From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:
– don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.
– archive everything on your blog you want to keep
– tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.
– tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.
– go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.
– support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.
Okay, folks. So. Tumblr’s jumped the shark in a big way, and I’m not even just talking about indiscriminately blocking all “adult” content on a platform that IS, in fact, primarily 18+.
Many blogs, like the wonderful @blackkatmagic , that are not especially NSFW have vanished.
(And I for one LIKE being able to go to curated porn blogs run by actual people and have a chance of finding stuff to my taste, it was one of the things that kept me on this hellsite, but that’s another issue entirely.)
I know lots of people are talking about migrating, but none of us are sure to where yet. Pillowfort seems to be an option, some people are talking about Twitter. But for now, it’s a mess, and even if we knew where we were going, it’s often a huge process, and a lot of us have stuff on tumblr that ONLY exists there.
One possible quick solution to save your blogs, both NSFW and personal, is to import it to WordPress. I found this solution through from frantic googling on how to save an entire blog, text posts an all. There are several apps for downloading all the pictures from a tumblr, (Plently for Windows, but only a few paid ones for mac, of which Tumbelog Picture Downloader is working for me so far) but this is the only solution I’ve seen so far that allows you to save EVERYTHING. I downloaded my NSFW blog in like 10 min. My regular blog, which is significantly larger, is in the process of importing, but I don’t anticipate any problems. I will, of course, update you if I have any.
This tutorial I found worked really easily. http://quickguide (.) tumblr (.) com/post/39780378703/backing-up-your-tumblr-blog-to-wordpress
I put parenthesis around the .’s like we’re back in FF-Hell, just in case tumblr’s new thing about outgoing links kicks in. You know what to do.
To break it down, just in case:
Sign up for a WordPress.com account at wordpress (.) com/start
You’ll have to create an account, with your email, a username, and a password. They should send you a confirmation email immediately, check it, activate it, and you’re good to go.
On the site, it will ask you for a site name. That page asks you a bunch of other information too, but you only have to fill out the site name.
Then you have to give your site a URL. If you’re lucky, your tumblr URL is still available, if not you’ll have to come up with another one, sorry.
It will tell you if that option is still available for free.
Then it will ask you to pick a plan. Free is really good enough, I swear.
Now you’re set up! You can import your tumblr!
The only differences from the linked tutorial are that the Import button is now on the first level menu, not in tools.
Hit Import, then you have to follow the link for “other importers” at the bottom, to find the option for Tumblr.
Then you’ll have to sign in with tumblr, using your normal tumblr credentials. You’ll be redirected there automatically.
You’ll have to allow WordPress permissions on your blog.
Then your blogs, including all your sideblogs, will show up in wordpress.
Hit import, wait a WHILE depending on the size of your blog, and you’re done!
ALSO!!
I made my NSFW blog private for now, since I don’t know WP’s policy on NSFW.
This means that to access it, someone has to have an account and request access. But hey, part of our problem on this hellsite has been people going places they aren’t wanted, so I don’t personally see this as a bad thing. They can send a request from the landing site on your blog, you get an email, click a link in the email, and PRESTO, they have access.
To make it private, go to Settings > Reading > Site Visibility. Go back and check, it took me changing the setting twice for it to actually stick.
tl;dr, you can import your entire blog to wordpress in just a few steps.
I’m going to tag the hell out of this, in no particular order. PLEASE reblog this and spread the word so people know it’s an option. If you’re having trouble, PM me, and I’m happy to help.
Moe's Backup Blog 