This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Changing Advanced Settings
Tumblr's settings under the Advanced menu are a bit confusing, but worth getting right and understanding, so you can change them if your needs change in the future.
To change advanced settings, begin by accessing the Advanced menu by following these steps:
- From any screen in Tumblr, choose Account, Preferences.
On the Preferences page, click the Customize Your Blog button that displays in the top-right corner of the Preferences page or click the Customize link that displays at the bottom right of the page, above the Cancel button.
The Customize page, with its generic tumblog, displays, as described in Lesson 3, "Customizing Info Settings for Your Tumblog."
Click the Advanced menu.
The Advanced pull-down menu displays, as shown in Figure 5.1.
Figure 5.1 Tumblr Advanced options are a bit of a grab bag.
- Change settings as described in the following section.
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Setting Appearance-Related Advanced Options
Several advanced Tumblr settings relate to your blog's appearance and display in the upper part of the Advanced pull-down menu. Some of the settings display in Figure 5.1. Follow these instructions to set them:
- Timezone—(Default: U.S. East Coast, GMT-5.) Choose your timezone; Tumblr will use it to time stamp your blog posts, so this is important. You might want to change it when you travel, although that might be difficult to remember to do.
- Add Custom CSS—(Default: Empty, no custom CSS.) This text box enables you to enter Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) code that overrides code in your theme, if your theme allows this. (The default Tumblr theme does, but others don't.) The role of CSS with Tumblr themes is explained in more detail later in this lesson.
- Post Count—(Default: 10 posts.) Choose the number of posts to display in one web page before the user has to go to a new page to view more posts. You can choose from 1 to 15 posts; the default is 10. The actual length of the resulting page and how long it might take to load depends on the content of the posts. Because this includes posts from any tumblogs you follow, the length of the page is therefore unpredictable.
- Enable High-Res Photos—(Default: Set, which means yes.) If you clear this check box, Tumblr displays a lower-resolution preview photo; if you leave it enabled, the full high-resolution photo displays in your tumblog. Uncompressed photos can easily be several megabytes in size and overfill the screen, so be careful.
- Open Links in New Window—(Default: Cleared, which means links are open in the same window, replacing your tumblog.) If you want to make all links open in a new window and keep your tumblog onscreen, select this check box. However, this might annoy users who are sophisticated enough to open a link into a new tab or a new window on their own when they want to.
- Truncate RSS Feed—(Default: Cleared, which means no truncation.) There's an old debate about whether RSS feeds should "give away the store" by including everything or "tease" by only offering parts of a post. There's not much sense in truncating feeds for most tumblogs.
- Use Descriptive URLs—(Set: Cleared, which means descriptive URLs are used.) With this option set, Tumblr adds a version of your post title to its URL, which makes the URL far more understandable to people. With this option cleared, the description is not added, which makes the URL shorter.
- Promote Tumblr!—(Default: Set, which means promotion is on.) With this option checked, a Follow button for your blog is shown even to non-Tumblr users. If they click it, visitors are invited to join Tumblr.
Setting Control-Related Advanced Options
The remaining advanced Tumblr settings relate to controlling how your blog works with other blogs and within Tumblr and the Web. These settings include the following:
- Allow Search Engines to Index Your Tumblog—(Default: Checked, which means yes.) If you want people to easily find your tumblog through search engines, leave this option selected; otherwise, clear it. (If you're looking for work, remember that hiring managers routinely "Google" the names of applicants—that is, look them up on search engines, in Facebook, and so on. So you may want to leave uncheck the box.)
- Promote Me on Tumblr—(Default: Checked, which means yes.) If you want Tumblr to potentially highlight your page in its directory or elsewhere, leave this option selected. Many Tumblr users try hard to get this kind of attention.
Not Safe for Work (NSFW)—(Default: Unchecked, which means no.) This check box serves as a warning that your tumblog might contain "adult" or risqué content. All it does is exclude your blog from Tumblr's directory and other collections; users don't have access to any setting to exclude NSFW content from their Tumblr viewing.
Set NSFW if you intend to include or reblog risqué content in your tumblog. This setting is not foolproof, even within its limited scope, because content from people you follow might be risqué even if you hadn't intended to include such content in your own tumblog.
- Location—(Default: empty.) Enter as much location information as you care to. If you're worried about identity theft or other problems, a full address might be too much information to provide. A town or city name is probably safe, and a U.S. five-digit ZIP code might be fine as well.