Help Desk

Welcome to the help desk! How can I assist you today?

Frequently asked questions

Take a look at my FAQ and see if your question is already answered. I'm only one person, so I'm not always quick to respond when you reach out. But my FAQ might be able to answer your question right away!

How do I install your themes?

Oh hey! I have an installation guide that should come in handy for you.

Why can't I see/edit my theme?

Tumblr has a setting called Custom Theme that is disabled by default (this is fairly new — before, everyone had a custom theme by default). To find enable this, go to Tumblr's settings page and select your blog in the right sidebar under Blogs. Then find the Custom Theme setting and make sure it's enabled.

Your blog will also have this error if you have the Hide [blog name] from people without an account setting turned on. Scroll down a bit from the setting mentioned earlier and you'll find it — make sure it's disabled.

How do I add custom links?

My themes use Tumblr page links to create unlimited custom links. These links utilize Tumblr's pages feature, one page per link, in order to make this work.

Let's start by creating a page. Find this button at the bottom of the theme editor:

The default option is a Standard Layout page. This is the easiest option for linking internally to your pages on Tumblr. You fill a page with content — about you, commission information, etc. — and it's formatted using the same design and architecture as your other standard text posts are. I'll make an About Me page, for example.

Now, the important part — make sure that little option called Show a link to this page is turned on. When you enable that option, it'll create a link to this page that will show up in your blog's navigation. In the text box to the left of the option switch, give your link a name (I went with "About Me"). Then, click Save.

Important: Often, you won't be able to see these links in the Tumblr theme editor. Make sure you check the live version of your blog to see if your new links are working properly!

The Custom Layout page is similar to the Standard Layout, but instead of using your theme's post design, it gives you a totally blank HTML canvas to create your page. I don't have any page themes that you can use, but you can find a ton of them over at Coding Cabin. (It's also important to note that Tumblr currently does not allow you to have JavaScript in your Custom Layout pages unless you ask them for permission first, so if you're getting a JavaScript error, reach out to the Tumblr staff to get this fixed!) The process for creating a link to Custom Layout pages is exactly the same as the Standard Layout pages explained earlier.

Now, for the Link pages. This is how you link to your non-blog stuff — your other social media accounts, your other blogs, third party resources, etc. It's pretty straightforward, but let's go through it anyways.

Next to the Link to text, paste your link. In this example, I'm linking to Tumblr's entry on Wikipedia. And just like earlier, name the link in the top-right. On my blog, the title of this link will be "Tumblr on Wikipedia."

Reminder — these links usually don't show up until you save all of your changes and view your blog. If your links aren't appearing, make sure you've saved all theme editor changes and view the live version of your blog.

If you're still running into issues, feel free to reach out and I'll see what I can do to help!

The search bar on my theme isn't working.

This is, without a doubt, one of the goofiest decisions I've found on Tumblr, and this is the same place that had Tumblr Live. Why is it goofy? Let's chat about it!

For some reason, the search functionality on your Tumblr's blog is inherently tied to the ability to find your blog by searching for it outside of your blog. Yeah, your guess is as good as mine.

On Tumblr's settings page, find your blog on the right side and click on it. Then scroll down through your blog's settings. That setting under the "Visibility" category called Discourage searching of [blog name] has to be disabled, or your search bar on your blog will go away. I haven't been able to figure out why searching within your blog is dependent on this setting — hopefully just a bug? Who knows.

[Benoit Blanc voice] Makes no damn sense. Compels me, though.

What happened to your old themes?

Due to Tumblr's ever-evolving code, many of my older themes are outdated in some way — namely, all of my older work isn't NPF-compatible. In 2019, I made the decision to retire any of my older work that I wasn't quite as proud of. You can find a list of my currently available themes here, and a list of my retired themes here.

You can install old versions of my current themes; if you really want an old version of Chirp or Ocular, for example, you can find them in my themes repository on GitHub. I also made the decision to upload all of themes made between 2016 and 2019 available on my retired themes repository, even if they haven't been updated since 2019. Please use these themes at your own risk, as many of them are very out of date!

I'm getting an https:// links error.

This shouldn't be an issue with my newer themes. If you're using any of my new themes, reach out to me!

More likely, you're encountering this problem with my older, retired themes. In 2019, Tumblr adjusted their privacy settings to no longer allow Tumblr themes that contain unsecure links (http://) and requires all links to be secure (https://). My old themes contain some links to scripts, fonts, etc. that are now considered unsecure.

The fix is simple: in the HTML editor where you pasted the theme code, click the gear in the top-left corner and choose Find and replace. In the "Search for" box, enter http:// and in the "Replace with" box, enter http://, then hit "all" to replace all unsecure links. You should be able to bypass the error and save your changes now.

Can you add more columns to this theme?

Single-column and multi-column themes involve extremely different coding methods, and it's very difficult to turn a single-column theme into a multi-column theme. If one of my themes has only one column, it does not have the capability to add additional columns. I will not do this on request.

However, my work is covered under transformative licenses, which means as long as you don't remove the credit stating that I created the original theme, you can do whatever you want with it. If you know a bit of HTML and CSS (and probably some JavaScript, too) feel free to hack my themes up and figure it out!

Will you help make small customzations?

Absolutely. Most small customizations can be made using the Tumblr theme editor's Custom CSS function, which can help you make small tweaks without actually editing the theme's base code. But I'm not always online, so sometimes it can take me a few days to get back to you!

Ask Rachael for help

Before you send your message...

• All of my themes have a user guide that explains what each theme setting does and provides examples of how to make basic customizations to the themes, which might be useful! You can find the user guides by going to my themes page and clicking on the user guide of your choice.
• If you're reporting a bug, please do not message me anonymously. I need to be able to see the issue on your blog myself, and I can't do that if you're anonymous. Which brings us to...
• If you're reporting a bug with one of my themes, make sure the bug is visible for me to inspect on your blog (aka the theme is installed). If the bug is on a side blog, please include that blog's URL.
• Update your theme to the latest version. The version number of your theme is listed at the top of your HTML code, and the update log can tell you about version updates. I try to put detailed notes in my update posts, so make sure I didn't already fix your bug!

With all of that out of the way, send an ask using the form below!

Or, if you prefer, you can send me a message through Tumblr messages. Thanks for visiting!