#How to Use WordPress Themes

[meriablog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2itssa-QLc

Elementor How To Create A Website New 2024 - YouTube

Elementor How To Create A Website New 2024 - YouTube

Elementor How To Create A Website New 2024 - YouTube

Elementor How To Create A Website New 2024 - YouTube

Elementor How To Create A Website New 2024 - YouTube

[transmandrake]

Hmmm... it would be sort of fun and a learning experience to try and recreate as much of my own site to neocities as possible... but also a tremendous waste of time when ive, yknow, already made it.

Gotta say the pricing of it is surprisingly... high?

I pay €60 a year (albeit on a legacy plan... wonder when they'll boot me from it...) for a full website with servers and emails and neocities is also €60 for just the website...? The storage and bandwidth is very generous, and yes of course the fact its free by default means paying is more like a bonus than a proper bundle, but still. I hope people know that that's what they're getting, because paying for hosting isn't just the website itself, and that seems to be all that neocities gives you.

I dream wistfully of something with the freedom of coding yourself but the ease of use of a website builder... Did you know I had to install 3 add-ons to make boxes on my wordpress site. You can do it by default now but why the fuck could I not do that without 3 add-ons 4 years ago. Why. Took me like 5 minutes to do in html so its not like its a new thing. Whyyyy

...Boggles the mind that websites, the web itself even, just dont have commenting or accounts built into them. Probably one of the single biggest reasons i use wordpress. Many times I have wanted to comment on a site and given up because I forget my disqus or whatever 5 hosts there are's log in every time and figuring it out is not worth typing 'i love this! Great work!' And hitting send. Its also so damn ugly looking.

I would whine more but I should sleep... if anyone wants to hear more probably uneducated opinions about web hosting lemme know

[emporium]

How did you find tumblr?

I really enjoy talking with tumblr users so I thought I'd try posting more prompts to get some conversations started.

I was in a nostalgic mood this week and was trying to remember how I first came to tumblr. It got me thinking that it would be cool to learn other's origin stories. I'll go first.

Even though I'm a big nerd who loves Star Trek (DS9 4 life) and Anime (Fairy Tail forever) it was WordPress that brought me to tumblr. Back in 2010 while in college I worked part time for a WordPress theme shop called Obox Themes. They were looking for new markets and decided that tumblr themes would be a good area to get into. I fell in love with how easy it was to modify my digital home and how there was a whole community of people hacking and releasing themes. Creating a WordPress theme from scratch would have been impossible with my skillset then but with tumblr I could do anything with my handy CSS guide and a few energy drinks.

Over the years what kept bringing me back was the themes. They were funky, weird and sometimes a little broken but who cares. It seemed like the entire web was trying to be grown up but tumblr was Toys R Us, they said it’s ok to be a kid. I loved that. Whenever I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere else I’d come back to tumblr and make a new theme (https://www.tumblr.com/themes/by/nick). I use to love clicking on the installs and seeing what kind of fun folks were using my stuff. What kind of people liked the weird stuff I did. It's your turn. What brought you to tumblr?

[wip]

So I've heard about the migration to the Wordpress backend... Will we know when it's done? Can you get @engineering to put out something technical about what had to happen?

Answer: Hi, @legowerewolf!

We’re in the planning and prototyping phase right now—so we don’t have a lot of details to share, unfortunately. But we will share our plans and our progress as it gets clearer.

Some of the pieces we are discussing are:

Mapping Tumblr database schemas to WordPress.

Supporting Tumblr themes natively in WordPress.

Ensuring fast response times for all feeds.

We must add two things here. Firstly, this will be a long process, and it won’t be completed anytime soon, per se. Secondly, we should also use the opportunity to clarify that, besides a bug or two here or there, how you know and use Tumblr will not change at all.

This will be a big change—but an invisible one, more or less.

Thanks for your questions, and have a great day!

[tempural]

Hi!! I wanted to say that I loved reading about your journey of creating a personal website. I'm still unsure between Vercel and Netlify. I have a small question to ask. See, one of the reasons I want to make a website is to archive drawings and journal/sketchbook. Would you have any tips for creating an area on my website just for the diary/journal, which has tags, files for each entry, etc.?

Bello!

Really happy to hear about your interest in websites! I want everyone to make their own site so I don't have to log into social media and get instant tummyaches ♥

Vercel vs Netlify: I think I settled on Vercel for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I just made a site on Netlify, then tested on Vercel, and now I have like 5 websites on Vercel so I just kept using it LOL. I'm sure a more tech-savvy person would know the difference - I think they have certain integrations with specific programs.

Creating a diary or journal with tags:

There's a couple of different ways you can do that, with different levels of work needed.

you got me yapping again:

This sadgrl tutorial might be outdated and may or may not work, but explains the process better than I can.

Easiest: make a journal on Dreamwidth, or another blogging site (wordpress??) that allows easy tags and RSS feed, and embed that RSS feed onto your site.

This requires almost no HTML set-up, and the easiest to organize tags, but you don't truly have the data on your own site since it's just embedded.

When I snuck into a web design class at college, this was one of the methods that the professor used for a blog within a portfolio site LOL.

Shit like wordpress is what a LOT of ~professional~ sites do for their blog section. They code it separately from the main site haha. It's the most popular thing, but not necessarily the best. And wait til you read on what the CEO of wordpress has been having meltdowns about... he owns tumblr too!

It's made with a tutorial for Neocities if that's what you use.

Medium: Set up zonelets.

It will require some HTML and JS editing, but will help automate making headers/footers for each page of a blog.

I've never used it myself, but I see other people speak highly of it.

HARD FOR ME CUZ I'M A GORILLA: I believe a lot of professional web devs will slap your face with their coding cock until you use a static site generator (SSG) to make your site.

You will need some coding knowledge to set up the tagging system since it doesn't come with it enabled by default. But it's made explicitly to be an alternative to big Static Site Generators which are...

It requires some more intimidating knowledge, because it's a lot of scripts that turn files that are not HTML/CSS/JS into plain HTML.

Also you have to use the command line, and that doesn't come with buttons that tell you what you can do. You have to copy/paste all that shit or memorize the code to 'dev build astro' and it all looks silly.

I've used Eleventy, and now am using Astro. Other people use Hugo or Jekyll or some other stuff with crazy names like Glup Shitto. I hate all these sites cuz none of the words mean anything to me. This is a common theme for me and tech. I don't know what NODES or CONTENT or ISLANDS are!!!

I had the most success attempting to learn how to use a SSG by downloading a template and altering it with github + VScodium. Here's the template page for Astro. You click on a theme you like, and it takes you to its github page. (If you don't want to use evil Microsoft stuff sorry. Skip this entire section.) Follow the instructions on the page for "forking" the glup shitto. When it tells you to run commands, I run those commands through the terminal window in VScodium. These tutorials never tell you what these commands do cuz they assume you already know. Usually those commands automatically install the files you need onto your computer, and create the final files.

You can see my wip here for a "tag system" that SHOULD show members of a web listing haha but I don't know what I'm doing and I have a reading disorder AND don't know cumputer good.

THEORETICALLY this will be the simplest and easiest way to maintain tags and files, because after you set it up you just have to write the "content" of the blog page. And you don't have to set up the header/footer ever again. I see the vision, and potential, but I am not there yet when it takes me 5 hours a day to figure out what any of the words in the documentation mean and I don't want to ask an actual tech person cuz they will be like 'obviously just press the Blip on the Repository and then Suck My Ass in the command line".

(side note I haven't updated fujofans in like a year cuz I'm struggling with this part to make updating easier).

Con: the final HTML/CSS code is really ugly if it's "minified", and a lot of themes use """"""professional"""""" CSS libraries like Bootstrap and Tailwind that I honestly think are ugly cuz that's what every fuckin' tech website uses to style their pages and make them look Professional and Minimalist with stupid code like style="500-w dark-gray-balls D-cup-bra" on every single element. Even Toyhouse uses Bootstrap. Eugh!

But maybe you're smarter than me and can wrangle these things better!

That was really long. Woops. I hope you can slug through this wall of text and find something helpful. Feel free to email me if you have any more specific questions. I may or may not be helpful.

If someone else sees this and has better suggestions for making BLOGS, please chime in. I'm begging you.

[ashubii]

in honor of the nature event and hopefully fairies here's a throwback to my Wonderland themed story I wrote years ago, long before I started posting on tumblr or knew how to use reshade and barely knew how to edit screenshots

my wonderland fairies were always some of my favorites! anyway, their names - as originally written:

Orange - Igni Dazzletwig, who’s wings had captured the pale light of the sky…

Blue - Ora Blueflip, fae of the water…

Green/Teal - Quinn Limedash, the only male faerie to appear, with wings that glimmered in shifting hues…

Pink - And Caliphe Petalwing, the youngest of the four, who had only just earned the color of her wings…

IF WE GET FAIRIES I AM REMAKING ALL OF THEM

the story is also currently privated b/c wordpress devoured my final chapter and epilogue before they got posted and i lost everything. still devastated.

[phoenotopia]

Introducing Star Iliad!

We’re happy to announce our next game, “Star Iliad”! Now in development.

Star Iliad is a retro-futuristically themed Metroidvania that takes place inside a giant star whale.

See the teaser trailer!

In the game, you’ll play as Blythe Braves, a Star Ranger who patrols a remote region of the interstellar frontier. Heeding a distress signal, she investigates to find a curious large rock formation in the shape of a whale. Shortly after landing and locating a couple of castaways, her ship is destroyed by unknown alien creatures. Stranded and surrounded, but not outgunned, she joins forces with other castaways in a bid to escape. A big adventure ensues!

Where Phoenotopia had more Zelda-style leanings, Star Iliad dives deeper into Metroid territory with a larger, interconnected map and a stronger focus on gun combat. We’ve learned the correct lessons from Phoenotopia— which is… Guns are Good 👍 Bats are Bad 👎 (joking!)

The story won’t be taking a backseat. While Phoenotopia featured a large ensemble cast, Star Iliad narrows its focus to a smaller group of more thoroughly explored characters.

(Characters can leverage expressive portraits to drive emotionally charged scenes)

Some additional in-development pics. We have both very finished & very unfinished looking areas.

Legacy of Phoenotopia

Since Phoenotopia’s development concluded, we’ve received some really encouraging emails from fans expressing how much they enjoyed it and even sharing their concern about whether we were doing alright. This meant a lot, especially considering Phoenotopia was not a strong seller.

For a while now, I’ve felt the need to allay those fears and let everyone know that we’re alive and hard at work on something new. With Steam’s fourth anniversary for Phoenotopia approaching, it felt like the right moment to finally share an update.

True, Phoenotopia was not a strong seller, but it would not turn out to be as bleak as I previously believed. Long after sales should have dwindled to zero, the game found a small, but steady threshold—a lifeline that has kept us funded. We’ve also been able to rely on family (and the occasional side job or two) to stay afloat.

Lastly, I think the game got some organic word of mouth, so there would be random times here and there where a youtuber or renowned streamer covered Phoenotopia and we’d get an unusual sales spike out of nowhere.

So, to all the fans who supported us, whether by buying the game, spreading the word, or just sending us kind messages—thank you! You’ve sustained us in ways you may not even realize, and we’re incredibly grateful 🙇

Chronicling Star Iliad’s development with a new Dev Log! (on wordpress)

After Phoenotopia, there was a bit of wandering around and thinking about what was next.

I wanted to settle into a quieter pace of development for a while. With Phoenotopia, I had been doing long form dev log updates. I wanted to try something different – a smaller, but more frequent form of dev logging. And it appeared that the new dev blogging meta was social media like Twitter & Instagram.

But there was no point in starting right away. Because 4 years back, we didn’t know what we were working on. It would take about a year of exploring & feeling around before “Star Iliad” developed enough shape and form that it could be talked about. Then we started twitter (@StarIliad) and instagram (@StarIliad), and started posting. Not as regular as I thought I would it turns out – short form updates have their own unique challenges and dev logging is always easy to neglect.

Still, if you’re curious, you can look at the StarIliad twitter account and enjoy the past 3 years of short form dev log posts (it may keep you entertained for all of 10 minutes).

As for the instagram account, it never quite took off, basically dying right out the gate >_>

In any case, we’re in the midst of development. It’s difficult to see the finish line from here, so I can’t announce a release date. What I can announce is the return of the dev log, where like times of yore, I will be chronicling our thoughts and tribulations until we reach the finish line. I invite you to join us by subscribing to the new dev log on wordpress.

(Also, please wishlist on Steam! It helps with the algorithm)

[leslekieuart]

Hello! I couldn't find where to message you and felt silly to email the question on your business email, so you're absolutely free to ignore this!

Love your comic so so much, your characters are wonderful! As someone who also wants to make a webcomic (traditionally, not like webtoon or tapas or any scrolly place), how did you get your website made up and hosted? I'm always stuck on the details of that stuff. Making the art isn't hard, it's the technical details that I'm too boomer to understand!

Apologies if it's such a weird or awkward question, but thank you for reading nonetheless!

Not a weird question at all, I feel like with large social media platforms being the main places where people post their work, the art of making your own website is truly lost in this day and age (I know I had to fumble a bit to make mine)

I use Bluehost to host my site, and used Wordpress's open source website builder for it. I highly recommend checking out Toocheke, which is pretty much what I used for the framework for my site. I am not a tech savy person (most of my css knowledge was editing my own tumblr back in the day), but toocheke was fairly easy to install and I was able to get most of my problems fixed by light researching.

I would highly advise against trying to make your website on wordpress itself, for some reason toocheke costed more to use since they put custom themes like that behind a paywall on their own built in builder if you decide to host with them.

[crownmemes]

Advice; Where to Make Rules and About Pages

If you've read my advice post about the difference between about and rules pages and why they're both important, you may not be wondering the best way to make them. The good news is, there are plenty of options!

Tumblr

The simplest choice. In the past, people would make custom pages on their theme. However, since dash view has become popular (and you can't view custom pages via it, nor can you view them on mobile), most people simply post their about/rules page as a normal text post, and link to it in their pinned post. If you have a custom theme, make sure to link the pages in the navigation bar too!

Using a plain Tumblr post increases your page's readability, but reduces the amount of formatting you can do. If you make your pages elsewhere, you will be able to customise them a lot more.

Carrd

A free website maker. You can make a small site with a free account, and the prices are pretty reasonable if you need to make a bigger site. Carrd has a minimalist aesthetic, and it will also adjust what you make to fit a mobile browser (though this may break your formatting if you have designed something complicated).

Carrd is easy to use, but it is best used for simple designs. If you want to do something more complicated than a basic Carrd layout, you're going to spend a lot of time trying to make the formatting work. If you want multiple pages for your site, you're also going to spend a lot of time formatting as you can't clone pages, therefore have to recreate each one every time instead.

It uses markdown for formatting text. If you're familiar with it, this can speed up writing, but it may slow you down if you've never used it before.

One of the benefits of Carrd is that there are lots of free templates available within the rpc! Here are resources I found with a quick Google search, but there are plenty more out there if you look for them: [x] [x] [x]

Weebly

Another free website maker. You can make more for free here than you can on Carrd. Weebly sites should adapt to work on a mobile browser.

I've never seen anybody use Weebly for about/rules pages, but I do recommend it! It's very easy to use, and, unlike Carrd, you can copy and paste entire pages. This makes it ideal if you have lots of muses that you want to make individual about pages for.

It uses a more typical text editor than Carrd. Instead of markdown, it's more like Microsoft Word - where you highlight text and click buttons to add formatting. You also have HTML/CSS options.

Weebly does offer some free templates, but you're likely to want to edit them to suit your needs more. This is okay! It isn't difficult to do!

Google Docs

A popular, completely free option. As with Carrd, there are plenty of templates and resources within the rpc (here are three examples: [x] [x] [x]). These pages will be viewable on a mobile browser, but the theme may not translate well. Keep readability in mind if you use this option.

If you use this option, also make sure the link you share is viewer only and doesn't have editor permissions!

Other Options (WordPress, Self-Hosting, etc)

Don't feel you have to follow the crowd. If you like to use WordPress, use WordPress. You could also use Neocities, or any other website builder!

Personally, I already own a web domain because I have websites for other online activities, so I use about pages that I've coded from scratch and host them myself. For my rules page, I just use a Tumblr text post that's linked in my pinned post. In the past, I've used Carrd and Tumblr pages for about pages.

If you want to write your site using HTML, some free website hosters will allow you to do this (Neocities, for example). If you're interested in coding, I do recommend this! It allows you to have full customisability, and coding can be a really useful skill. However, one downside of this is it can make your pages hard to read on a mobile browser. It's up to you to decide how important this is.

If you're interested in learning HTML (as well as CSS, JavaScript, and other coding languages), this site is a great resource!

[cheebg3]

Today's project: I made a fancy little wordpress site for Stepdaughter of Bhaal!

Isn't it fancy?! I've decided to start calling it my "webnovel" instead of my "longfic" because there's no rules and I could use a a boost.

This is pretty much just a mirror of the fic on ao3, but with direct links to my profile removed so I can show people the fic without sending them my ao3. You know how it is.

I highly reccommend doing this to your fics, it's so fancy! it's a free theme on wordpres called Livro, but if you wanted a less evil corporation you could also try neocities, which I'm also experimenting with.

[2024-grimoire-challenge]

October Week 5 - Getting Crafty

This week is all about getting our hands dirty and working on those fantastic books we’ve been making. Papercrafting and decorating and fancy writing, if that is your chosen medium. Or even how to make pretty digital pages! This week is about bringing the grimoires to life! Lots of links and ideas this week for inspiration (grimspiration?) on ways to put our books together!

Monday - Digital Mediums

I know some of these require payment and subscriptions, and there are plenty of other free options out there if anyone knows of them feel free to add them in a reply or reblog!

Gimp - Photo/ Image Editing

Adobe Photoshop - Photo/ Image Editing

Word/ Excel (Or wordpad, cause its free) -

Tuesday - Papercrafting

Scrapbooking

1 - Tips and Tricks

2 - Ideas

3 - Witchy Ideas

A general search on the internet, Youtube, or Pinterest will give a bunch of other ideas! Some things I've done in my own include pages with envelopes and scraps of paper with sigils on them, s bit of foil on a page dedicated to mirror magic, and a functioning, turning wheel of the year!

Junk Journaling

Pinterest - Witchy Junk journal Ideas

Youtube - How to Junk Journal

Bullet Journal

How to

Witchy Themed

Witchy Ideas

Journal

How to

Guide to Journaling

Wednesday - Stickers and Ephemera

This kind of speaks for itself. But like anything on the crazy old internet, its all about tags and searching. Think about the tags you follow here on tumblr. Witch, witchy, grimoire, dark academia, vintage, plant and flower, magic, magick, wicca, paganism etc. Be as specific in some cases as you can be, though a vague search will sometimes lead you to what you're looking for. Below are a few places I've found things to use in my papercrafted grimoire journey.

Amazon/ Temu

Etsy/ Bigcartel/ Depop any of those!

Small business/ Artists

Art from friends

Thursday - Other things to add and other links

No draw art ideas!

So you want to build a grimoire - Patheos

Laurel's Guide -Tumblr

Cauldron and Brew - Wordpress

Don't hesitate to add anything you can think of both written/ typed or physical trinkets to your grimoire. It doesn't have to be neat and trim, unless that's what you're going for. It can be overstuff and gritty. Whatever works for you! Add twigs in the shape of runes, charms, crystals, leaves or flowers, plants, anything! Locks of hair, photographs, charts and graphs, anything and everything you can think of. It is literally yours to create how you wish!

Friday - do the thing!

Now that we’ve covered a bunch of links with all kinds of ideas, get crafty! Make your pages! Or take the pages you’ve started and decorate them! Make them your own! Whether your grimoire is form over function or function over form, make it yours!

Don't let these be the limit of your creative searches! Find more online tools, find more physical books, find inspiration for your creation anywhere and everywhere, but most importantly, express yourself freely within your grimoire!

-Mod Hazel

[taylortruther]

I know you mentioned you had web development experience. Do you have any HTML/CSS courses you would recommend or people to follow or YouTube channels or anything? How did you learn it? I work in SEO and would like to get a better grasp on the web and coding side of things. Also good with your job search bestie!

thank you! i was self-taught and think that's the best/easiest way to learn. check out the code of a site you like, try to recreate it/mess with it on your own, make tumblr themes (for css)! i learned the essentials by making my own goofy websites on neocities. but i don't keep up with my education now, i have a good idea of the fundamentals. plus, unless you want to be a front-end developer, it's unlikely you'd need to know anything beyond basic html/css - most organizations probably use a cms like wordpress that allows you to implement templates and update things very easily without touching code. but understanding the basics can be helpful, it's definitely a plus.

but i have heard good things about university of michigan's course: https://online.umich.edu/series/web-design-for-everybody/ i believe it's free on coursera!

[kradeelav]

Hey Krad, do you have any advice for starting a website like yours? I love the idea of starting a website to host my fandom and personal portfolio, and maybe get back a piece of the old internet. How did you put yours together?

hey there! great question, and the good news is there's a lot of ways to go about it.

the bad news is, there's a lot of ways to go about it.

to simplify things, there's kind of ... three "tiers" to the back-end of how to create a website. let's break it down below.

high ease, low customization. (wix, weebly, squarespace, etc. you pay a company + they give you a bunch of themes and pre-made pages for you to drop images in.) can have one of these online in 2-3 hours, but it often "feels" templated and sterile.

medium ease, medium customization. (making a theme from scrach with tumblr's custom code editor, hybrid sites with some pages in pure code, some with wordpress grafted onto some subdomains). this is what i'd classify my site as, as I use wordpress for my logs for brainless updating. while i'm confident coding single/static pages, i just don't have the time or brainwidth right now to make a complex archiving system.

low ease, high customization. (neocities, pure html/css/coding). the downsides to this is oftentimes these sites are not phone-friendly, and there's a steep learning curve. but for the quintessential "old internet" experience, by far the best route to take. there's also something really empowering about learning why things work the way they do.)

some of this can be super intimidating if you're starting from 0 coding knowledge; there's no shame in switching to a templating software. hell i started with weebly and dicking around in tumblr's custom code template for a solid 5 years before making my current site, and that was with a previous 5 years of sketchy html experience) you're not gonna learn everything overnight.

but! as long as you keep a curious and inquisitive mind, you can't go wrong.

one last encouragement: there's kind of a mini renaissance with custom sites right now, especially in neocities circles, so you're kinda in luck in that there's more resources than ever. i love scumsuck's guides, and fancoders (the community) is also all over this too.

good luck!

[theambitiouswoman]

Hey sweet girl! I just wanted to say at the top that I LOVE your blog! It's so helpful and inspiring 💞

I was just wondering if you had any tips on how to start a blog? I'd love to try but have no idea where to begin or what to do and would greatly appreciate any help from you. ILYSM 🎀

Hey lovely!

Thank you SO much for the sweet words, I’m excited for you to start your blog!

Starting a blog can feel like a lot, but what makes a blog successful is actually staying true to your words. People can tell when you FEEL what you are saying.

Pick a niche you love & can talk about for days. Within that niche, talk about things you wanted to learn/ needed to hear, because other people might be looking for the same thing. Without a niche, it's very hard to attract the right audience because people wont feel like they can connect.

When I started this blog, It was when I had started a business and I wanted to document my journey and feelings. I am actually insanely vulnerable here with you guys than I am with most my friends IRL hahahha But I am so grateful for putting myself out there because I thinks thats what really helped me connect and find people who "get me" on this platform.

As your blog grows and people interact, you will see what subjects they are most interested in and can format your contact towards that. But most important is to first put A LOT of content out there. Even now, I post 5-10 times a day even though my blog has grown so much by the grace of God.

Pick a blog name thats cohesive with your niche and catchy.

Pick a platform you want to use to post in... Substack, Blogger, Wordpress, Blogspot, tumblr

Pick a theme you like that feels cohesive.

If you aren't using tumblr, you will need to buy a DOMAIN name and a HOSTING plan. I use Godaddy for everything.

You will also need to create key pages: About page, Contact page, Blog page, Privacy Policy

Then once everything is set up, you can start writing :)

If you need writing ideas, search for posts on instagram, x, tiktok, answer the public etc in the niche you are interested in, see whats popular and then write your own thoughts and opinions since you know its a popular subject.

SEO helps people find your blog through Google. To optimize your content, make sure your posts include relevant keywords, meta descriptions and other SEO basics. When you are writing quality content, the SEO will naturally follow tbh.

You can promote your blog on social media platforms, I don't do this.. but it definitely helps drive traffic!

Stay consistent with your posts. Don't put a lot of pressure on yourself, maybe bulk create and schedule them... but being consistent is very important.

In Short.. pick a name for your blog and start writing. If you don't start, you won't know how to optimize & make it better.

You’ve got everything it takes to make your blog a beautiful space for inspiration and connection. Don't overthink it. Take it one step at a time and enjoy the creative process.

I am so excited for you! 💞

[wip]

hey guys!

I saw a release from Automattic that said something about migrating Tumblr's backend to Wordpress for easier updates and better infrastructure. do you guys have more info on how that'll work?

also, I saw one of your recent posts about allowing more features for sideblogs, which is great. but is there a plan to allow a user to change which blog is their primary? I know I'm not the only person who no longer uses their primary blog, and it would be nice to switch functionality to the blog that I use more often.

thanks so much!

Answer: Hey there, @psycho-magnotheric-slime!

To answer your first question, we answered a very similar question very recently.

We’re in the planning and prototyping phase right now, so we don’t have a lot of details to share. But we will share our plans and progress as it becomes clearer.

Some of the pieces we’re discussing are:

Mapping Tumblr database schemas to WordPress.

Supporting Tumblr themes natively in WordPress.

Ensuring fast response times for all feeds.

To answer your second, we can say that we have looked into this several times in the past, but it is a tricky problem that requires some careful work. There are a lot of assumptions baked into Tumblr about how primary and secondary blogs work, and it would be particularly difficult to switch them around. It’s also not something we’ve had a chance to prioritize, in recent times.

We should also use the opportunity to clarify that, besides a bug or two here or there, how you know and use Tumblr will not change!

We hope this helps. Have a great day!

[rainmustfallts4]

One day, you’ll fly (short story)

New Note: Here is another story that I wrote back in 2023 as part of my 'uploading old stories from my old wordpress blog' project lol I wonder if I should have uploaded these in order hmmm Original Note: It’s not normal to submit two different entries for MSSS, but I just had both of these ideas and couldn’t resist. Thank you, Min, for letting me submit both! I feel like this one is much nicer than the first. Also a huge thank you to the amazing creator whose house I used in this story: – Newcrest Starter by SimsOnlineCom

Theme: Take Flight

Challenge/Month: Monthly Simlit Short Story/April 2023

Genre: Friendship, animals, fluff

Word Count: 861 words

Sprinkles slowly approached the kitchen counter, feeling more intimidated the closer he got.

Why was it so tall? He didn’t understand why it had to be so tall.

His older brother, Zeus, easily jumped from one counter to the next, seeming to soar through the air with ease.

Why couldn’t Sprinkles also do that? He just didn’t understand. He had tried multiple times, but he failed every single time. Zeus made it seem so simple but, to Sprinkles, it was the hardest thing he’s ever done.

Zeus glanced over the counter, watching as his younger brother paced around the island.

Curious, he jumped down in front of the smaller feline, head tilted to the side. “What are you doing, squirt?”

“I’m not a squirt!” replied Sprinkles with a scoff.

Zeus hummed. “Were you sizing up the counter again?”

“No…”

“You’re worrying too much about it. You’ll be able to jump that high one day, just be patient.”

“What do you know?!” hissed the smaller of the two, his back arched. “It’s been months and I’m no closer, but you can do it so easily! You’ve always been able to jump so easily with your long legs. It’s not fair!”

“Calm down,” Zeus told him softly, lightly tapping the kitten on his nose. “Here, why don’t we practice your jumping?”

“Practice?” he tilted his head to the side in confusion. “How?”

“It’s simple! Just jump in place as high as you can. Let’s go on three, okay?”

“I don’t see how that’s gonna help… but okay.”

“One… two… three!”

Together, the two cats jumped into the air. Sprinkles didn’t make it very high because of his tiny legs and Zeus only made it a bit farther because he had held back, not wanting to make his brother feel worse than he already did.

“You’re doing great! Once more!”

This time, it was just Sprinkles who jumped.

“Oh ho ho, look at you go! You got a bit more height on that one.”

“Did I really?”

“Yes!” Zeus held up his paw, a grin on his face. “High paw, little bro!”

Despite himself, little Sprinkles smiled back, high pawing his older brother.

For hours, the tiny kitten practiced his jumping, marking his progress with a claw mark to the side of the counter. His jumps were not getting higher, though. If anything, he was finding it harder to reach the same height consistently.

Little Sprinkles finally gave up, running into the bedroom to hide under the bed, trying not to succumb to his feelings of inadequacy. Just like his attempts to reach the counter, it did not go well.

His brother’s words echoed in his mind.

One day, his brother had said.

But it had been a lot of days already and the kitten was no closer! Sprinkles was beginning to think that his brother had lied to him. He curled up into a ball beneath the bed, stuffing his face into his fur.

‘I’ll never be able to fly like Zeus can…’ he thought to himself as he slowly drifted off to sleep.

// One Year Later \\

Sprinkles was no longer the tiny kitten he once was. If anything, he was actually a bit bigger than his skinny older brother. That did little to boost his confidence or stifle his nerves as he stared up at the counter.

Zeus came up beside him with a grin. “You ready? Today is the day, I can just feel it!”

Sprinkles wasn’t so sure. Even less so as he watched his brother jump effortlessly onto the counter.

“You’ve got this! Just believe in yourself, little bro!”

Sprinkles took a few deep breaths to calm himself before he sat back, wiggling his butt before pushing off the ground. It felt as if he had grown wings and taken flight! He soared toward the counter with incredible speed.

When his paws finally touched the countertop, he released a yowl of happiness that made his owner nearly fall out of bed. “Oh my grim, I did it! Zeus, I did it!”

“See? I told you you could.” Proud of his baby brother, Zeus moved toward him with the intent of rubbing against him, but the young cat jumped back down before he could. “Eh? Where are you go – AH!”

In the blink of an eye, Sprinkles had jumped again, nearly tumbling right into the older cat. With his heart racing, Zeus moved himself to the edge of the counter, watching as his brother continued a seemingly endless loop of jumping onto the counter, then down and back again.

“I’ve created a monster…” Zeus muttered to himself before moving to the opposite end after nearly being clocked again by the excited feline.

Seeing that his brother’s back was to him, Sprinkles crouched down low against the surface of the counter, slowly approaching his brother.

In the blink of an eye, the younger had pounced on the older, his arms wrapped around Zeus’ neck as he bit down playfully. “Thank you so much, big bro! I couldn’t have done it without you!”

“Alright, alright!” Laughed Zeus as he tried to fight off the excitable young cat. “Just get offa me already, you’re heavy!”