#miyamiwu.article

[miyamiwu]

A Guide to Tagging on Tumblr: Types of Tags

This was meant to be part 3 of my Tumblr guide for Twitter refugees series, but I figured old Tumblr users could benefit from it as well. I’m also writing this for myself because even after years on this site, there’s still so much I could learn to tagging.

Types of Tags by Purpose

General (for global categorization)

Communal (for identifying with a community)

Considerate (for other users’ safety)

Descriptive (for describing how the post is formatted)

Promotional (i.e. tag tracking)

Systematic (for blog-level organization)

Fun (your little side comments)

Above are categories I’ve come up with after looking through the tags on my own post, and I think they should cover all the tags mainly used on Tumblr. If you think there should be another category up there, just share it in the notes.

Before I explain what each of those types are, here’s a heads-up that most of my examples would be tags used in fandom spaces. After all, this is a multi-fandom blog.

General

General tags are also what I would call Topic tags. They make your post easier for your target audience to find. Like, if you post something about a certain topic, then a #topic name would be appropriate.

Example: Posts about the anime Blue Lock would be tagged with #blue lock.

Topic names can even be abbreviated to make it faster to type. Mob Psycho 100 can be #mp100. Archive of our Own is usually tagged as just #ao3. Blue Lock can be just #bllk (the actual acronym should be #bl, but people are cowards asfhddgfzh).

General tags also include sub-topics.

Example: If you’re posting specifically about the Blue Lock manga and not the anime, then you may tag it with #blue lock manga.

Sub-topic tags can also work as Considerate tags. People may be interested in posts under the parent topic but would like to avoid the sub-topic. Don’t want to intentionally spoil people about a certain media? Tag it with #media title spoilers.

Example: #mp100 spoilers, #little mushroom spoilers, #blue lock spoilers

Extra example: If you post x reader fanfics for a certain media, then you may must tag it with #media title x reader.

[Don’t wanna sound like a tyrant on this blue site, but for the love of god please include a general tag for your x reader fics to make them easier to filter out. Some people (me) don’t want to read them at all, and it’s tiring to come up with all #character name x reader variations out there. I end up just automatically blocking those who don’t use general tags the moment I come across their fic.]

Examples of some non-fandom General tags:

#spilled ink

#writing

#art

#illustration

#science

#chemistry

Communal

These are tags used to identify yourself as part of a certain community here on Tumblr. Such tags are often suffixed by “blr.”

Examples:

#bookblr

#writeblr

#studyblr

#artblr

#birblr

There are no hard rules, but these -blr communities often contain specific kind of posts in the tag. For example, in #studyblr, you would find a lot of photos of aesthetic notes and people’s desks. If tagging with a -blr tag, check out the community first to see what kind of posts fit under the tag.

Examples of other communal tags:

#actually adhd

#artists on tumblr

#writers on tumblr

#photographers on tumblr

And here’s a list of the top Tumblr communities in 2022. You might wanna check it out.

Considerate

Considerate tags are the most important. Primarily, these tags contain the trigger/content warnings for your post. I’m not gonna include a list of all possible triggers on this post though coz that would be quite long. You can just look that up on your own.

From observation, warning tags affix a tw or cw to the base tag to differentiate them from neutral discussions of said tag.

Example: A post tagged with #depression may be an informational post containing tips on how to manage one’s depression. A post tagged with #tw depression or #tw: depression, however, may contain extremely depressing rants that could negatively affect others’ moods.

It’s different for posts that may be harmful to epileptic people, though. If your post contains flashing gifs and the like, tag it with #flashing and NOT #tw epilepsy or just #epilepsy. A more in-depth explanation as to why can be read here.

You may have also recently seen the #unreality tag in Goncharov posts. I just learned about this tag myself, so I cannot explain it well. Here’s an old post by @ whethervane though that explains it:

an unreality warning is a warning that something (media, discussion, etc.) will deal with themes of unreality and false reality—which can be very stressful and triggering for people who’ve gone through feelings of unreality or disassociation before.

Another kind of Considerate tag would be one used in fandom spaces, especially in big fandoms. These are what I would call anti tags, and they’re used to contain fandom discourse or prevent fandoms from becoming toxic spaces.

If you spout hate about a certain character, do not tag your post with #character name. Instead, prefix your tag with the word “anti.”

Example: If you hate Mu Qing from Tian Guan Ci Fu for whatever reason, tag your hate post with #anti mu qing.

Believe it or not, regardless of how hateful you think that guy is, some people in the fandom actually like him (me, for one) and would be upset at seeing your hate posts while browsing under the #mu qing tag.

Moreover, anti tags are not just for characters. They can also apply to ships you hate.

Examples: #anti mileven if you don’t like the Mike x Eleven ship from Stranger Things. #anti byler if you don’t like the Mike/Will ship.

I see a lot of people censoring anti tags (e.g. #anti mil*ven, #anti milkvan, etc.), but I think such tags would be easier to filter out if they’re just spelled completely.

Descriptive

Descriptive tags describe how the post is formatted. In a way, they also work as Considerate tags, as they allow people to filter out posts that may be too stressful/painful for them to read or look at.

Most common example would be #long post, which is used for posts that are, well, very long. I reckon such a tag became necessary because in the past, Tumblr didn’t have an option to truncate long posts on the dashboard. It was all up to the original poster if they’d be kind enough to cut their posts under a Read More/Keep Reading block. Scrolling past a long post was hell, especially for those on mobile. The color of the sky post was quite notorious for this.

Another example would be tags informing users on whether images in the post contain an alt text (aka image description/image ID): #image id, #image described

Or, if the images don’t have an ID: #undescribed, #no image id, #no id, #no id in alt text.

Other Descriptive tags:

#caps lock

#large text

#small text

#colored text

#eye strain

#bright colors

#flashing

#fast gif

#transcribed (for audio/video posts including a transcription)

#unmute (tells the viewer of a post to turn on the sound of a video)

Promotional

These are tags that are tracked by other blogs and often use the name of the blog that tracks them. By adding Promotional tags on your posts, you are guaranteed a reblog from the blog tracking the tag.

Examples:

@ bluelocksource tracks the #bluelocksource and #bluelockedit tags

@ anisource tracks #anisource

@ dailyanime tracks #dailyanime

Systematic

Tags are a great way to organize your blog. Since Tumblr is a reblogging site, people often use tags to differentiate their original posts from reblogs. Some would tag their originals with something like #my post or #mine. Another trend is to use #your-url.txt.

I tag original posts on this blog and across my side blogs as #lznk #miyamiwu.src. I chose it because it’s unique throughout Tumblr. Whenever I want to view my posts across all my blogs in one place, I just use the dashboard search. Nobody uses the tag aside me, so all posts that come up would be mine. Hopefully it stays that way…

And from your own originals, you can categorize it even further: #my art, #my edits, #my writing, #my cats, etc.

Of course, you can also categorize reblogs. Some people add #reblog or #rb. If you blog about a certain topic and would like to post/reblog something unrelated to that topic, you may add a #not topic tag. The popular @ one-time-i-dreamt blog uses the tag #not a dream.

Fun

I don’t really have to explain this, do I? Fun tags are basically your little side comments/footnotes. They are things you wanna say but don’t really want to be too out there.

I'm not gonna include examples of this, but I’d like to talk about the mentions of “prev” in Fun tags.

Prev stands for the user you reblogged a post from—the previous person, so to speak. Some people just prefer to speak to someone in the tags instead of saying it loudly in a reblog; hence, the need to say “prev.”

“Prev” is also used when one is copying a person’s tags [on the mobile app]. To give credit to the person who came up with the tags, you may add something like #<- prev’s tags (the arrow would be pointing to the copied tags).

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Aaaand that's all. Normally, I'd write a proper conclusion to a post like this, but writing this was exhausting, okay? Just take this and go~

[miyamiwu]

An Honest Guide to Tumblr for Twitter Refugees (Part 2)

Part 0: What the heck is Tumblr and is it right for me?

Part 1: Configuring settings + customizing your Tumblr

Covered in Part 2:

Posting basics (introducing the editor, different post types)

Best practices (stating trigger warnings, adding image IDs, indicating sources, etc)

Post controls (who can reblog and reply to your posts)

Note: Like Part 1, I suggest you follow this guide while on desktop Tumblr. This post also contains lots of images without ID. Such images though are basically just screenshots of what's already described in the post body.

Posting Basics

I was gonna talk about curating your dashboard first, but considering how Tumblr veterans would think you’re a bot and just block you if they see your blog is empty, I think it’s best if we cover posting first.

Tumblr Editor

Before everything else, let’s get to know the editor.

On your desktop dashboard, you get to pick from different post types: Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio, and Video.

It should be pretty self-explanatory what they do, but you know what? THESE DON’T MATTER.

I talked about this briefly in Part 1, so lemme just copy-paste it here:

Although Tumblr is still advocating its different posts types (text, image, audio, video, etc.), they’ve actually been rolling out changes to their editor where only a single post type is used (text) and you just add media to it. This is called NPF (Neue Post Format). On desktop, you can turn off the beta editor and thereby turn off NPF. However, on mobile web and on the app, posts can only be made in NPF.

To put it simply: There is no difference at all between the different post types. The only difference is that when you click on a post type (for example, photo), the first block* on your post will be related to that post type (e.g. a photo block).

* If you’ve used WordPress before, then this should be familiar. But if not, then here’s a quick explanation: A block is basically a component used to create a post (text block for text, image block for images, video block for videos, etc.)

More technical info about the block editor and how to use it can be found here.

So my point is, don’t sweat too much over the different post types.

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You can also write posts in HTML / Markdown!

If the default rich text editor is not enough for you, then get more power by using the HTML editor. It doesn't support all HTML elements, but at least you can do fancy stuff like adding some gradient text:

gradients are cool

To switch editors, click on the gear icon at the top of the editor, and in the Text Editor dropdown, choose between Rich Text, HTML, or Markdown. If you’re curious about Markdown, learn more about it here.

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Some neat stuff you have to know about posting on Tumblr:

A. YOU CAN EDIT POSTS!!!

We’ve had an edit button here for years, and best of all, it’s free! However, for posts of yours that have been reblogged, even if you do edit the original post, the edits won’t be reflected on the reblogged version. More about reblogging in Part 4 of this guide.

B. You can post loooong articles here

Like Twitter, Tumblr also has a character limit for text. However, this limit is on a per-paragraph basis and not for your entire post. And it’s such a generous limit that I’ve never once hit it. I don’t even have to keep tabs on how many characters I’ve made. You can find a list of all the limits you have to keep in mind when using the NPF/beta editor at the bottom of this article.

C. You can save drafts and schedule posts

If you can’t finish that post right now, no worries. Just save it to your drafts first and finish it later. Or, if you’ve prepared a cool post for New Year even though it’s still November, just schedule that post to publish on a New Year. More about queue/scheduling in Part 4 of this guide.

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Best Practices

I don’t think I need to do a step-by-step on how to use the editor because it’s pretty intuitive, so let’s talk about best practices when it comes to posting.

On stating trigger/content Warnings

In Twitter, you do this:

// tw: r*pe, g*re, m*utilation . . . . [actual triggering content]

Please don’t do this.

First of all, here on Tumblr, we do not censor out those “problematic” words. You have to spell them out so that people who have such words filtered in their settings will actually not see them. Getting content filters to work will be a pain if people have to keep in mind all variations of rape (r*ape, r@pe, r4pe, etc).

Second, those multiple dots don’t do anything. Instead, utilize the “Read More” block. This block will hide everything that comes after it under a “Keep Reading” link.

On desktop, you click on this icon that has a zigzag sandwiched between two horizontal lines:

On mobile, you do it by typing :readmore: and then hitting Enter.

(I’ll talk more about triggers/content warnings in Part 3, which will cover Tags)

Just spell everything out actually, not just trigger words

Instead of oomfs or moots, say mutals. Instead of unalive, say murder. No need to shorten or tone anything down here.

Add image ID’s

Image ID’s are basically descriptions of an image. This is important for people using screen readers. I’m guilty for not always following this, but just trust me on this.

On desktop, you hover over the image, click on the three dots that appear, and then click “Update image description.” Keep the description in simple words and state exactly what the image contains. I’m doing it for this particular image below:

On dashboard and on some themes, the image ID will be shown when you click on the ALT button that appears when you hover over the image.

Sometimes, when OP forgets to put an ID, someone will reblog the post and add the ID themselves. If you see someone doing this on one of your posts, then please be an angel and add that ID to the original post. Image descriptions will be more useful/have more impact if they’re actually part of the original post.

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Link back to source

If you’re sharing someone else’s content from another site, please indicate the source. You can do this by adding a link to the source from within the post body itself, or by using Tumblr’s content source feature in the editor:

Click on the little gear above the editor, and in the “Content source” field, paste your link.

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Do not repost other people’s gifs/edits

Sometimes you see a cool gif here on Tumblr that you want to use on your own post. People are generally fine with that, but you have to do it the right way.

DO NOT DO THIS: Downloading the gif and then uploading it to your own post.

Instead, DO THIS: Use Tumblr’s GIF block and search for a gif from there. Doing it this way would link back to the OP and even notify them in their Activity.

Here’s an example of how it looks:

The gif above is from my side blog, and below the image, it says “GIF by fyeahbachisagi.”

Post Controls

If you don’t want a certain post of yours to get around too much, you can disable reblogs on it. Click the gear icon at the top of the editor, and in the “Who can Reblog?” dropdown, choose from Anyone or No One.

Limits on Replies, however, is on a per-blog setting and not per post. Go to tumblr.com/settings/blog/username, and scroll all the way down until you see the setting for Replies.

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Okay, that’s all for Part 2! Next up, in Part 3, I will talk about utilizing tags

Update: Part 3 is up! Well, kinda... Not exactly a guide catered to Twitter refugees, but still a guide to tagging:

A Guide to Tagging on Tumblr: Types of Tags

[miyamiwu]

An Honest Guide to Tumblr for Twitter Refugees (Part 0)

So I had posted Part 1 first, covering basic technical aspects like configuring your Tumblr settings and customizing your Tumblr. And while I was writing my draft for Part 2, I realized that all these “How to use Tumblr” guides are pretty much useless if you don’t even know what the heck Tumblr is and why you should even use it… Thus, I’m just gonna go ahead and talk about that first.

So, what the heck is Tumblr?

I’ve mentioned this in Part 1: Tumblr is a blogging platform. The name “tumblr” comes from the word “tumblelog.” But this definition is just putting things simply.

I’d like to define Tumblr as your own personal corner in the internet. What it really is depends on how you use it. This blog where I’m posting this guide is a blog I use for the multiple fandoms I’m in. Here, I talk about the latest anime episodes, reblog gifs, and sometimes post theories and analyses. My dashboard, then, is full of users who are in the same fandoms as me, and the posts I see most often are those about anime and manga.

Fandom is just one Tumblr use-case. You can customize your Tumblr experience to however you want it to be.

If you’re a writer, you can join the writeblr community and post about your WIPs. You can also follow other writers and talk about their WIPs.

If you’re an artist, you can check out the #artists on tumblr tag and see what other artists are making.

If you’re a developer, you can try making your own Tumblr themes and even join coding challenges.

If you like science stuff, check out the #science side of tumblr.

And if you want to wax poetic about your latest hyperfixation, you can start an fyeah blog. You can go as wild as you want, and people won’t cringe and call you weird for it.

Great! So now I can start posting and joining the x/y/z communities on Tumblr, right?

Not yet. I mean, you can, of course; there’s no hard rule for it. But I advise against jumping right into things.

Someone posted about this before, but I couldn't find that post anymore, so I'll just say it again: Before starting anything here on Tumblr, it's best you spend a few days just lurking around.

Don't make an intro post, don't rush to advertise your blog, and don't start begging for followers yet (the number of followers don’t even matter here). Just lurk. Observe. See how the veteran Tumblr users are doing things and learn from them.

This has been said many times before, but please leave your Twitter habits out the door. Tumblr culture and etiquette is not something you can learn overnight, so it’s wise to just watch first.

Familiarize yourself with the Tumblr terminology. Like, what does “meta” mean? What are ask/tag games? What does it mean when a user says they’re “tracking tags”? There are many other terms, and although it’s not necessary to learn them, you’ll enjoy Tumblr more if you know what they are.

Oh, by the way, it’s called reblog, not retweet. God forbid you call them retweets. And no, adding content to a reblog is not the same as quote tweeting. (I’ll talk more about this in Part 2 or 3 of this guide.)

Why should I listen to you? I’m gonna treat this place like Twitter, fuck you

You don’t have to listen to me at all. But I’m telling you, if you treat this place like Twitter, you’re just inviting hate and ridicule upon yourself. As much as Tumblr users like to call this place hellsite and complain about how it’s always broken, we are oddly very defensive of it. We do not want it to become a Twitter 2.0.

Is Tumblr right for me?

As long as you’re not a brand always trying to sell us stuff or a celebrity only using the platform to promote their show/album/movie, then yes, you are welcome here.

To enjoy Tumblr, you have to treat it like a place where you just hang out and have fun and not just another platform to get sales or followers or to chase clout. That just doesn’t work here. There’s a reason why @/neil-gaiman is Tumblr’s most beloved celebrity, and that’s because he understands this.

[miyamiwu]

An Honest Guide to Tumblr for Twitter Refugees (Part 1)

I know there are already tons of guides out there, but my WiFi was down the whole day and I got nothing else to do. Spent the entire morning making gifs, but still no WiFi, and I’m like, fck this let’s make a Tumblr guide.

Now, assuming you’ve already signed up and was able to snatch a fancy url*, here’s what you should do next: Log into Tumblr on desktop. You probably made your account through the app, and that’s cool and all, but for this guide, I’ll be showing some features that are currently only available on desktop Tumblr, so go ahead and get your laptop or PC out. Following this guide will also be easier on desktop.

*url = basically your username/handle on this site. We call them url’s because it what makes your domain name on your blog. More on this later.

Covered in Part 1:

Configuring your Tumblr Settings (filters, community labels, algorithms, etc.)

Customizing your Tumblr (how to avoid being mistaken as a bot**, enabling your Tumblr website, finding a Tumblr theme)

**this wasn’t included when I first made this post but decided to add it coz it’s really important.

Configuring your Tumblr Settings

Filters and Community Labels

Go to tumblr.com/settings/account. Here, you’ll find one of Tumblr’s most important features: filters and community labels. Filters are similar to Twitter’s “mute words” feature, and they come in two types: Tag and Content filters

Unlike Twitter, where tags are part of the post itself, Tumblr has a dedicated section at the bottom of the post to add tags.

Tag filters block out posts that are specifically tagged with #tag, while Content filters block posts containing a certain word within the body of the post itself. Once you have these set, you will never see such posts when using the search feature on Tumblr. It will still show up on your dashboard though, but it will look this and comes with the option to view the post for whenever you’re curious:

As for Community Labels, this should be self-explanatory. Mature content is now allowed on Tumblr, but if you don’t want to see such content, you can always opt-out.

Go wild in using these two features. Tumblr is the only major social media left that still allows you to liberally curate your feed. The peeps here on Tumblr mainly still abide by the “don’t like, don’t interact” rule from the old days. Calling out or cancelling a user for what they’re posting will get you nowhere. That’s just not how it works here. If you don’t like something, just block it.

Turning Off Algorithms

Contrary to popular narrative, Tumblr actually has algorithms. But unlike social media sites, they are contained in a tab of its own (i.e. the “For You” tab in Dashboard) and can be even turned off from showing up from within the feed you manually curated (the “Following” tab under Dashboard).

To turn off the algorithms, go to tumblr.com/settings/dashboard and scroll down to the Preferences section. And if you’re a privacy stickler like me, you can go further by going to tumblr.com/settings/privacy to turn off Improved Search.

Tumblr Labs

Tumblr Labs are experimental features. They’re not required, but if you want to make the most out of Tumblr, you might want to turn on some of them. I like to turn on the different Dashboard tabs so I can keep up with what’s going on in Tumblr.

Customizing your Tumblr

Now here comes the fun stuff and what really sets Tumblr apart from all other major social media sites: Personalization. In Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc, all user pages look the same. But in Tumblr, you can customize it as much as you want.

Before I start though, I’d like to throw in some stuff that you have to understand first:

Tumblr’s Two “Profile Pages”

Each Tumblr user technically has two “profile pages.” The first one is found at tumblr.com/username, and is basically not that much different from the profile pages of Twitter/Instagram/Facebook. You can customize its colors, icon, and header, but that’s pretty much it.

Edit: I forgot to include this very important bit when I first posted— How to avoid being mistaken as a bot Do not settle for Tumblr’s default icon and header. Tumblr has a long-standing bot problem. An uncustomized profile will make people think you’re a bot and will block you immediately. And when choosing an icon, you might have to think twice when using a selfie that does not include your face (i.e. an upper body picture starting from the neck/chest). Porn bots often use such pictures to make people think they’re real users. Numbers at the end of a url (like username123) are often indications of a bot account, so you might want to avoid that too.

Moving on… The second profile page is where the magic happens, and its found at username.tumblr.com. However, it’s not turned on by default.

Remember what I said earlier about Tumblr usernames being generally called as url’s? That’s because of our “second profile page” here (I hate calling it second though because it’s what came first, but since it’s not a default option now, “second” it is). Tumblr is a blogging platform. Like WordPress and Blogger, but a fun version of it. Your username.tumblr.com page is basically your own custom website.

Enabling your Tumblr Website

From hereon, I’m gonna refer to the “second profile page” as just site because, well, that’s what it really is.

To enable your custom site, go to tumblr.com/settings/blog/username. Toggle on the custom theme option. [If you’re a professional, you can even use a custom domain if you want your site url to look like your-site.com instead of your-site.tumblr.com.]

In the past, the step above would’ve been enough to enable your site, but since Tumblr started implementing changes that sites using the default theme would just redirect to the first profile page (tumblr.com/username), we now have to do some extra steps to make sure that folks visiting at your-site.tumblr.com will really see your website instead of Tumblr’s default profile.

For that, we need to edit our site’s theme.

What are Tumblr themes?

It's basically the design and layout of your site. It can be as crazy or as professional as you want. Here's Taylor Swift's Midnights theme, for example.

Where to Find a Tumblr Theme

Tumblr’s Official Theme Garden (free and paid)

Tumblr’s Official Theme Garden, but filtered to show only the free themes

@theme-hunter

@codingcabin

It’s so hard to filter for the right theme in the Theme Garden though, so I suggest looking for themes in theme-hunter instead.

Tip in Choosing a Theme: Find one that supports NPF (Neue Post Format). Although Tumblr is still advocating its different posts types (text, image, audio, video, etc.), they’ve actually been rolling out changes to their editor where only a single post type is used (text) and you just add media to it. This is what NPF is about. On desktop, you can turn off the beta editor and thereby turn off NPF. However, on mobile web and on the app, posts can only be made in NPF. So if you intend to post on mobile, you have to find a theme that supports it. Otherwise, your content may look weird on your site.

I absolutely recommend themes by @seyche and @fukuo. The one I’m currently using on my site is the Lilac theme by Seyche.

For a more comprehensive guide on customizing your Tumblr, check out Tumblr’s official guide for it.

And that ends part 1 of this Tumblr guide… Though I called this part 1, I actually don’t know if there’ll be a part 2 lol. I’m lazy, and writing this took some time. If my wifi continues to be down though and I still have some data left, I might just write a part 2, covering posting and tumblr culture.

Okay, I'm working on Part 2 now, and will soon edit this post to link to it. But for now, you might want to check out Part 0: What the heck is Tumblr and is it right for me?

Edit: Part 2 is done, and it covers stuff you need to know about posting! You can read it here.

Update: Part 3 (sort of) is up:

A Guide to Tagging on Tumblr: Types of Tags