C'mon Tumblr, get it together!
C'mon Tumblr, get it together!
I'm rooting for you Tumblr, but seriously. 😬
No Comic This Week?
No, I’m still working on it. But I do have good news!
Comics from the Kitchen has been funded! There is still six hours to go, but by the time most of you see this, it will have been wrapped up for a few hours.
I’ve been trouble shooting a store for my website all week. I purchased 10 copies of the book, but I might end up with a few extra copies as well. It’ll be over a year before I can get out to a comic convention or comic festival, so an online store might do the trick.
I also sent my two most recent comic strips to a printer to see how they look as glossy 11” x 17” posters. I image I’ll have to do some formatting to make them look the way I want them to look, but I might be offering prints on my site as well. Within a week I’ll know if it’s worth it or not.
Anything else?
Yeah, my work space is getting a little crowded.
I picked up my old drawing table on the weekend, and my old podcasting gear was returned to me, as the new owner doesn’t have the space for it in his apartment.
Also, tucked behind the drawing table you’ll see a jogging stroller, which arrived on Tuesday. That was much easier to assemble than the one I got when my daughter was born.
We really need to think about buying a house soon. We have way too much stuff, and this is after downsizing. 😬
Tumblr, what is going on?
The other day I had the bright idea that I was going to move my personal blog back to Tumblr. I move markliebrecht.com around. I like to use it to test out new web-services, newsletters, Wordpress themes, etc.
I wanted to start messing around with advertising, just to see how much $10 here and there will actually get me. For fun, I ‘Blazed’ a post on my Tumblr blog. The results weren’t spectacular, but I did get a couple of new followers out of the deal. Halfway through the campaign, I tried to move my domain back to Tumblr, but the button was missing. “That’s odd,” I thought, so I reached out to tech support. They were very unapologetic in their reply; it appears they phased out the option to use a domain you actually own. If you want to use a domain on their site now, you need to buy it through Tumblr.
This irked me, because they said they are thinking about opening it up to transfers in the future, but didn’t explain why they made this change. It seems they don’t advertise these changes, you’re expected to follow one of their three Tumblr blogs that mention these changes. I started investigating things a little further, and found out they had a digital town hall meeting the other day, where the CEO of Automattic admitted that Tumblr is very much in the red. This explains why they’re doing everything in their power to make as much money as possible. Lots of digital goods for sale, like profile badges, ad free subscriptions, domain names, etc.
This is when I looked at my blog for the first time in ages, and noticed most of the pictures weren’t loading. Again, I talked to tech support, and they told me:
This is likely due to the theme you’re using, which is not handling Neue Post Format (NPF) posts very well.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to provide technical support for HTML/CSS customizations to make the necessary tweaks, but if you continue to have trouble with your theme, try installing a different theme from tumblr.com/themes, like Tumblr Official.
This wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. Especially since I spent $50 on that theme. I emailed the theme developer, but I haven’t heard back. I probably never will. I reached out to them a year ago and have yet to hear back from them, so I’ll be shocked if they get back to me on this.
In the event they don’t fix their themes, the support agent told me this:
As a side note, we’re also doing work on our end to make sure that NPF posts display correctly regardless of your theme. I don’t have an ETA for a fix to address this, but we provide bi-weekly updates on issues and updated features on our Changes blog.
I have been using Tumblr for the better part of the last 15 years. I joined when they first started. I’m one of the few people that stuck around after they banned all the NSFW content from their servers. I want Tumblr to do well. I want them to succeed while Twitter flounders. I want them to get out of the red.
They have given me 15 years of stupid entertainment, so I’m doubling down on Tumblr. I purchased a domain name and a badge from them. You can find me on Tumblr at
https://fictionist.blog
where I will be offering commissions and paid content. I may even “blaze” a couple more posts, just to do my part to help them out.
That being said, I’m giving them one year to get their shit together, fix the NPF format. If they continue to make changes without emailing the users who don’t check the site daily, or make more changes that break the existing themes, I’ll delete everything and start putting my money towards the sites that actually communicate with their users.
You Done?
Yeah, I think so. That’s my rant for the day.
That’s all?
Yeah, that’s all for this week. If my watercolour experiment works out, I’ll have comic for next week. I was originally going to skip this week’s newsletter, because I want to try posting at different times, because Friday’s don’t seem to get much for engagement, and I totally understand why. I find myself ignoring most newsletters until midweek, when I’m really bored. This week, I’m posting on a Thursday night. Next week’s will be on Wednesday morning. It’ll be interesting to compare the stats over the previous three weeks.
With that, I hope you all have a great weekend. I’ll write to you again on Wednesday.