In this post, I talked about working on a new Tumblr theme. That theme is actually Arica, and I’ve just finished it as I discussed in this post. You can buy the Arica premium Tumblr theme on Gumroad using this link: https://gumroad.com/l/arica-theme.
Before Arica, I was working on Rei Asa. You can learn more about this theme on this post. It’s also available for sale on Gumroad. You can use this link to buy it: https://gumroad.com/l/reiasa.
You can also check out my themes blog as well as my themes page to see a complete list of all the themes I’ve made so far.
Anyway, now that I’ve finished Rei Asa and Arica, I have now started working on another Tumblr theme. This one is similar to the Rustelia Tumblr theme in that it also comes with a fixed sidebar. This new theme’s sidebar is located on the right side as you can see on the pic below.
The fixed sidebar comes with its own vertical scrollbar, which is separate from the scrollbar for the header and posts part of the blog (the first column).
Since this theme is responsive and mobile-friendly, just like all the themes I make, the sidebar is only visible on large screens and devices. On smaller screens and devices, the contents of the sidebar will automatically stack and show up below the header and the posts.
This also means that you won’t ever be seeing a horizontal scrollbar on your blog. All the contents of your blog will always be visible on any screen size or device without the need for side-scrolling.
On smaller screens and devices, a circular downward arrow will show up after the header tagline text. You can see this on the second pic above. If you click on this icon, you will automatically be scrolled down to the sidebar part of your blog.
Here are some more of this new theme’s many features and customization options:
Highlighted Posts
Just like Arica and Rei Asa, this theme supports Tumblr’s new Highlighted Posts feature. If you choose to show this, images from your latest Photo, Photoset, and Panorama posts will be displayed on the sidebar. These images will contain a link to the post where they came from.
On the demo blog for this theme, the heading for this feature is “Recent Photos”, but you can change this to any text you like.
Note that even if you choose to show this feature, it will not appear on your blog unless you have at least 6 Photo, Photoset, or Panorama posts (this is decided by Tumblr; the feature will automatically show up (if you turn or toggle it on) as long as the requirement of 6 pics have been met).
Sidebar Slider
The new theme is similar to the Fiorella Tumblr theme in that it also comes with a carousel, slider, or slideshow. This feature shows up on the sidebar right before the Highlighted Posts feature.
With this feature, you can:
Add up to 10 slides
Add titles to each of these slides
Add text content to each of these slides
Add links to any site you want
Share your arts and works and anything else you want
You can choose whether or not the slider should autoplay. The slider comes with navigation icons (left and right arrow carets), and you can choose whether these icons should be visible all the time or whether they should only show up when you hover your mouse over the slider.
While you can use these navigation icons to look through the slider, you can also use your mouse, or, if you’re on mobile or on a touchscreen device, your fingers, to navigate between the slides.
Sidebar Navbar
This theme’s sidebar has a navbar.
This navbar contains the following links and info:
Menu links - the burger menu bars icon. Click this to open a dropdown box or container with the Ask, Submit, RSS, Archive, and Random links.
Pages links - the vertical ellipsis icon. Click this to open a dropdown box or container containing links to the pages you’ve made and added to your blog. Check out this tutorial to learn how to create and add pages to your blog.
Social media follow icons - the share icon. Click this to open a dropdown box or container which shows links to your profiles on social media websites like Twitter, Pinterest, Medium, deviantArt, Patreon, and more.
If you hover your mouse on each one of these icons, you will see a tooltip with the words, “Follow me on [site name]”.
Note that you can choose which of these icons to display on your blog, so you don’t have to show all of them if you don’t want to, or if there are sites you don’t plan on joining.
Blog group members - the multiple users or people icon. Click this to open a dropdown box or container, which shows the avatars of the members of your blog.
Their avatars will contain a link to their Tumblr blog. If you hover your mouse over each of the avatars, you will see a tooltip with the blog member’s username as well as the title of their blog.
Stuff I like - the heart icon. Click this to open a dropdown box or container, which shows a list of the things you like on Tumblr along with a link to your Tumblr likes page.
People I follow - the person with plus icon. Click this to open a dropdown box or container, which shows a list of the blogs or people you’re following on Tumblr.
Note that the likes and follows features are only available on main Tumblr blogs, and only if you have the following settings turned on:
Search - the magnifying glass icon. Click this to open the search bar or box. This bar will temporarily hide the rest of the contents of the navbar.
Type what you’re looking for on the provided textbox then press the enter key on your keyboard. You will then be taken to the search results page. Click the x icon to the right of the textbox to return to the sidebar navbar.
Speaking of the search results page, if whatever you were looking for can’t be found on your blog, you will be taken to the no search results page:
This new theme gives you the option to customize the no search results page to your liking. For instance, you could add links to your tags page or let your readers know they can contact you if they need some help.
Here’s an example from my themes blog:
Cookie Consent Notice
This theme’s cookie consent notice feature comes in 3 different styles and 2 different positions. You can use this to let your readers know your blog uses cookies, or let them know about a contest or any other news or announcements you may have.
The available positions are Float Bottom Left and Float Bottom Right. On this theme’s demo blog, the cookie consent notice shows up on the bottom right side in a Classic style.
The styles look like this:
Classic
Block
Edgeless
You can customize the colors and fonts of this feature.
Related Posts
This theme also supports Tumblr’s new Related Posts feature. This shows up on post permalink pages after the comments section (if you choose to have a comments section on your blog).
As you can see in the above pic, the Related Posts feature shows up in its own container or box with its own vertical scrollbar.
Once you scroll through the end of the available related posts, you will see a button with the words, “Show more”. Clicking this will take you to the homepage of your blog.
The Related Posts feature shows the minimal versions of the Spotify and SoundCloud music players for Audio posts. Photoset posts will be displayed in slideshow, slider, or carousel format. This is similar to the one for the sidebar, only this one is specifically for photosets, and it will only show up on the Related Posts feature.
Tumblr Posts
This theme supports all of Tumblr’s post types. Below, you can see some examples of the appearance and layout of these post types:
Audio posts
SoundCloud
Spotify
Tumblr’s buil-in native audio player
As you can see from the above pics, this theme will include the track info of all audio posts if they are available. This includes:
Track name
Artist
Album
Play count
Photoset Post
You can position your photoset pics in any way that you want. But, on your blog, these images will be displayed in a single column, one image per row. You can add captions to these pics, and they will show up below the photo.
If it's available and it's what you want, you can also choose to display the exif data of each image. This includes:
Camera
Aperture
Exposure
Focal Length
ISO
Photo Posts and Panorama Posts also come with the exif data feature.
You can also add links to Photo Post pics.
Lightbox for Images
If you click on a Photo Post image, a lightbox will open. This will show a larger version of the picture in the middle of the screen. The post’s caption will also show up at the bottom of the screen.
If the caption is too long, it will automatically be truncated, and you will see an ellipsis at the end of the excerpt. To close the lightbox, just click on the x icon, or the left or right portions of the screen.
Photoset Posts have the same lightbox as the Photo Post. But, with Photoset Posts, you will also see left and right caret arrow icons on either side of the picture. You can then click on these icons or use your mouse, or, if you’re on a touchscreen device, your fingers, to navigate between the slides.
Panorama Posts have their own lightbox. Click on a Panorama Post pic to open Tumblr’s built-in native lightbox for panoramas. This will show a larger version of the image along with a smaller version. You can then scroll through the image to get a closer look at it.
Quote Post
The quotes on this theme come with an optional border as you can see in the pic below. You can change the fonts and colors of the quote. The first line of the source will also show up in a different style from the rest of the text content of the quote post.
Text Post
Want to add titles to text posts you reblog? Before, this used to be possible. But, after Tumblr made some changes, it’s no longer possible to add titles to reblogged text posts. When you reblog a text post, the title box is not displayed.
But with this theme, you can easily and quickly add titles to text posts and reblogged text posts with no titles just by using a tag.
Video Post
The vids on this theme are responsive. They span the width of the post box or container regardless of the screen size while maintaining the aspect ratio. The video formats and players supported include:
YouTube embeds
Tumblr’s built-in native video player
Other features and options of this theme includes:
Center photos: pics added to the body of a post will automatically be centered
All your pics will be high-res (high resolution). Tumblr will automatically resize your pics to 500px (pixels), but, with this theme, the size of your pics will be 1280px. Even the size of pics you reblog will be 1280px. Note that this will be the case for all pics unless they are really small in which case they will not be resized so as to avoid having them look pixelated and stretched
Caption titles: automatically turn the first line of your non-text posts into titles. You can see this in some of the pics above. This feature is available for Video, Photo, Photoset, Panorama, etc posts
Header, Sidebar, Post, and Footer widgets: you can put anything you want on these widgets including ads, text, images, and javascript
Tumblr fonts and Google fonts: choose from hundreds of different fonts; change the font size, font color, and font family of your blog title, your blog posts, your blog’s header, your blog’s footer, and more
Back to top button: easily and quickly go back to the top of your blog with the simple click of a button
Lazyload images: images will be loaded only when they are needed and not all at once, which will help make your blog load faster
Author meta tag: will allow you to identify yourself as the author or owner of your blog
Social sharing buttons: easily and quickly share posts with the like, reblog, and social sharing buttons
Disqus comments feature: talk to your readers; let them share their opinions with you; discuss your posts with the visitors of your blog; add any text you want (like your blog’s comment guidelines) before the comments section
Twitter cards feature: share your posts on Twitter and have them displayed in a layout (complete with thumbnail and excerpt) that encourages people to check out your blog and read your writing or look at your art and other works
Google Analytics: learn more about the visitors and readers of your blog; analyze your blog’s traffics and stats
Compatible with Tumblr’s HTTPS Security feature: make your blog more secure without messing up its appearance and layout. Your blog’s URL address will start with “https” instead of just “http”
Background image or color: you can choose to add a background image or color to your blog. If you choose the background image option, you can adjust the opacity of the pic if you think it’s too dark and the text on your blog is hard to read
JavaScript code prettifier: this theme also supports code syntax highlighting. This allows you to share codes or samples of code in a way that your readers can easily read
GIF Attribution: GIFs you add using Tumblr’s GIF search will include attribution. The username of the person who originally posted the pic as well as a link to their blog will show up below the image. You can change the background color of the attribution box
And more
The theme has a whole lot more features and customization options, but this is all for now. I hope to be able to finish this theme soon. What do you think about it so far?
You can share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, by reblogging this post and adding some text to your reblog, or by sending me an ask or message here.
Pics are screenshots from the new Tumblr theme I’m currently working on
Since I've been getting some followers whose intentions I am not entirely sure about, let's make this very, very, very clear:
I am an Israeli Zionist Leftist Jewish woman.
If you have a problem with any or all of these words, block me now and spare me the effort of blocking you. I check every single one of my new followers, and I block liberally if I feel you might be hostile. All hate messages are deleted on sight without reading.
Highlighted Posts - Serious Topics
Link for the fandom topics post.
For the sake of convenience, I've decided to make two massive posts concentrating all of my most important posts on various topics. These are my most popular posts, my favorite posts (i.e. not necessarily popular but they should be! Just kidding. Or not...) and my best comments on other people's posts that are valuable enough to be mentioned here (in my opinion obviously...).
The posts are separated into subjects, and each has a comment in brackets denoting what type of post it is: an analysis relating to real world issues, meta for fandom stuff, and jokes when it's, well, jokes, plus occasional ones that are self explanatory. Both subjects and Types might overlap. It seems like there might be a limit to the number of links per post, so I've divided them into two groups - serious topics posts and fandom posts.
Beside these posts, I have many others I made or commented on that were just not important enough to include here, as well as literally thousands of amazing and fascinating posts I've rebloged from others, but mentioning them all here is of course impossible. It should also be mentioned that often specific reblogs might have valuable notes on them on chains of reblogs, so keep that in mind.
Jewish/Israeli Things:
Mourning October 7th (analysis).
The... metamorphosis of our lives since October 7th (analysis).
Part 1: You fuckers say: “go back to where you came from”. The fuckers in those places say: “they’re not from here, don’t send them here”. Jews: =/ (analysis/joke).
Part 2: Denying the connection of Jews to the Land of Israel, but not letting us live anywhere else. It’s almost like… you don’t actually want us to live. Anywhere. At all. [AKA: the history of antisemitism on the left] (analysis).
Part 3: It's okay, the others hate us too [AKA: antisemitism on the right] (analysis).
Stop pandering to Western Leftists. They want us dead (analysis).
Western leftists might want me dead, but I don't want them dead. I'm angry but I'm not a fucking monster, you know (analysis).
My Roman Empire (the Roman Empire) (joke).
Blaming the Roman Empire, subversion and responsibility (analysis).
History and the Weaponization of Trauma in post-colonial narratives (analysis).
From sea to shiny sea, Abya Yala will be free (joke????/analysis).
Part 1: Israel is not a colonizer state, comparison to Liberia and the origin of the word “Palestina” (analysis).
Part 2: Jews and Palestinians are both indigenous to the southern Levant, and they're both fucking assholes (analysis).
Part 3: A day will come when we can recognizes that we’re all Arabs, but it is not this day. Also – the ridicules obsession with the foundation of Israel being in ’48 and the fact that new nations and cultures are always being created, even in recent history (yes, the Palestinians are one of those) (analysis).
The correct comparison is right there, you might want to use it (analysis).
IYCSTTKUFLFMTWBG (If You Could Stop Trying To Kill Us For Like Five Minutes, That Would Be Great) (joke?...)
Israel. Is. Not. A. Fucking. Colonizer. State. Guess who is though??!?!?!?! (joke/analysis).
The youth are very much not alright, and their education is not the problem (analysis).
The trauma of Oct. 7th and the fact that I no longer trust any of you fuckers (analysis).
Existing as a Jew on this platform is fucking hell (analysis).
... and very lonely as well (analysis).
Archaeological terminology and academia’s allergy to “Israel” (analysis).
No, Jesus wasn’t a Palestinian. Just say you hate Jews for fuck’s sake! (analysis).
אבל מה אם ישו כן היה חי היום...? (בדיחה)
Israel didn't exist in Biblical times??? Are you on fucking crack?! (analysis).
Ahhh, yes. Palestine. The historic home of every nation in the world (except Jews). Sure. Also, apparently they're appropriating the fucking Natufians now. (analysis).
Jews aren’t white 1 (analysis).
Jews aren’t white 2 (analysis).
Jewish IS an ethnicity, for fucking fuck fuck fucker's sake (analysis).
THAT'S NOT WHAT ETHNICITY MEANS (analysis).
Antisemitism and Hollywood (The Nanny, The Golden Girls, Seinfeld and Friends) (analysis).
Jewish people's physical appearance and antisemitism (analysis).
Calling it antisemitism isn't working anymore, just call it what it is - racism (analysis).
אנחנו חייבים לדבר על חוסר היעילות של הפגנות (ניתוח).
להיות ישראלים בחו"ל (בדיחה).
כי משקפיים זה מוצר צריכה בסיסי (בדיחה).
History and Social Issues:
King Menashe of Judea is awesome actually (analysis).
Native American cities and ethnocentrism (analysis).
Ancient Egyptians were (not) black (analysis).
The erasure of Hatshepsut isn’t what you think (analysis).
No, Hatshepsut didn’t wear a fake beard (analysis).
No, the Santorini volcano did not cause the Egyptian plagues (cause there were no plagues!) (analysis).
Elizabeth II, Rameses II and longevity of reign (joke).
The reality of the field of archaeology is a little more nuanced than calling them “grave robbers” (analysis).
No, Europe isn’t keeping historical artifacts “safe” in museums from the barbarians who can’t take care of them (analysis).
The danger of the “erasing queerness from history” tumblr narrative (analysis / didn’t contribute to this one, but it's important for other purposes and for easy access).
The danger of the “erasing queerness from history” tumblr narrative continues, Egyptian tombs electric boogaloo (analysis).
Cultural appropriation is rarely what you think it is (analysis).
You’re calling it “cultural appropriation”, but you’re just advocating for segregation (analysis).
Bend it like Beckham and the internet’s inability to understand the complexity of history and ethnicity (analysis).
Western Leftists be like: “well maybe you should have been born in a more MORAL country, like mine =)” (analysis).
The problem with “educate yourself” mentality (analysis).
Influencers and “educate yourself” bullshit (analysis).
Shutting up about social issues you know nothing about is an option, you should try it (analysis).
Real people aren’t representation (analysis).
Not everyone knows their sexual/gender identity, and that’s just as important to represent in media (analysis).
The concept of consent and haunted houses (analysis/joke).
If your multi-dating, talk to your fucking partners (analysis).
Male birth control (analysis).
Covid and being on the same boat (joke/analysis).
A Covid joke because I’m hilarious and underappreciated (joke).
Professionals criticizing their profession's image in cinema (joke).
The trolley Problem is not about fault! (joke/analysis).
And now it's a murder trolley (analysis).
Police and “bad apples” (joke/analysis).
No, you don’t have a right over other people’s labor and creations (analysis).
Dupes are fucking evil and so are you (joke/analysis).
No, buying directly from the Chinese manufacturer of the brand isn't good either (analysis).
Luxury brands, chain of supply and craftsmanship (analysis).
Stop insulting YA books (analysis).
Online bookish community's obsession with finding problems in the online bookish community (analysis).
Social media cyclical criticism of authors (joke/analysis).
Special editions are for fighting Amazon actually (analysis/joke).
Stop saying "Amazon is losing money on Kindle books". You're playing into their hands (analysis).
Bezos, the man who has everything except a heart (joke).
There’s nothing wrong with nepotism, you guys just don’t understand how professions work (analysis).
I need you to tell me that you know when an influencer is trying to sell you a product (analysis).
In this post, I talked about working on a new Tumblr theme. That theme is actually Rei Asa, and I’ve just finished it as I discussed in this post. You can buy the Rei Asa premium Tumblr theme here: https://gumroad.com/l/reiasa.
Anyway, now that I’ve finished Rei Asa, I have now started working on another Tumblr theme. This one has a fixed navbar, which means it will stay in the same position even when you scroll down your blog.
The navbar contains the following:
Search icon - when you click it, the dropdown search box will show up
Burger menu icon - clicking this will open the modal menu
Vertical ellipsis icon - clicking this will open the menu links (Ask, Submit, RSS, Archive, and Random) dropdown box
Paper icon - clicking this will open the pages (pages you add to your blog; for example: tags page or about page) menu
Custom Link - this can be any text you want, and you can add any link to this text; for example, you can use this to link to your Patreon page or your online store
When you hover your mouse over the navbar icons and the Custom Link text, tooltips will show up.
The modal menu contains a lot of things including:
The description of your blog
Your blog’s avatar - if you hover your mouse over this pic, it will spin or rotate; you can choose to display your photo as a circle or as a square
The featured tags list - you can add up to 5 featured tags, and you can even include descriptions with these tags
Social media follow icons - if you hover your mouse over these icons, you will see a tooltip with the text “Follow me on name of site”
The Tumblr blogs you’re following
The stuff you like on Tumblr
And more
The theme also has a Header Slider (the very first pic above shows you what this looks like). With this, you can:
Add up to 10 slides
Add titles to each of these slides. The titles will show up when you hover your mouse over the camera icon located in the middle of each pic
Add links to any site you want
Share your arts and works and anything else you want
You can choose whether or not the slider should autoplay. The slider comes with navigation icons (left and right arrow carets), and you can choose whether these icons should be visible all the time or whether they should only show up when you hover your mouse over the slider.
While you can use these navigation icons to look through the slider, you can also use your mouse, or, if you’re on mobile or on a touchscreen device, your fingers, to navigate between the slides.
This theme also supports Tumblr’s new Related Posts feature. This shows up on post permalink pages.
The Related Posts feature shows the minimal versions of the Spotify and SoundCloud players for Audio posts. Photoset posts will be displayed in slideshow format.
Photo, Photoset, and Panorama posts will display exif data, but you can turn off this feature if you don’t want to display exif data.
Audio posts will display the audio track info, if available. This includes:
Track name
Artist
Album
Play count
Apart from Spotify and SoundCloud, the theme also supports Tumblr’s built-in native audio player.
This theme also supports Tumblr’s new Highlighted Posts feature. If you choose to show this, images from your latest Photo, Photoset, and Panorama posts will be displayed in the modal menu. These images will contain links to the post where they came from.
On this theme, the Highlighted Posts feature will be displayed in slider format. It’s similar to the Header Slider, but only 6 images (the number is decided by Tumblr) will be shown by this feature.
Also, even if you choose to show this, it will not appear on your blog unless you have at least 6 Photo, Photoset, or Panorama posts (this is decided by Tumblr; the feature will automatically show up (if you turn or toggle it on) as long as the requirement of 6 pics have been met).
The theme has a whole lot more features and customization options, but this is all for now. I hope to be able to finish this theme soon. What do you think about it so far? You can share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, by reblogging this post and adding some text to your reblog, or by sending me an ask or message here.
You can also check out my finished themes here.
Pics are screenshots from the new Tumblr theme I’m currently working on
