How To Theme Your Tumblr Blog

How To Check The Appearance And Layout Of Your Tumblr Blog Theme?

This is an answer to a question asked by Anonymous on my Soyuz Mir Tumblr blog.

You can see a preview of what your blog will look like if you change your theme. But this only applies to the homepage of your blog. To see what the permalink or post pages will look like, you will need to save the changes you've made.

You can refer to this post to learn how to backup your theme. In case something goes wrong or you don't like the new theme or the changes you've made, you can easily revert back to your old theme.

Here are some screenshots on how you can change your blog's theme and check out its layout and appearance:

First, go to the homepage of the blog whose theme you want to change. For this tutorial, I'll be using the Arica Tumblr Theme's demo blog as an example, so let's go there now. You can learn more about this theme on this post and this one. You can buy it here.

As you can see from the above screenshot, most blogs will have the Tumblr controls located on the upper right side of the page.

Click on the one that looks like a palette. If you hover your mouse over it, you will see the words, "Edit appearance". Clicking on that link will take you to your blog's Edit Theme page.

You can click on the Browse themes link if you want to check out the themes that are available on the Tumblr Theme Garden. Click on the Edit HTML link if you want to make your own theme or if you're using a free or paid theme that isn't available in the Theme Garden.

If you make changes to your blog's theme, the green Update Preview button will become clickable. Clicking it will cause the preview pane to the right of the Edit HMTL section to change, reflecting the changes you've made. Doing so will also cause the blue Save button to show up.

If you're happy with the changes and your blog's new look, then just click the Save button.

However, as noted above, the preview pane only shows your blog's homepage. If some of your content is hidden under a Read more or Continue reading link, then you won't be able to see the changes made to those posts.

It should also be noted that there are some elements in your theme which may now show up in the preview, but which will show up on your blog. Take Tumblr's like and reblog buttons for example.

So, to really see how a theme will look like on your blog, save the changes you've made to it then go to your blog's URL and check out its posts and permalink pages. If you don't like the changes, you can just revert back to your old theme or check out another one instead.

Hope this helps. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask :-).

Note: Screenshots from my Tumblr acount and the Arica Tumblr theme's demo blog