#htmlwizards

Theme makers are human too

It feels like a lot of users on tumblr these days have been taking theme makers for granted and not according us the respect we deserve for providing a variety of layouts to help the user make his/her/their blog look the way they want it to. As I’ve demonstrated above, theme making is a lot of work, and it’s not the kind of thing that can be done with a snap of the fingers. Theme makers spend hours, days, some even weeks or months, making themes, because a lot of us think it’s fun. Some use advertisements to try and earn some revenue and some take commissions to earn a living, and that’s understandable because they are people who need to survive, too.

Despite all this, more and more people are deleting the credits because they “look ugly”, “make the blog/navigation too cluttered”, “ruin the aesthetic” or whatever. Some people even have the gall to say things like “I edited this theme, and I spent so much time on it, why should I credit someone for my own work?” It feels disgusting to have your effort, time and hard work consistently spat on on a regular basis, and that’s why so many theme makers have lost the joy of making themes and quit. Coding is fun, yes. But when you have to deal with people treating you like slaves so much, it sucks the life out of you. So many theme makers have said they felt drained, or had no motivation to continue. Please don’t do this to people. Don’t make people hate something they used to love, because it’s really a fucking shit feeling.

I understand, sometimes we are not perfect, and we do make mistakes when we code. We are still learning and many of us are self-taught, not professional web designers. There will inevitably be bugs. But even so, this does not give you reason to go into theme makers’ inboxes, demanding that they solve your problem immediately. We are real people, with real lives. Give us time, we will work on it if and when we can.

I understand, sometimes you just need a slight tweak on this or that feature to make the theme suit you perfectly. You feel like an aesthetic choice isn’t really you, and you want the theme maker to change it for you, but you don’t know how to change it because you don’t know how to code. This is normal and everyone has different tastes. But then that’s what Google is for. That’s what places like w3schools and stackoverflow are for. They’re for you to learn how to do things that you want to do. Theme makers are not your go-to search engine for tumblr coding. If you search for an answer yourself, the feeling of satisfaction you get when your theme finally looks perfect is 2147483647 times more worth it than what you feel when a theme maker solves the problem for you. We don’t have time to help everyone under the sun edit their codes, though some of us would definitely love to.

I understand. Sometimes you’re new, and you don’t know how to do something. So you go into a code, and you steal the stuff that you want. It’s okay to not know how to do something, and it’s definitely okay to ask. I think if you ask us to explain things to you politely, theme makers will explain how they did the thing. But don’t demand that we do it immediately, because as I’ve said, we are people with lives. Although, sometimes we don’t want to reveal how we did the thing because we spent super long on it or don’t want others copying the design, and you just have to respect that. You can try google, w3schools or stackoverflow instead, try to figure something out yourself. Just don’t steal. Stealing is bad, and illegal, too. Plagiarism is an offence that can get you prosecuted in court as well as a criminal record, which is so not worth it for some shitty website.

I understand. Before we are theme makers, most of us are also bloggers. We share your concerns, even more so than you thought. People stealing shit? Why is this person publishing my work as their own wtf! Staff updating dashboard sizes? Oh no, there is no default size to code now! Staff changing the tumblr controls code? Fuck, all my controls are hidden under some navigation or title bar now! Staff doing things to their links? Oh shit, all my links are now broken! A lot of us also think things like “man my theme on ______ blog needs a slight tweak here because _____” and “maybe I should remove my own credit because I made this theme for myself and I don’t want people demanding it”. But from these thoughts, we learn. We learn new ways of doing things, and we improve.

So as a theme user, what can you do?

Well, first and foremost, start seeing theme makers not as coding robots, but as people. Appreciate that we have lives, people that are important to us, things that we have to do, obligations, studies, jobs. And feelings. Don’t delete our credits, and try to edit the code yourself before you ask a theme maker how to change something. If there’s a bug, try scrolling through the theme maker’s blog to see if he/she/they has updated the code. Try reinstalling the code, as they might have done under-the-hood updates when you weren’t looking. Respect theme makers’ rules and FAQs, don’t ask things that they don’t want to answer. Don’t demand that we do things for you, don’t demand that we release things that we don’t want to release.

Above all, please, I implore you, realise that we are not obliged to do this. Realise that a lot of us do this for free and for fun. Realise that we can quit whenever we want to. If you don’t, I assure you that in the future, you’ll have no more theme makers on tumblr.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that people use my stuff, enjoy my work, reblog my themes. I appreciate it a lot and I thank everyone for your support. I’m sure most theme makers will feel this way as well. We are grateful that you are using our coding, trusting us with the design of your blog. However, I think I can speak for most people when I say that I’d rather you not use my work if you’re not going to respect us, the creators.

That is all. Thank you for reading this, and have a pleasant day.

1. HTML for posts

We will have posts wrapped with 2 divs - an outer layer containing all the posts (for infinite scroll to work), and another div for individual posts. To identify each post as unique, we’ll add a variable {PostID} as the ID of each individual post, like so:

<div id="content"> {block:Posts} <div class="posts" id="{PostID}"> ... ... </div> {/block:Posts} </div>

If you’re using a different HTML element for posts, like <article></article> instead of <div></div>, then you just add the variable {PostID} as the ID of the element, as I have done above. If you are using <div id=“entry”></div> or similar, please change your current ID to a class. It is incorrect syntax in the first place.

2. Infinite Scroll Script

For this tutorial, I’ll be using Paul Irish’s Infinite Scroll. Load the files onto tumblr’s static uploader and put the script after </style> and before </head> in your code. You should have the infinitescroll.min.js file, as well as a copy of the jQuery library, in your code once you’re done. After that, set up the script by following the instructions on the website.

3. Like Button

You’re almost done. Now all that’s left to do is to tell the browser to check the like button status once a new page has been loaded. To do this, we add a callback to the infinite scroll (the part in bold):

<script> $(document).ready(function(){     var $container = $("#content");     $container.infinitescroll({         // your options     },     function(newElements){     var $newElems = $(newElements);         var $newElemsIDs = $newElems.map(function(){             return this.id;         }).get();         Tumblr.LikeButton.get_status_by_post_ids($newElemsIDs);     }); }); </script>

Update: Using Infinite Scroll v3?

If you are using Infinite Scroll v3 (Desandro’s Infinite Scroll), the callback function was removed when he updated the script. But, fear not! This method still works with Infinite Scroll v3, you just need to make some changes:

<script> $(document).ready(function(){    var $container = $("#content");    $container.infiniteScroll({  // options         // your options    });    $container.on('append.infiniteScroll', function(newElements, response, path, items){         var $newElems = $(newElements);          var $newElemsIDs = $newElems.map(function(){           return this.id;       }).get();       Tumblr.LikeButton.get_status_by_post_ids($newElemsIDs);    }); }); </script>

(Callback function in bold)