i know it's been years since tumblr started pushing all the mobile-first stuff and javascript ban that resulted in the death of customisation, and i know it's only a part of the reason why theme making isn't as big as it once was, but it still makes me so sad to think about. i've been on tumblr since 2011 and i remember how active the theme/page coding community was for a whole decade or more, and how the majority of tumblr users truly enjoyed setting up their custom themes on desktop. even all these years later i still remember old theme makers i followed and i love going back to look at the themes that were so revolutionary 10 years ago, even though almost all of the people who made them left in 2020-2022. i'm still mad that tumblr chose the lazy route of (mostly) squashing such a creative ecosystem that was a major part of the platform's charm in favour of looking more like a typical social media feed. i miss seeing literal dozens of examples of experimental web design every day done by teenagers and college students as their hobby outside school!! i miss watching their skills evolve from simple two-column layouts to full-on interactive designs with fun scripts and pages to explore. i miss the personality you would see immediately upon visiting someone's blog - now like 80% of users i check out don't have a custom theme at all.
all that to say it gives me an even greater appreciation for the people who do still create themes despite less engagement than before, and especially despite tumblr always screwing over creators. when i made this blog in january of this year i immediately took on one of @phantomcodes's themes, and then recently changed it to their newest theme, and i always get giddy to see new things from them. same with @glenthemes - in fact i just recently made a playlist page using one of their codes that i had on a blog 10 YEARS AGO LOL. there are still several theme makers out there trying their best and i think all of you are the coolest. it almost feels like finding a relic, like, oh, this still exists! someone's still doing this and there are others who still enjoy it! and i'm so glad for that.
#i can't even figure out how to access the themed versions of anyone's blog anymore including my own#like it used to be you could go to tumblr dot com slash (blog name) and that would take you to the themed blog version#but now that just goes to the in-tumblr-browser version#you know with the activity/messages/inbox buttons on the left and the suggested blogs and whatever on the right#overriding any custom theme and just showing the blog vertical in the center like the app#if there is a workaround to view custom themed blogs again i wish i knew#i was absent from tumblr for most of 2020-2022 so i missed that era
@diabolical-blue you have to go to "[blogname].tumblr.com" As far as I know that's always been the only way to do it (at least since I joined the site in 2018.). If someone has a custom blog theme enabled, under their icon on their "mobile" blog (which is the default if you click on their url) it will have a link!
This is what my "mobile" blog header looks like. (underline added for emphasis)
And same deal with my personal blog
It also shows up in your "mobile" sidebar, like this!
The key point is that people now have to choose to enable having a desktop bog ("[blogname].tumblr.com") at all! So a lot of people don't bother to enable it or don't know it's even a setting they can have.
In case you don't know how to enable it, go to your blog settings (click the cog wheel on your mobile blog) and one of the first few options should be this:
It will be off by default for blogs created after the JavaScript ban.
(You also need to send Staff a support ticket asking them to enable JS on your blog if you want to use a theme that includes it. It's easy, though, and in my experience they responded quickly, but that was when this ban was new, like 5 or 6 years ago.)
