on an ocean of stars...

NOTE THAT ALL SECTIONS ARE DISABLED BY DEFAULT, TO AVOID HAVING EMPTY/UNEDITED SECTIONS. If you want a particular section to display, make sure you enable it in the Customize menu before making any changes, so that you can see it as it's being edited.

All of the below instructions assume that you've gone to your Customize page, then opened the "Edit HTML" menu.

Again, if you have trouble making your edits work, feel free to send me an ask or a DM for help.

Note for HTML beginners

Every bit of text or code is wrapped inside "tags", which have arrow brackets on either side. For example, a paragraph is placed inside <p> tags.

Every element has an "opening" and "closing" tag; the closing tag looks just like the opening tag, with a / after the opening bracket. The content inside one section is bracketed by these; for example, a paragraph would look like this:

<p>Text here!</p>

In the above line, <p> is the opening tag, and </p> is the closing tag. Tags of this sort can be placed inside each other:

<p>Some <span>special</span> text.</p>

Note that the "span" tags, both opening and closing, are both inside the "p" tags. You don't want a misordered set, like "<p>Some <span>special text.</p></span>". The opening tag nearest to the start should also have its closing tag nearest to the end.

It is extremely important that while editing the HTML for your theme, you make sure all opening tags have a matching closing tag. If you have a <div> tag, but no matching </div> tag, this might break the theme.

Featured posts

This section fetches the 3 most recent posts from a chosen tag on your blog. To select the tag:

Ctrl+F to "EDIT YOUR TAG HERE".

On that line, there will be a link inside quotation marks, ending in "tagged=featured".

Change featured to the tag of your choice; for example, "tagged=photo". This tag can include spaces, such as "tagged=my writing".

Save and ensure your posts show up as intended.

By default, the tagged posts are fetched from your blog, but you can change this so that the featured posts are from a different blog:

Ctrl+F to "EDIT YOUR TAG HERE".

On that line, there will be a link inside quotation marks, starting with "https://{Name}.tumblr.com".

Change {Name} to the blog username of your choice; for example, "https://starlightthemes.tumblr.com".

Save and ensure your posts show up as intended.

Be careful not to change any other parts of that section. The code for fetching the posts from blogs is easy to break.

Updates section

The updates section has two editable parts: the title, and the actual updates.

To edit the title:

Ctrl+F to "EDIT HERE: UPDATES".

Scroll a few lines down, until you find the line reading "Latest updates".

Change "Latest updates" to say whatever you want. Make sure the text stays inside the ... tags. For example, if you want the heading to read "My activity", that line of code should read "My activity".

To edit updates:

Ctrl+F to "EDIT HERE: UPDATES".

A little under this line, you'll see a template, with the outermost tags reading <div class="update">...<;/div>. If you're adding a new update, copy this template.

Scroll a few lines down, until you find the line reading "".

Now, for each update, paste the template once over (two updates are present for you to start with), and edit three things:

-> "3-LETTER MONTH HERE": The first three letters of the update month, e.g. "Jan".

-> "2-DIGIT DATE HERE": The two-digit version of the update date, e.g. "01" or "31".

-> "UPDATE TEXT HERE": The actual text that'll show up as the update.

Make sure that all the updates are separate- the starting and the ending of two updates shouldn't overlap.

Make sure all your updates are above the line reading """.

Save and make sure things look how you want them to.

Members list

To change the title of the members section:

Ctrl+F to "EDIT HERE: MEMBERS LIST".

Scroll a few lines down, until you find the line reading "Blog members".

Change "Blog members" to say whatever you want. Make sure the text stays inside the ... tags. For example, if you want the heading to read "The gang", that line of code should read "The gang".

Scroll further down, until you find the line that reads "{lang:Group members}". Again, change this to your chosen title, such as "The gang".

The actual members list can be customized in two ways. One, for group blogs, you can have it automatically fetch the blog members' main blog names/titles/icons. To do this, turn on "Members list" and turn off "Custom members list" in the main theme settings.

The other option is to manually add any group members and their icons/links. This will also allow you to add customized names and descriptions for each member. To use this option, turn on BOTH "Members list" and "Custom members list". Then:

Ctrl+F to "EDIT HERE: MEMBERS LIST".

A little under that, you'll see a template with the outermost tags reading <a class="member" href="//BLOGNAME.tumblr.com">.... If you're adding members, copy this template.

Scroll a few lines down, until you find the line reading "".

Now, for each member, paste the template (two members are present for you to start with) and edit three things:

-> "BLOGNAME": Next to "href" in the tag, and next to "src" in the tag. Change this to your member's username, such as "starlightthemes".

-> "MEMBER NAME": Takes the place of the username. This will show up in bold at the top.

-> "MEMBER DESCRIPTION": Takes the place of the blog title. This will show up at the bottom.

Make sure that all the members are separate- the starting and the ending of two members shouldn't overlap.

Make sure all your members are above the line reading """.

Save and make sure things look how you want them to.

Theme credits: Layout/design/icons by Tumblr, Style My Tooltips by malihu, featured posts by Fukuo, NPF photosets plugin by codematurgy, dark/light mode toggle by eggdesign, custom audio posts by annasthms, scroll to top script by Fabian Lins