#tumblr still does that thing where only the first like 5 tags are searchable right. cool

[skungie]

a bunch of misc doodles (dys + tammy + sol + utopia), plus alt colors for that one congruence drawing, based off bkomei’s concept art!

last row of art is yuyu and (headcanon) older echinacea

[manga-and-stuff]

The tools behind Manga and Stuff

In this post I will show you how I make this blog possible 

Where do I get my manga:

My primary source for manga is Nyaa.si where I also upload stuff myself sometimes.

Viable alternatives I use include Mangadex and Bato.to. I also post manga on Bato.to myself. You can download manga from mangadex, Bato.to and many other sites like them with the Manga downloader by red Squirrel 

The programs I use: 

ComicSreen

I read all my manga with this Android app. There are countless other comic viewer apps on android and IOS, but this one allows me to save pages in full resolution which is kinda important for this blog and it’s just a pretty nice app overall. 

Viable alternative for Desktop: Honeyview, but just like with Android, there are many others.

Advanced Renamer

A pretty simple program that allows me to rename thousands of files at once. It’s not really essential for this blog but it helps keep things organized and is overall a very useful program. It’s free for personal use. 

XNconvert

XNconvert is an immensely powerful image editing program and the workhorse of this blog. I mostly use it to automatically crop out all the white spaces around manga panels (this used to take hours to do) but it can do so much more than that, from changing color depth to converting a picture into any format imaginable, and it can do it to thousands of pictures at once.

It was this program alone that made it possible for me to clean up 1000 scanned pages of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in like 2 hours, here’s a before and after:

This would have taken days without this free program. 

Topaz Gigapixel AI

I used this program to upscale a few manga I upload here, including Fullmetal Alchemist, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō and the recently added Chainsaw Man. Here’s a preview of what this program can do.

This program needs a pretty beefy PC and it costs around 80-100$. And remember, upscalling is not magic, upscaled manga will never look as good as high resolution scans. 

Waifu2x is a free alternative, but not really a viable option for doing whole manga. 

Photoshop

I don’t think I really need to explain this one...

Free, and nowadays actually viable alternative: GIMP

AutoHotkey

AutoHotkey is a very easy scripting language that allows me to caption and tag my posts like this:

And it can do A LOT more than this. 

Here’s the basic code I use for captions and tagging, with basic explanations of what everything does, but its far from a tutorial. 

While AutoHotkey is free, it’s only available for windows and I don’t know of any alternatives for Mac or Linux. 

One important tip for tagging: 

Only the first 5 tags you add to any post are searchable. So if you have “Art” as your sixth tag your post will not show up when searching the art tag. This is why the manga title and the Author’s name are always the first tags on my posts. 

The whole process briefly explained:

I am always on the lookout for interesting manga, so feel free to post suggestions.

When I do stumble across a manga that seems interesting I download it from my sources mentioned above.  I then read it on my Android tablet for the first time, only after reading the entire manga once I decide if I want to upload it here.    If I decide to upload a manga here I read it for a second time, but this time I focus on what pages and panels to capture. In my experience doing this on your first read isn’t a very good idea. You can’t really focus on both the story and the capturing at once. 

Then I move all the caps to my pc and rename them with Advanced Renamer. I then make a backup of everything before cropping it with XNconvert.

I then add them to my queue here on tumblr, this step is also where I do all editing of the caps, like cropping out single panels or more substantial stuff. I also throw out a lot of caps in this step for various reasons. 

There are usually around 50 posts queued which gives me a 5 day buffer to queue more posts. 

I never do all these steps at once. There are sometimes month between me reading and capturing a manga, the processing of the caps and the eventual uploading.  

Some fun stats about this blog:

This is the second iteration of Manga and Stuff, the first version was deleted by accident (by tumblr) when it had around 400 followers.

This iteration of Manga and Stuff started out in January 2017.

This blog has 100 times the follower count of my personal blog even though both blogs are the exact same age and have roughly the same number of posts... the main difference is that I don’t put any effort whatsoever into my personal blog... 

As of right now there are 12600 posts on this blog, around 1500 of which are reblogs.  

This is my most popular post of all times... by a wide margin...  and it’s not even really about manga... and I uploaded it for a laugh...

My posts get 107.33 notes on average... but my most popular post mentioned above probably inflates this number a bit... 

As of right now this blog has close to 1,2 million notes in total. 

I still have every single unedited mangcap ever uploaded to this blog, dating all the way back to 2017... the size of this backup is 94 gigabytes and it saved my butt a number of times.     

[onychaos]

Observing Tumblr bugs

So I did some more work digging and observing around on tumblr wondering why posts are missing in on dashboard search tags, since you know? You have the power to search for terms in a post or tags on the dashboard. I also noticed that some posts don’t show up at all..

UPDATE 2/13/2020: Gonna update this post. As a warning, retweets of the post don’t have updated info

So, for WordPress when post don’t show up, you would change the date the post was made (The current time and date) and it would be added back to WordPress search where everyone can see it.

With WordPress, It’s a very easy fix to deal with. Not really a problem when you think about it.

Now with Tumblr, Dear lord. I can kinda see why Tumblr is seen as a hellsite.. Mainly for the issue, the site breaking search engine. It’s a mess..

So, for tumblr, it’s very different. Things I noticed.

A notice: Should go without saying but if your blog and posts are adult themed and not meant for anyone but adults, your posts will never show up. You can show a like of things but porn is a no go here.

1. There are some tags on Tumblr that will show your post for 10 mins+ before removing the post from the tags recent tab. If your post is popular (I.E. 3 notes or more) It will still show up there.

The tags I know where this happens is the tags “Twitter”, “WordPress” Let me know if you know of any other tags that act like this.

1.2 There are times when your post has 5 main tags but they won’t or don’t show up in search or tags. Retagging works in some cases but most of the time, it does not work.

2. Sometimes when you have 5 tags you want your post to be found in dashboard search, they just don’t show up. Sometimes if they showup, they show up on a new post (i.e. Re-upload) with the same tags will fix the problem.

2.1 Please remember this, as it may be another reason. If you have links in your post that are blacklisted, remove them. I can not say if having blacklisted links after the URL ban dropped may affect your post in the future or not.

Tags make it easier for readers to find posts about a specific topic on your blog. For instance, you could tag your landscape photographs with #landscape or posts about your butler with #butler. Tagging your posts is as easy as you’d expect. When you create a post, enter the tags in the field at the bottom of the post form.

Tips:

You don't need to put a tag in quotes or start with a hash symbol (#).

Hit enter to separate each tag.

Only the first 20 tags on a post will show up in searches. After that, you’re just tagging for show.

Tags on Tumblr can have spaces in them. They are the most legible tags on the internet. Hooray! - Tagging your posts

3 It also seems the URL ban + being able to search posts for terms in the post or tags has had a weird effect on posts. Reblogs don’t count, as they only show up on your blog and not searchable

I was looking in a part of tumblr called “tags not working” and I’m not the only one with this issue. Some post seems to suggest the election day and/or tumblr tag system is broken (No shock about it being broken)

Search for multiple tags or terms

To search for multiple tags or terms, all you have to do is use the right syntax. For example:

picnic lunch - returns posts with the terms “picnic” and “lunch” anywhere (e.g., #picnic basket, or #lunch break, or a post using the word picnic).

#picnic lunch - returns posts with the #picnic lunch tag.

#picnic #lunch - returns posts with both #picnic AND #lunch tags.

There is a 4th option that a user or bot may have reported your post for spam or  mass Automation by a user/bot. (If you post too much) If you use tags that someone thinks is not fitting for a post of yours or if you used any import tools to upload posts from one site to Tumblr. You may fall under this rule..

What I can assume is that Tumblr system for keeping spam like post out of search + the URL ban + being able to search posts by terms / any tags has hit a great number of posts made by users..

If that is the case, you have to re-upload the post to see in search or find it by terms.

I will talk about this later..

And there is a 5th option which I can’t prove to be true or false.. I have heard the porn bots that like or retweet your posts is another reason to why your posts may not show up in search / tags but can not prove this but something to keep in mind..

If you have a secondary blog account on your main that posts or reblogs adult things, be careful, I can’t say how much this may or may not affect you since there no way to test this but keep that in mind

I don’t know if adult blogs that like / reblog your posts will affect you or not.

There is one last option.. And this is a very extreme case.. but..

If your posts aren't appearing on Tumblr-wide tag pages, it might be because your blog is pretty new and we need to make sure you’re not a robot or a spammer.

Make sure you’ve verified your account via the email we sent when you joined Tumblr. Once you’ve used your account for a while (and done normal, human things with it like follow other blogs and like or reblog posts), your posts will start appearing on tag pages.

If you are a robot or a spammer, you should visit our article about account deletion.

On the help center page for Troubleshooting tags. The post I quoted worries me. There could be a chance your account is marked as a robot or a spammer. If, at that point happens.

You have 2 options. 1. Contact Tumblr support and tell them your problems and pray to god that they do something to help out, and hope they don’t send a automatic response which can amount to “we will try to do something but won’t“

2. Backup your blog, make a new account and re-post everything there by hand, and let your followers know of the new account. Your current account may be marked as a spammer account or a robot.

So… How do you get your post to show back up on Tumblr Dashboard search with the power to search for terms and any tag on your post, and tags that are after the 5th tag on posts?

ANSWER: Re-upload the post or posts that is not showing up in tags or is no longer searchable on Tumblr Dashboard. It’s the only current fix to the problem for why posts are no longer showing up in tags / searched by terms

Update:  

treygocray said: onychaos HEY! I got it to work. Delete all your tags on the photo and re-tag it. Mine worked so I thought I’d share! :D

This does work but if the post didn’t have a banned link. This is worth a shot but be warned that your post may fall under the 5 tag or less rule.

end update

For users who only reblog or like, this will not affect you. But those who don’t reblog and make posts, this affects us greatly. When our posts can’t be seen by other users besides followers.. I don’t man, not feeling it since most followers may / are no longer active.

Since the dashboard search engine is awful and tumblr @staff don’t seem to want to fix this issue or know how to fix the issue. This is the only way from what I tested.

If you have this issue but don’t want to re-upload posts to fix it. You have to go by the 5 tags can be searched, and you can’t term and your posts may or may not show up in tags. I could be wrong but I know there are people who don’t want to use a wrong around for this bug if you got more then 50 posts.

You can test to see if your posts are searchable by making an empty tag that has never been used, ever. Then go to mass post editor and add the empty tag as the 6th tag to 30 or 20 posts at a time and search the said tag.  If your posts that you tagged with the empty tag show up in that tag under the “most recent” search and not tagged.

A empty tag (Your username) seems to be able to hold 40 or 20 of your posts at a time. That’s why it is best to do 20 or 10 to test them. You may need to wait a bit as there is delay for posts to show up. Or you can add the empty tag to 3 of your post as the 6th tag or anything after the 5th tag works.

However, if the tag being used is brand new or barely used it can affect some post from what I tested.

Brand new tags (Never used aka no posts in the tag) Can hold 40 of your posts.. Sometimes it can hold more?

non-empty tags (Tags that get used once in a while) Can hold 3 posts and there is a post delay

Very active tags can hold 3 post but if you post a lot, your older posts in a tag will be hidden after a fourth post is made but will show back up after a week or so. Sometimes Tumblr may break and the post might not show back up if hidden and you probably have to reupload it or re-tag?

If you see the post in most recent or popular search, your posts can be found by terms / any tag but this is me just observing and testing about 20 posts

Now should say this. New tags that never been used can hold 40 of your posts sometimes more? But this is if you are trying to search by term and not tags

This means users can search for your posts by tags and tags after the 5th tag as well or terms in your posts on tumblr dashboard. (That is good, very good)

Because I tried to bring my posts from WordPress to Tumblr via a defunct import tool named wp2tumblr and as a result of my post falling under these  rules of spam here what I took note of.

Posts that don't show up or can not be seen working well in tags or at all and not coming up in the search terms. Out of 147 posts.  only 113* of my posts do not show up right in tags or search nor can they be searched by terms or tags (Some tags do not show these post after 2 weeks. You have to wait a week to see them but nothing happens..)

So only 34+ posts can be searched by tag / terms / seen in tags or searched by terms

113 posts have bugged / shadow flagged for spam / search from the effects of using wp2tumblr to import my wordpress posts to tumblr..

Only way to fix this is by re-uploading the post to allow it to be found in tumblr tags and search terms.

Again, if you don’t see your post show up in search or tags, you will need to re-upload the posts in question.

And for me, I hate having to re-upload posts to have them be seen again but I will have to do it if I want my posts to be seen. Even if that means re-uploading my rants, vents, talking about users, and other things. So you will be seeing me upload some posts that may be 2017 or 2018 related.

Your followers may or may not be annoyed with you as a heads up if you re-upload posts to fix this issue.

And even if you do this, there is no 100 % plan yet or there is a chance someone may see you re-upload a post as spam.. Or the post may not show up later

But I thought I share what I have been observing how things been working on tumblr. If anyone has a better way of dealing with this, let me know.

Because when you make a new post, it is seen in tags / search. And it is searchable be terms or tags after the 5th tag

Again, if your post is not showing up in tags, re-upload the post in question and it will be back in search to be seen by everyone

However, another issue came to me. If you reupload the post it can be found in search and by terms.. now however If you edit/delete the tags when having more then 5 tags on the post and go down to 5 or less. 

Your post may fall under the 5 tags or less rule and may also lose the right to search for that post by terms but something to look out for.

Update: It seems some of my new posts are not searchable by terms anymore.

I contacted Tumblr Support but got a fast reply but it was a copy and paste. I don’t know what Tumblr Staff is doing but it’s anything but helpful.

Here a list of my posts that got hit or don’t show up.. I added clear to the post name meaning it works / shows up. I need to look at all of them. I have since deleted some old posts so this list is outdated and this is not all of the posts yet..

Some post below don’t have the right name but keep that in mind

Nothing important below. :3

my plans for 2017 - clear 12:20 AM 12/11/2019

a new discord server archive it - 11:16 PM 12/10/2019

Twitch channel updates - archive it 11:16 PM 12/10/2019

Sonikchan update archive it - 8:08 PM 12/10/2019

Updates for Sonikmage twitch archive it - 8:08 PM 12/10/2019

Sonik muffins - clear 7:34 PM 12/10/2019

Future Update archive - 4:13 AM 12/11/2019

Shutting down Sonikmage twitter archive - 12:21 AM 12/11/2019

My little guide to streaming archive - 4:13 AM 12/11/2019

New twitch streams archive - 4:14 AM 12/11/2019

Twitch rant

mini twitch rant

one trick pony archive - 4:14 AM 12/11/2019

Sonic adventure SX 2018 clear - 12:02 AM 12/11/2019

how I been feeling

game progress

sonic speed R 2018

update log 6

The Tumblr purge

game dev update 2

game overhaul

kyle and lucy

Tumblr purge 2

Done with Pangya

Tumblr purge AM

Last speedrun to do

Twitch and youtube let's play

srb2 teleport

Sonic beta clear - 3:35 PM 12/11/2019

twitter rant

facebook update

srb2 update

Speedruns I plan to do clear - 10:03 AM 12/15/2019

Second Discord channel update

how to use twitter

Thoughts on SXSW

Thoughts on Sonic Speed 2017

What's next for me?

Thoughts on Pangya celebrity

Thoughts on Pangya celebrity big ann clear - 8:58 PM 12/17/2019

Thoughts on speedrunners

Why do you stream?

New personal discord channel update 3

Sonic adventure 2 livestream

New thoughts on Pangya c

A side project

Mini server update +

sonik rp story clear - 10:05 AM 12/15/2019

another twitch rant

birthday livestream

my thoughts on spinball

The future for sonic 1 hell

Zelda shine hunting

Sonic Forces custom character

Revio shutting down

new personal discord server clear - 9:32 AM 12/15/2019

SRB2 forfeit rules clear - 9:30 AM 12/15/2019

my forum

moving out update

duel link replays

Mario Maker 2 experience

My Tumblr experience

Gave Pangya debug one last shot

Frozen Snowman Land - clear 9:30 AM 12/15/2019

Images of my fan game

venting about video games

changes and moving forward

sadx question

Playing duel links on twitch

Hyper's quest 2

video of srb2 kart

srb2kart rainbow road

mini update about my posts clear - 9:31 AM 12/15/2019

levels i forgot

srb2kart darkvile garden

tumblr theme bugs clear - 9:32 AM 12/15/2019

SRB2Kart final fall

Beaten nep

Zelda BOTW master mode stream

My review sonic spinball

streams this weekend

Why I dislike twitch fight streams

Thanks for watching

A long vent / rant

A message to a friend

Cyberscore review

What I done in 2 months

Youtube planned let's plays

My goals for 2018

Final post on speedrunning

Clicker heroes 2 thoughts

final Pangya c post

Chaos realm race nights

My CyberScore Ideas

New Start

Sonic Gather Battle

Pantufa the cat dx review

SRB2 review

Dungeon Souls revisit

Sonic R review

update log

my new server updates

Sonic World R8 review

Pangya C tea time

Sonic and Shantae 2017 demo

Sonic ages 2017

Update on Sonic hell

Sonic Forces review clear - 3:51 AM 12/12/2019

Battle for the internet act 3

game mode ideas

New changes for this year arc - 2:57 AM 12/12/2019

Sonic Mania delay archive second account -

rant: twitter archive

2 rants for the price of one

Twitch bits

Sonic Mania stream today archive - 4:44 PM 12/11/2019

SRB2 testing clear - 9:29 AM 12/15/2019

Sonic Grand Adventure clear - 10:03 AM 12/15/2019

[spnfanficpond]

July 2019 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with @crispychrissy today! Thank you so much, Chrissy, for joining us!

This month, to make up for not having a chat in June, we chatted for two hours about some issues related to posting your works on Tumblr. Chrissy talked to us about making our own gifs, we discussed giving credit to gifmakers, how to make a Keep Reading cut, and much more!! A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut!

[Editor’s Note: For ease of understanding, the tags you put at the bottom of a post with a # will be called #hash-tags, while the tags you use to notify another Tumblr user that you’ve posted something will be called @mention-tags.]

Q: What programs do you use to make gifs? Are they free, or do you have to buy them?

Chrissy: Well, there is a free one I used back when I started called GifCam. It's easy to set up (it's just an exe) and there's a little learning curve, but it's easier than what I do now. I currently use a screen capture program that came with my $1500 graphics card along with Sony Vegas. If anyone wants GifCam, I can send it to them.

Q: And are you watching via Netflix or some other way?

C: Yes, I use Netflix. I have the first 6 seasons on DVD along with 12 and 13, so for bloopers and deleted scenes I have to use the DVD's. For current episodes, I have YouTube TV, and use the screen capture option with that. Tumblr has a 3MB limit on file size, so it’s really hard. The amount of frames you can fit in a sub-3MB gif depend on so many factors. Colors in the scene, movement, FPS (frames per second), and length. A low FPS gif looks pretty choppy, while a high FPS gif is smooth as butter.

Q: So that's why some gifs seem to go on forever, and others are quick things.

C: Yes. I can make a really long gif of something that's really really tiny, but if you want it to fit into the pixels of a Tumblr post, it limits how long they can be.

Q: And I guess that's also why some gifs I find from Google and try to put into a post won't animate right. If they're too big, I guess Tumblr stops them?

C: Yes. Tumblr just freezes the image instead of animating it. When you save it, check the file size.

C: So this is an example of the brightness and colors of a gif affecting the size. Since there's so much brightness and color, the more the gif has to render, meaning the bigger the size. This worked out to be only 35 frames, which is like... really small, but the gif itself came out to be 2.83 MB.

Q: Are websites that come up when I Google "gif maker" worth my time and effort?

C: Only if you don't mind a stupid watermark from the company.

Q: About giving credit to gifmakers....any thoughts?

C: Well, all my gifs have "cc" in the bottom right corner, that's how I give myself credit if they're used. Not everyone knows the "cc" gifs are mine, but I do. I offer my gif making services to anyone if they need a specific gif made for a story or otherwise, not limited to SPN. I've made porn gifs, ones from YouTube, and from other shows. If it exists, I can gif it. Tumblr's search feature is... well, it's not perfect, but it'll help give you a quick gif and give credit to the author. When someone uses a gif I've posted, it gives me a notification, which is awesome, but annoying if it gets reposted a crap ton. It also links the person back to the original post and who posted it.

Q: Some folks seem to think that if they grab a gif from Google, just saying they found it on Google is giving credit. I know this isn't the case. (I mistakenly thought that pasting the link to the image would allow folks to click through to where I found it, but discovered last night that's not the case.) If I found a gif on Google that was yours and used it, and provided a link to the page where Google found it, would that be enough, do you think?

C: Sometimes a reverse image search can be helpful, but it mostly doesn't work with gifs. That would be fine for me. Like I said, I have "cc" in the corner so that's me marking the gif as one of mine. I can't control where someone reposts them or uses them. There's a difference between reposting it to a site like Pinterest or using my gif on a LiveJournal post and saving it and reuploading it like it's yours and without giving me credit. One is malicious, the other isn't. I have a problem with the latter.

Q: I started looking at where Google finds gifs last night, and noticed that sites like gfycat have whole pages of gifs, and just citing that page might not be enough. (And trying to find where Google found them many times leads to a Tumblr blog that’s now gone.)

C: Google finds gifs all over the place. Someone can take my gif from Tumblr and reupload it to a bunch of different websites, all which would show up in a Google search. It's hard to find the original poster when it happens. Yeah, people delete their pages, but the gif stays. If you get to that point, just say, “Gif found on Google, unable to find original post"

Q: Speaking of finding gifs, how does the search function work on Tumblr? Is it just whatever the post was tagged with or the first 5 tags like regular searches or something else entirely?

After some discussion, we all decided that the gif search uses whatever #hash-tags are on a post where a gif is used, and then makes that gif searchable by that #hash-tag. So, if you make a post about chronic pain and use a gif of the Winchesters hugging, that gif will then show up in the gif search under #chronic pain. Also, popularity of the gif ensures it shows up at the top of the search. As people stop using a gif, it eventually falls out of the search results.

Q: Going back to file sizes...Do the dimensions of the source video (like watching Netflix/YouTube in full screen vs in a smaller window) impact the size of the gif, specifically with GifCam?

C: Now, that's a HUGE reason why I switched the way I make gifs. Netflix has a set streaming rate, which is only optimized at full screen. So the smaller you make the window to get it to fit into the size of the gif, the more degraded the image is. (Some confusion was expressed, so she continued to explain it further.) Netflix likes to run as big as possible. It wants as many pixels it can get to show you an image. If you minimize the window, it kind of freaks out and has to quickly scramble to make everything smaller so the video keeps playing. It does that by squishing everything down, making the image look weird. It might not be too noticeable when you look at it, but when you make gifs, they're gonna come out lookin all wonky.

Q: So, you have to make the Netflix window smaller in order to capture the images with the gif-making software? The gif-making software can't capture full screen?

C: GifCam will record the gif based on the window size. You gotta squish the window down to make it a reasonable size to fit on Tumblr. Other programs, which you might have to pay for, might be able to capture full screen and do the squishing for you. (Side note: during this discussion, Chrissy gave us some examples, and in showing them to us, revealed that a good gif size for Tumblr is around 410-430 wide, 230-250 high.)

After that, we moved on to other topics that had been brought up in the Pond survey a while back. 

How to make a Keep Reading cut and when you should use it.

Note: Although this worked for one person on the app, it doesn’t seem to work for all, and we’re not sure why. There are too many variables to determine the root cause for why it doesn’t always work. 

Q: "When should I give someone credit for being a beta (for example: I bounced ideas with someone for a minute or two but they didn’t technically beta read it; I can’t decide between X and Y (with no context), pick one)"

A: Always mention anyone who helped you. You don’t have to say they beta-read your story, but at least mention that they helped, even if they didn’t know it! Gratitude is always a good thing!! Writing takes a village, and being thankful for help is courteous, kind, caring, and helps you to make friends that will be the same right back to you.

How do I add my masterlist for my blog description?

Note: Chrissy pointed out that if you change your bio by hitting “edit appearance” instead of “edit theme” the link will break, so be careful where you add this! These things and more can be found in the Pond FAQ list!!

Q: The facts on search issues (re: links, tags, and anything else that keeps a fic from being “searchable”)

A: A lot of testing and research went into trying to figure this out, and we still probably don’t have it all figured out, but we learned some interesting things!

Most importantly, since we have a lot of smut writers, if you use the #hash-tag #NSFW on your post, your post will NOT show up in any searches!!

Adding an external link should not cause your post to be unsearchable, but that’s not guaranteed. According to Tumblr’s own help pages, “some links may cause posts to be hidden from recent search results.” Since spambots use external links in their posts, this will always be something that could possibly interfere with your post being searchable.

According to Tumblr: “Blogs that have been either self-flagged or flagged by us as “explicit” per our old policy (before December 17, 2018), will not show up in search. Users under 18 are still not allowed to click through to see the content of these blogs. If you think your blog has been erroneously marked as explicit, you can file an appeal by following these instructions.”

When you are searching for your post, make sure you are looking at Most Recent posts, not Most Popular! 

Some things to know about searching:

There are two ways to search a blog. If you use the search box at the top, then your results will have a URL like this:  https://spnfanficpond.tumblr.com/search/big-fish-chat

However, that is not the only way you can search your blog. If you look at a post, and click on one of the tags on that post, your results will have a URL like this: https://spnfanficpond.tumblr.com/tagged/big-fish-chat

The first search will look through all of the text in a post to find the words you’re searching for. The second search will only look for posts with that specific tag. If a blog doesn’t have a search box in its theme, you can type these searches in manually, and they will still work.

You can also do these searches manually through all of Tumblr. Keep this in mind when you’re doing your general Tumblr search and check the URL of your results, because... “search” & “tagged” look at #hash-tags differently!

(This is so confusing, we know.)

“Search” will look through 20 #hash-tags. “Tagged” will only look through 5 #hash-tags. So, put your most important #hash-tags in your first 5!!

Q: Can you talk about xkit?

A: xkit is awesome and we should all bow down to the xkit guy because he fixes things when Tumblr poops on the carpet. Seriously. It’s only for use on desktop, but it makes Tumblr so much easier to manage.

xkit is an extension for your browser. Look for New xkit, and download that. Once you have xkit loaded, click on the xkit icon near the top right of your screen. When the xkit window pops up, click on Get Extensions. We could suggest a list of the best extensions, but they’re all seriously awesome. Blacklist seems to be the most common, as it filters out posts you don’t want to see based on tags and text. Auto Tagger, Activity+, Outbox, One-Click Postage, and Quick Tags are all ridiculously useful for everyday blogging. The whole thing is super easy to learn and use, and you can’t break anything while you’re learning. Some extensions, like Blacklist, may slow your computer down when you’re surfing your dash because they essentially surf it ahead of you and manipulate it. If you start seeing problems, you can disable any extensions you decide you don’t want to use, anymore.

Seriously, it’s freaking awesome.

Great talk, guys! If you have ideas for topics, please let us know!!

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: 

We’re working on setting up the discord server. We’re still learning the ins and outs and all the options available. More options means more discussion among the admins and decisions to be made, so please be patient! We’re getting there!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work!  IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

SPNFanFicPond Season 14 Weekly Episode Challenge - Now that the season is over, we will be reposting each prompt list through the summer months! Remember, there’s no deadline for submissions!

Say hi to June’s New Members!

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the chat room and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details!  The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We don’t have a topic or speaker set up for August’s event, yet, so if there’s something you want to talk about, or someone you want to talk to, LET US KNOW!