Untitled Themes
Untitled Themes

Untitled Themes

The official blog for Untitled Themes and Level82. Theme updates, news, tutorials and support.

Stacky 5’s large post feature

Stacky 5, like its predecessors, uses Masonry by Desandro which aligns the posts left to right then stacks the posts beneath like bricks, thus creating columns. From Stacky 4 up, the ability to control individual post sizes was added making columns wider, however in Stacky 5, controlling post sizes is easier than before.

In the appearance settings of the theme you will see an option that reads “Large post tag”, by default ‘large’ is the set tag, when creating or reblogging a post add ‘large’ to the tags (without the quotes) and the post will appear twice the size of normal posts on your blog (filling two columns). You may change the tag to whatever you want, if you regularly tag your posts with the same thing you may wish to use that, for example, if your blog has many landscape photos (tagged ‘landscape’) then you may set it as ‘landscape’.

For more features included in Stacky 5 and other releases, follow the Untitled Themes blog. You can install Stacky 5 here.

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Installing custom themes the easy way

‘Custom’ referring to themes that require copying and pasting such as Stacky 5, Stacky 4 and Incontext 2.

Since Tumblr introduced the new customize page just about everyone has encountered an issue, from odd refreshing and theme updating to not resetting a theme’s default settings. The best workaround is to not use the new customize page altogether, Tumblr conveniently kept the old version online, which UT recommends you use instead.

The old version can be accessed here (this will go to the old customize page for your main blog) or by adding ‘-classic’ without the quotes to www.tumblr.com/customize so it looks like www.tumblr.com/customize-classic/[Blog Name].

To install a custom theme using the old customize page, follow these steps:

  1. Click ‘Theme’ from the top menu bar and click ‘Enable custom HTML’ (if it’s already enabled then move onto step 2).
  2. Select all the code in the box and delete it, paste the HTML for the custom theme into the blog and click ‘Update Preview’ (not ‘Save’), the page should refresh with the new theme, it may look messed up but don’t worry.
  3. Click ‘Appearance’ in the menu and click ‘Reset defaults’, the page should refresh again with the default appearance settings for the theme enabled.
  4. Customize the theme and/or click ‘Save’ (as soon as you click ‘Save’ the page will redirect to the new customize page, this is ok because the theme should be properly installed and you may customize it from there) or ‘Save + Close’.

The old version of the customize page does not load all javascript so posts won’t stack if the theme is Masonry based, Twitter won’t appear, etc.

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Stacky V.4 - Custom post sizes

If you use the alternate version of Stacky Version 3 Stacky version 4, you may not be aware that you can control the size of all posts* using tags. 

* Text, quotes, links, chats and photos only. Videos, audio posts and photosets are currently set to a static size (l - large, 500 pixels).

  1. s - Small, the smallest setting at 250 pixels.
  2. n - Normal, the normal post size of photos, audio posts, videos and photosets at 500px.
  3. l - Large, at 750px it takes up three columns.
  4. xl - Extra Large, the largest at 1000px, this takes up 4 columns and on most computer screen resolutions, this will occupy the entire width of your page.

Please note that you cannot use two at the same time, if you do it will choose the smallest size override. Enjoy!

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Creating A Letter Title Applies to Incontext Version 2. Ever since the launch of Incontext, people have asked how to create the transparent title in the theme’s preview image. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible without Photoshop and knowledge of how to use it, however one of the features included in Incontext Ver. 2 is the ability to create the title with ease. Here’s how… With Incontext version 2 installed (install here) on your blog, go to Customize. Open the Appearance menu and scroll to the bottom where you’ll find “Sidebar letter title:” with a text field next to it. In a plain text editor such as Notepad (on Windows) or TextEdit (on Mac) write the letters that will spell your the title with spaces between them, for example mine is ‘Andrew’ so it looks like A N D R E W, then enclose each letter with <span> so it looks something like <span>A</span> <span>N</span> <span>D</span> <span>R</span> <span>E</span> <span>W</span>. Between the letters of the title place random letter, to begin with it doesn’t matter which letters you choose, do not enclose these letters with <span> but make sure there are spaces between them, this should look like <span>A</span>  F P O B K R <span>N</span> X etc. Copy and paste it in the text field in the appearance menu, then click the blue box with “Appearance” written in it so the menu closes and updates the preview.  Now you’re required to experiment to get the lines the same width using different letters. Keep clicking the blue box to update the preview. As soon as you have the right balance click Save or Save + Close. It requires trial and error but the finished result looks good.  Install Incontext Version 2 here.

Creating A Letter Title

Applies to Incontext Version 2.

Ever since the launch of Incontext, people have asked how to create the transparent title in the theme’s preview image. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible without Photoshop and knowledge of how to use it, however one of the features included in Incontext Ver. 2 is the ability to create the title with ease. Here’s how…

  1. With Incontext version 2 installed (install here) on your blog, go to Customize.
  2. Open the Appearance menu and scroll to the bottom where you’ll find “Sidebar letter title:” with a text field next to it.
  3. In a plain text editor such as Notepad (on Windows) or TextEdit (on Mac) write the letters that will spell your the title with spaces between them, for example mine is ‘Andrew’ so it looks like A N D R E W, then enclose each letter with <span> so it looks something like <span>A</span> <span>N</span> <span>D</span> <span>R</span> <span>E</span> <span>W</span>.
  4. Between the letters of the title place random letter, to begin with it doesn’t matter which letters you choose, do not enclose these letters with <span> but make sure there are spaces between them, this should look like <span>A</span>  F P O B K R <span>N</span> X etc.
  5. Copy and paste it in the text field in the appearance menu, then click the blue box with “Appearance” written in it so the menu closes and updates the preview. 
  6. Now you’re required to experiment to get the lines the same width using different letters. Keep clicking the blue box to update the preview.
  7. As soon as you have the right balance click Save or Save + Close.

It requires trial and error but the finished result looks good. 

Install Incontext Version 2 here.

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How to show more or less posts on your blog

This tutorial applies to all themes, but Stacky Ver.1, Stacky, Stacky Pro and Sarah’s Theme users will find this most useful. Stacky Ver.1.1 and Stacky may require you to increase the number of posts to allow infinite scrolling to work successfully.

Read More

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Adding more links to the menus

(The tutorial applies to Lynx, 8 Guitars, Stacky (version 1 to 3), Insomnia, Sam’s Theme, Bulletins, Curator and Incontext).

If you would like to add more links to your blog’s menu, it’s easier than you may think and it doesn’t require enabling custom HTML (which I do not recommend), here is a very simple tutorial.

  1. In Customize click Pages in the menu.
  2. Click “Add new page”.
  3. Select a URL (for example ‘imsupernova.tumblr.com/photos’).
  4. If you would like to redirect to an external site (say for example Flickr) select ‘Redirect’ from the drop down.
  5. Choose the address (for example ‘http://www.flickr.com/photos/astichbury’).
  6. Check the box “Show a link to this page” and give it a name (for example ‘Photos’)

Done, the link will show in the menu. If you would like to put a link to your Twitter account all you need to do is enable Twitter under the ‘Service’ menu (this only applies to Stacky).

Still unsure? Ask.

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