replies from followers, etc.

If you want people to be able to contact you, make sure to turn all of these on:

You can also set your blog to NSFW, which I don't recommend unless you actually post pornographic stuff yourself and post it in the tags.

If you do not turn NSFW on and post porn in the tags anyway, Tumblr will however mark your blog NSFW by default and you won't be able to change it back. I don't think they do that, however, when all you do is reblog the occasional NSFW picture. I do it all the time and my blog hasn't been flagged so far, so... unless you post porn yourself, there's no need to flag your blog.

When you scroll back to the top, you'll notice that there are more pages in the sidebar - Account is the page we were on just now, but if you click Dashboard, Notifications or Apps, you will find more options.

There's nothing much to say about those options, really; they're all pretty self-explanatory, I think.

The only thing worth mentioning is "endless scrolling". Tumblr generally works with "infinite scroll", so it can take forever for the posts on your dashboard to load if you have a slow internet connection. In the settings, you find the option to turn this off. If you do, you have the option to have pages on your dashboard - pages of, I believe, about 15 posts. So this can be easier for you if pictures take ages to load.

Now, let's go back to the dashboard (by clicking the Tumblr logo or the little house icon).

Step 3 - Creating a sideblog

Tumblr gives you the option to have more than one blog on your account. This is great if you want to keep a personal blog and want fandom stuff on a different blog. Keep in mind, however, that you're only able to follow blogs with your main account. So if someone follows your second blog and wants to be followed back, you can only do this with your main blog.

So let's create a sideblog.

You see this at the top of your sidebar.

When you click the little arrow next to your blog title, this will pop up:

Click 'create a new blog' and you will get to this page:

Here, you can enter information about the new blog you'd like to create. When you've done that and you go back to your dashboard, and click the little arrow next to your blog title again, you will see both your blogs and can use this to switch back and forth between your main and your sideblog.

Step 4 - Changing your theme/layout

Now you're ready to actually set up your blog. On Tumblr, layouts are generally referred to as 'themes'. To get to the customization area, you can either click 'customize' in your sidebar...

Or go to your blog and click the 'edit theme' button in the top right corner.

This will take you to the slightly complicated-looking 'edit theme' page.

As you can see, Tumblr has a live preview, so that you can check all the changes you make as you go. The live preview isn't always completely accurate, but for the most part, it works pretty well.

Now there are two different options for you to find a theme you like.

Option 1: Standard Tumblr themes

For this, click "browse themes"...

Then select 'Free Themes'. This is important. Do NOT pay for a Tumblr theme. There are tons of great free themes, so there's really no point in paying for one.

Now you can browse the themes in the sidebar (you see a little preview, and if you click on them, it'll show you the theme in the large preview window on the right). When you find one you like, click use...

Then it'll take you back to the main theme editor, where you can scroll down in the sidebar and change the colours and some other options. If you like the way it looks, hit 'save', and then 'exit', and your Tumblr theme is installed.

Option 2: Custom Tumblr themes by theme makers

There are tons of theme makers on Tumblr who make themes that are a little fancier and prettier than the standard Tumblr themes. To find these, you can either try to search the Tumblr tags for "theme" or "themes", or you can go to one of these blogs (that are much like mintyapple on livejournal and have themes from different theme makers):

- themesrec
- theme-hunter

On these, you can either just browse the themes or look for the tag lists to find a theme with specific criteria that are important to you (such as plain white themes, sidebar on the right/left, topbar, infinite scroll, etc.)

When you find a theme you like, you'll find a link in the post that says "codes" or something like that, so click that, which will take you to a page like this:

Select the entire code, copy it, and then go back to your "edit theme" page. There, click 'edit HTML'.

In the page that opens, delete the entire code you see there, and paste your code into the box.

Hit 'live preview', then 'save. On the main 'edit theme' page, you can again edit your colours, upload background or sidebar images, etc.

When you're done, hit 'save' again, then 'exit', and voilà! Your blog is ready to use.

Step 5 - Messages

When you're back on your dashboard, you'll probably already have received a message.

Click on the envelope icon, which will take you to your 'message center'.

On your message, you'll see three icons in the right bottom corner. The X means 'block', which will block the person who sent you the message. The trash can means 'delete', which will delete the message, and the little post with the little pencil means 'reply'. Let's click that.

Here you can enter your reply. If someone messages you on 'anonymous', you don't have the option to answer the message privately - obviously. You can only publish it, or ignore it. When someone messages you off anon, however, you can either publish the message, or answer it privately. Most people prefer it when you answer it privately.

Unless you want to get daily messages from that Tumblr bot, make sure to 'block' it, so it can't send you more dumb questions. ;)

These messages are called "asks", by the way. There is a different sort of message called "fanmail". You can send "fanmail" by clicking the "send fanmail" button on the right. Often, you can only send fanmail when you're following a person, or some people have it disabled entirely. These messages can't be published.

For asks, you will get an email to notify you BUT you will not get an email when someone's replied to your message. The only thing that notifies you about a reply, is a little '1' bubble by the envelope button at the top of the page. For fanmail, you will not get emails either; only the little '1' bubble at the top.

For asks, you also need to know that if you send someone an ask and they reply privately, there is no way to reply to their reply. You need to go back to their blog and send a whole new ask. This kinda sucks a little, but... there are ways to make this easier, which I will get to later. :)

Step 6 - Following blogs

You can use Tumblr by just browsing the tags and reblogging things from there, of course, but it's much more fun if you follow a few blogs/people who post stuff you actually like cause then you can stay on your dashboard the entire time and don't need to scroll through lots of things you're not interested in.

The easiest way to follow a blog is if you already know a blog you want to follow. I'm going to go to my main blog now (not the one I just created). In the top right corner, you see the "follow" button, so just click that, and you're following that person.

When you go back to your dashboard, you will see their posts there.

To search the Tumblr tags to find blogs to follow, type something you're interested in into the little search bar in the top right corner of your dashboard.

Now, Tumblr recently changed its system a little, and when you click on Teen Wolf, it will take you to this page:

Which is, frankly, a mess, and makes my computer, at least, work 10 times harder because there's just so much on the page and it's hard to find things. The layout is awful, so if you just want to look at a regular tag, look at your address bar, highlight "search" and replace it with "tagged":

When you hit enter, you will get to the actual page of that tag, which looks much like your dashboard and shows you the most recent post made about that keyword:

Much easier to navigate.

The bad thing about the Tumblr tags is that you find anything related to that keyword - good and bad. A lot of people are assholes and tag their hate for a specific fandom or ship, which is why, once you follow a few blogs, you will probably stay out of the tags entirely.

Also, reposts. People spend a lot of time making amazing gifs and editing pictures, only to have idiots repost them and tag them and claim them as their own (even though it is SO much easier to just reblog a post and leave the source intact). Avoiding reposts isn't easy when you're not in a specific Tumblr fandom yet and don't know the graphic makers yet, but there are a few ways to tell whether something is a repost, which I will get into later.

Step 7 - Reblogging a post

Let's look at what posts look like on the dashboard.

On the left, you have the person's icon. ~~When you click that, you'll get to their blog. Same if you click their blog name in the post.~~ Tumblr changed something last night and now it opens people's blog in an annoying sidebar on your dashboard. No idea what the point of that is, but... yeah. Next to that, you see who that person reblogged the post from. If you want to follow that person, you can click the little plus next to their URL. In the left corner, you see the source of the post; in this case, the person who made the gif set.

At the bottom of the post, you have the tags, the number of notes (how many times the post has been reblogged and liked), and on the right side, you have two little icons. The arrow means "reblog", the heart means "like".

Let's hit the reblog button. This will open the reblog page.

At the top, you can choose which blog to reblog it to (if you have a sideblog). The rest of these icons aren't important right now. When you scroll down, you see the bottom of the post...

Here you can add a caption (which is generally frowned upon unless you actually have something useful to say. People don't like it when you add things like, "omg he's so hot" or "LOL" or "THIS!!!" because if everyone did that, the post would end up having 34989204 captions, which doesn't look very pretty and doesn't really... contribute anything to the post). On Tumblr, people often add their comments in their tags. This allows you to express yourself without "ruining" the post, so to speak. Your followers will see how you feel about the post, but the original poster won't see it, and your comment won't be on the post when someone else reblogs it.

Underneath the caption box, you can see the tag box. TAGGING IS IMPORTANT for a variety of reasons. First of all, it allows you to find the post on your blog later. Secondly, there is a blacklist for Tumblr (which I will get to later), so if someone who follows you doesn't want to see (in this case) Tyler Posey posts, they can blacklist the name and your post won't show up on their dashboard. So please tag your posts. Personally, I don't follow people who don't tag, and I know a lot of other people don't either. :)))

When you tag something you reblog, it will NOT show up in the "open" Tumblr tags. In this case, tags are merely for organizational and blacklist purposes.

Under that, you see the "reblog" button. Here, you have a few more options:

If you just click "reblog", the post will be posted right away. The rest of the options are pretty self-explanatory. Posting something privately, however, is useless, because you will never find the post again, so... yeah.

After reblogging your post, you will be back on your dashboard, and can scroll down to find more posts to reblog.

Step 8 - Making your own posts

Tumblr has different post categories. These are pretty self explanatory.

Let's make a text post.

Also... pretty self explanatory.

A note on tags on original posts: When you tag a post you're making, it will show up in the Tumblr tags and people will be able to see it when they search for the tag you added. HOWEVER, only the first 5 tags will show up in the tags.

For example, if you want to post a photo of, say, Bill and Tom Kaulitz and you tag it, in this order: #bill kaulitz #tom kaulitz #tokio hotel #bill x tom #twincest #kaulitz twins

Those are six tags, meaning only the first five will be searchable in the Tumblr tags. The tag #kaulitz twins, will be searchable on your blog, and if someone blacklisted it, it will be blacklisted, but it will not show up if you search the Tumblr tags.

And that concludes the first part of my little Tumblr tutorial. Make sure to check out the second part, which introduces you to a browser extension that will make Tumblr about 100% easier and more awesome!

Part 2 - X-Kit

For

emzlovesharry! :D

Yes, I'm bored :P

( Tutorial - How to make icon-sized Art Previews )

OMG! I made a tutorial *gasps*

This is also my 600th entry, so I thought I had to post something special *g*

Yeah... I don't really know if I'm the right person to teach anyone anything but a few people asked me how I draw hair, so... here's how. It's a huge pic, so it might take some time to load, and... well, enjoy! :)

And if you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

( HAIR TUTORIAL )