Tumblr (an American microblogging and social networking website) features some limitations that you as the user may not be aware of. Before we discuss these limitations, here’s a little about what Tumblr is: Tumblr is a microblogging website founded in the U.S.A by David Karp in the year 2007.
As of now, it’s under the possession of Automatic. This website allows bloggers to make their personal/private blogs, and features of the website can be accessed through a dashboard interface. With that out of the way, the website does feature some major limitations, and most users aren’t even aware of them. Even the number of posts per day is limited.
Now, you can find most of the limitations of Tumblr’s help page, but some have not been mentioned by Tumblr at all. And that’s where this article comes in; we’ll be covering almost every limitation Tumblr features, so without further ado, listed below are the limitations featured by Tumblr.
1. Primary Blogs Cannot Be Turned into Private
The first limitation that we’ll discuss is not being able to turn your primary blogs private. If for some reason, you feel that the blog you posted on the internet has some content that may not be appropriate to view, or include something you don’t want to be seen by your viewers, you won’t be able to turn your blog private.
So, once you’ve made your post public, you can’t make it private. On top of that, your post can’t be contributed to by numerous authors. But this is where Tumblr’s secondary blogs come into play. Secondary blogs can receive contributions from multiple authors; plus, you also have to option to add password protection to its content.
You can even post certain posts in the private section, but you need to select the option before posting it. Unlike primary blogs, you can post about 10 secondary blogs per day.
2. 250 Posts/Day Limit
On Tumblr, there’s a limit to the total number of posts that can be posted per day, so you can only post about 250 posts before you reach the limit. It may seem like this doesn’t apply to reblogs, or secondary posts, but the fact is, it does. Reblogs, cumulative posts on both primary and secondary blogs, they all count. After every day, the posted limit is reset, for Tumblr, they reset the limit after midnight (EST).
Once you’ve reached the limit, you can either wait for Tumblr to reset it, or queue your posts for the next day, so they’ll be automatically posted once the limit is reset, To figure out how many posts you have left, you can use the “Post Limit Checker”.
3. 50 Posts/Day Queue Limit
Yes, there’s even a limit to how many posts you can queue per day. Most bloggers use this queueing feature to avoid stacking posts, so they don’t puzzle their followers. You can queue about 50 posts each day, which seems like a reasonable amount; bear in mind that this does contribute to the 250-post limit.
With that out of the way, posts can be queued to be posted on different days, adding up to 300 posts in total. Be aware of your post limit, and how many you have left, because if you queue more than the 250 (per day) limit, you’ll lose the remaining queued posts. So, if that happens to save the remaining ones to draft, you can queue them later.
4. Optimum-res at 500X750 Pixels
To be fair, you can still post photos that exceed the optimum resolution, but they’ll be viewed in a lightbox when selected. So the best option is to keep the resolution of the photos you post to 500×750 pixels for the best quality. This is the best option if you share posts frequently on Tumblr; keeping the picture resolution “500×750” pixels won’t scale down your post.
(Note: 150 out of the 250 (per-day) limit can be photo posts)
5. Heavy GIFs Can’t Move
GIF size is also limited in a way; while you can post “heavy” GIFs, Tumblr won’t render them as one. In simple words, that means GIFs that exceed the supported size won’t move. The maximum file size that can be uploaded on Tumblr is 2 MB, and if a GIF/file exceeds that limit, Tumblr takes the first frame and turns that into a still image.
If you post GIFs quite often, it’s best if you keep the GIF size to the limit which was increased from 1 MB to 1.75 MB, and the resolution again needs to be within 500 pixels. So, in short, make sure the GIF you’re posting doesn’t exceed the file size limit; if it does, save it in drafts, and try reducing its size before posting again.
6. More Than 5 Tags Lead To Phantom Tags
The number of tags cannot exceed the limit, or they’ll turn into phantom tags. For those of you who aren’t aware of it, tags keep track of things and provide a way to discover new content. If you attach more than 5 posts to your post, only 5 of them will be “clickable”, and the rest won’t contain a link, which will make them “Phantom Tags”.
Try holding off your comments until the fifth tag, if they’re an integral part of your daily posts. You can still look up the phantom tags on the website, but it won’t be as quick and easy as a normal tag. To search these types of tags in a better way, use the URL mentioned below:
http://username.tumblr.com/tagged/insert-tagl
7. Only 20 Tags are Trackable
Some users prefer using tags to find new content, and upon searching these tags, you’ll find content related to that tag. Once you’ve tracked a tag, it’ll show you new posts related to it when you visit Tumblr again. But this function also features a limit. You can track up to 20 tags in total, and reblogged posts cannot be tracked.
And for tracking to work as intended, it’s recommended that you track only 20 tags anyways, and if you want to add a tag, try removing one that features the content you’ve lost interest in. But, if you don’t care about the post count, you may track as many as you want.
8. 10 Questions / Hour
If a user has a question or is having trouble with a particular function, they can use the “Ask” feature to contact their favorite blogger. You’ll need to enable Ask first before you can utilize it. Once you’ve done that, you can ask about 10 questions per hour, and there’s also a character limit of 500.
If you have a question that can’t wait, you can try contacting them through “Fan Mail”, but they may take longer. Fan Mail doesn’t feature a character limit though, so it can be as long as you want it to be, but as we mentioned above Fan Mail takes longer to “process”.
And you can only send Fan Mails once you’ve followed the user for more than 48 hours/2 days.
These are all the limitations you’ll face while using Tumblr. We hope you find this article useful; if you have any further queries, you can let us know in the comments down below, and we’ll try to respond to as many of you as we can!
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