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#5 anons in my inbox asking the same question after not reading my faq
buglaur · 1 year
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tutorial contents:
1 ‣ gshade & photoshop actions 2 ‣ template or cropping & colouring 3 ‣ notifs & pop-ups
okay hi! i have a really old editing tutorial from back in january that i've been linking people to, but it's pretty outdated by now. i also keep getting anons asking about the same things, which is fine, but i always have to go searching for the post explaining it, so having it all in one place will be a lot more convenient lol
i use a ☠ copy of photoshop cc 2017 to edit my screenshots, however the majority of everything i'm doing also works on photopea
photopea is an online version of photoshop that's 100% free and works very well! i can't recommend it enough, it's fantastic
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first things first, you're going to need some screenshots to edit. for the sake of this tutorial i'll be working with this one of raffy:
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in all honesty, gshade will do most of the work for you. of course it's not needed, but i definitely don't think i could live without it! in this screenshot i used sunset n' vinyl by nesurii
when opening the screenshot, the first thing i do is run it through 2 photoshop actions:
butter action by early-grape
smooth sharp (no topaz) by poolbrop
to add actions in photoshop go:
windows > actions > the 4 lines at the upper right corner of the newly opened window > load actions > your downloads folder > open up the .atn files!
if you're using photopea, as far as i'm aware you can't use photoshop actions, but i've found that 'filter > stylize > oil paint' and 'filter > sharpen > smart sharpen' have a very similar effect when using the right settings. try these:
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i like these two actions because they smooth everything out nicely, but keep it sharp at the same time! i always run butter before i run smooth sharp, however butter may leave you with 2 layers. make sure to merge these layers before running smooth sharp to achieve the full effect.
here's a before and after (of the photoshop action):
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from here you can move on to step 2
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before anything else i want to share the template that i use to make editing a lot faster. you don't need to use it but it's definitely made things a lot easier for me! it's a .psd file and will work perfectly in photopea
download (simfileshare)
if you're using the template you can skip right on to the next section, as it's already cropped to the right size and has the colouring folder included. just drag your screenshot into it and resize to fit the height.
if you're not using it, crop your edited screenshot to:
1707 width x 1280 height
then adjust the colours to your liking. it always varies slightly depending on the picture but my regular process for each screenshot would be:
up the saturation by 8%
up the lightness by 3%
up the contrast by 12%
all of this can be done by looking in the 'images > adjustments' tab
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you should end up with something similar to this!
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if you want to add a moodlet or social interaction or anything similar, it's all the same process. what you'll need is a screenshot of it straight from the game. i just press the 'c' key to capture them! i'll be working with these two:
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for the blue notification i'm going to select it using the box select tool. try to get it as exact as possible. one you have it selected
for photoshop users:
click on the 'select and mask...' option located at the top
adjust the global refinements at the side as follows:
smooth: 70 feather: 0.0px contrast: 50% shift edge: 0%
for photopea users:
go to select > modify > smooth
set it to 15
select 'ok' and press 'ctrl + c' to copy it, then 'ctrl + v' to paste it into your screenshot. adjust the size and position and you should end up with something like this:
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next you want to add the transparent border around the notification. if you're using my editing template, right click on the reference notif in the layers tab and select 'copy layer style' (photopea > 'layer style > copy'). from there you can paste that layer style onto your own notif through the layers tab.
if you're not using the template, here's how to set it up on photoshop:
right click your notification layer and select 'blending options'
under styles, tick the checkboxes for stroke and drop shadow
input these settings:
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on photopea, it should be more or less the same. repeat the exact same process with the social menu option, but instead of selecting it with the box select tool, use the magic select tool. in the end you should end out with this!
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from here you're finished! thanks for reading! go to file and export as png
if you've got questions never hesitate to ask, just make sure to read the faq in my pinned. i might edit this post soon to include the gen intro traits and aspirations bit, but this is all for now. hope it helps, my editing process post has been in need of a revamp for a very long time. i haven't proof-read this so apologies for any mistakes!
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14dayswithyou · 9 months
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it's been ages sai and you still haven't answered any of my questions?
✦゜ANSWERED: Despite only visiting Tumblr 2-3 times a week, I get over 10+ asks daily and almost 90 asks weekly.
60% are from people who actually take the time to read the pinned post and follow the rules (hence getting their asks answered), 20% are repeated/FAQ questions, 10% are anons asking for NSFW, 5% are people sending their reactions to my posts (I'd prefer if you left a reply on the post instead!! ;v; /nm), 3% are people mistaking me for other yan blogs, and 1% are rude anons trying to start fake drama in the indie yan VN community.
Please understand that it's only me who's managing this blog, and I can't get through everyone's questions most of the time — whether it's by repeating the same thing over and over again, searching for and linking posts where their question has already been answered, or simply because your ask got buried amongst the others.
If you'd like a better chance at me answering your questions; please, please, please read my pinned post and search this blog before you send in anything! I know it can be frustrating waiting aaaaaages for a response, but please be considerate of what I have to deal with on my end as well ;v; I don't want your question to sound lacklustre or boring, but I also don't want to repeat the same things I've said a million times and bore everyone else who's reading jggkddfkg
Also I know it's the bare minimum, but please be respectful of a person's boundaries as well. I've explicitly stated in my pinned post that I'm not comfortable writing about a lot of darker topics (sc, sh, major death, etc.), yet people still try to send in asks about it anyways T_T Please don't do that. /lh /nm
EDIT: Also!! I usually clear out my inbox every few weeks or so!! Constantly seeing "300+" in my inbox is rather daunting and I'd rather not have that kind of anxiety looming over me all da time ;w; So if I don't get to your question after a few weeks, just send it in again!
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wowheadquarters · 5 years
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I have a little idea for the 1k followers. As I followed this blog recently, I was wondering about his history. If you feel like it, could do a summary? Like, why did you start it? Your first joy/disappointment. Any thing that we haven't see that you might want to share. Absolutely anything about the blog and you. (If you're comfortable with it of course)
This is a very good idea, lovable anon, I’ll try.
History:
It was 17th November 2015, somewhen in Tuesday afternoon. I don’t remember what exactly sparked the idea of starting this blog, but I can say for certain that it was heavily inspired by the @bleachlists (which is, if you ask me, better humor than canon Bleach). And thus the first list was born.
(I never expected this blog to get famous. Or followers besides bots for that matter. I hoped, maybe, for a little circle of, like, 5 actual readers. I certainly didn’t think I would keep this blog for longer than 4 months. That’s how it is with me usually, I have bursts of inspiration but lack long-term dedication. The fact that this blog is still going is a miracle.)
At first the lists were written in the “chat” style. I had to make up my own prompts, because the two followers or so only hearted the posts but didn’t interact with me at all otherwise. That’s why the activity was very irregular at the time, I was writing when I was inspired and thus a month could pass without a word from me and then boom, three posts in a week. Additionally, I wasn’t writing only lists, but also short stuff, kind of like “Slice of life from Azeroth.” Of these the most famous is Chromie and Dragons and in my opinion the best one and not enough appreciated one is Kel’thuzad’s Heard Of Sylvanas’ Plans.
The first breakthrough came in January 2016 when an anon, who made me happy so much that I called them “lovable” in the list and kept on doing so for all following anons, requested the very first requested list, the Care of Babies list. For a long time this has been the list with the most notes. Now there are too many lists to keep count and Tumblr doesn’t do “the best of your posts,” but still it is one of the most popular posts I have and along with the Chromie and Dragons it still pops up in my notifications. Around April 2016 I had stable enough queue of requested lists to stop making up my own prompts, thus I could completely rely on prompts from followers, most of them from anons.
Another important milestone was August of the same year: First of all, I came up with a posting schedule (Fridays and Mondays, but two months later I understood that was too fast - It ate the prompts faster than they were prompted, and I wasn’t managing it). Then Taedal was added to the lists, at first he was meant as a joke, as I keep reminding him and everyone else, and somehow it happened he stayed here. Additionally, Varian and Vol’jin’s deaths were acknowledged, putting Anduin on the list. Soon after, Garrosh joined in from beyond the veil to annoy Vol’jin in his afterlife.
About this time the blog began to create it’s own lore (and not only the L.O.R.E.), and I even had the (short-spanned) will to mystify people that Taedal is going to get his own expansion. I even had a sideblog dedicated to Taedal (in fact, it was Taedal’s own blog, intentioned as a RP blog but somehow it never…got much traffic) and even a wiki. The wiki still exists! I like to think of this as the Golden Age of HeadQuarters verse, when I even got fanfics on AO3 and a dozen of drawings for this blog even. This blog lives in an alternate universe where there is a new isle west of Pandaria and Garrosh adopted 37 dead children in the afterlife and learned to be a better person (not necessarily the same as good person, but let’s not lose hope).
I don’t remember exactly on what occasion in the 2017 the Interviews were added, but they were the first not-list which were requestable (that is, they weren’t the short filler stuff I used to make before). I think it was to celebrate the first 100 followers but I might be wrong. The first Interview was held with Taedal, by my decision, and ever since then the Interviews went by request every twenty days, moved to every other Wednesday, later as of not-so-recently, every other Tuesday. In the history of the Interviews, there happened to be only one which wasn’t published, because nobody asked any questions. (It was Interview with Kel’thuzad, pt. 3, and I jokingly said that “ when we met, the Archlich thought I used the Interview as an excuse to go out for a date with him and things went awkward” which resulted in this Top N list).
From there things went rather fast. To here actually. As a celebration for 600 followers (or was it 500? Memory fails me) I began writing Top N, sort of as of a filler in between the Interviews, so actually now this blog has moved back to the biweekly posting scheme very close to the one from 2016. Earlier this year (2018), there was a list about attack on not-Theramore, where I made up a character especially for my timeline speculations - because timeline shenanigans, it is a bronze dragon, and because it is representing me, the character is called Authormi. That is a very poor play on the word “author” (because I am the author of this blog) and the “-ormu/ormi” suffix characteristic for the Bronze dragonflight. Coincidentally, it was also the first time I have referred to myself with any sort of name here on this blog (besides the FAQ where is a link to my main blog) and I am using it since.
An important part of the blog is post maintenance when I try to at least twice a month (but if I’m very responsible, then every Friday evening) go thorough the blog, update the Interview, Top N, and L.O.R.E. pages, delete old request asks and so on. However, over the years a good number of not-request asks had piled up in here. They were…not filtered here and the blog seemed messy with them. Which is why Authormi vs. Inbox tag was created and from time to time when too many not-request asks pile here, I dump them into these post as a sort of archive. I admit that it is not, uh… ideal in case you are looking for something specific, but it keeps the blog clean. Well, cleaner.
The most recent new development of the blog was the addition of the Allied Races leaders - Alleria Windrunner for the Void Elves/Ral’dorei, High Exarch Turalyon for the Lightforged, Jaina Proudmoore for Kul Tiras, First Arcanist Thalyssra for the Nightborne Elves/Shal’dorei, Mayla Highmountain for the Highmountain Tauren Tribes, Overlord Geya’rah for the Mag’har Orcs, and Princess Talanji for the Zandalari. The choice of the leaders is taken from the information on the Allied Races from Wowpedia.
Speaking of Wowpedia, it is my primal source, besides personal experience, when it comes to writing the lists. I used to rely on WoWWiki, but, uh… that one turned a bit messy a couple of years ago and I never get around to check on it now. When I don’t know something, I look it up on Wowpedia. If it’s not on Wowpedia, I consider it a Free Real Estate lore wildcard, which means I can bullshit it out as long as it is lore/character consistent. I pride myself on giving the characters (leaders) some actual character, because, now correct me if I am wrong, Blizzard writers confuse character personality for that wind flapping pole. I am not saying that I am writing “good” or “pure” characters. They have faults, they are prejudiced, foolhardy, depressed (in not romantic ways), mean, holding grudges. Some, like Garrosh, Genn or Gallywix, are more straightforward in their flaws than others, but I am pouring a cup of sour traits to everyone here. (What I am saying here is: Be critical when you read your favorite leader’s opinion. They might not be right and/or honest.)
Overview, as of today, Monday 19th November 2018:
Published 174 lists, 24 more in the queue + bunch of requests hanging in the asks among the posts. (Somebody needs to do their maintenance)
Published 25 Interviews, 9 more in the queue + some in the asks too, I think I saw one request or two.
Published 21 Top N lists (most favoured number for N is 10), 0 in the queue.
1009 followers, woooo! I love you all. Except the 1009th one who is a porn bot, you can go fuck yourself. ‘Xcuse me. 1008 followers now!
The blog is 3 years and 2 days old. Happy birthday!
Authormi’s pick of lists to read (besides the one linked):
What they say far too often: Vintage one, so you see what the old style was like.
What do the think of the heroes: Meta one!
Their pick for a movie night: There were no guesses on what movie is a Ayeroth-verse of what Earth-verse. I am proud of some of those titles.
No Orc Invasion: The first timeline speculation, which I really lvoed. If somebody was to write that AU, I’d read it actually.
If they could erase one person from existence: Another timeline speculation. I like making those!
Draw the squad: Maybe you could draw the squad?
Watching Les Misérables: This one was an especially important journey for me, because this list is why I saw the musical in the first place. Later I read the book too (I love the book), got into some Les Mis RP, made some very good friends out of that… Yeah, I owe this one lovable anon who requested it a lot. (More or less, now I am also a professional Valjean RPer, except I don’t get paid for it. Whenever somebody who knows me joins a new RP server and they haven’t got Valjean, they usually ask me. Like… what? How? Why? Why do you all think I am a good Valjean? Why- Never mind, this is a Warcraft blog. Moving on.)
Spell of the Violent Tongue: The first time it has been brought to my attention that I think about the characters in a way a lot fo other people doesn’t, because this list surprised a lot of readers, and by surprised I mean hit into feels so hard they complained to me. I talked about it with my mum later (family support is an important thing for me and mum is fan of Warcraft), and I’ve been told that “I treat the characters maybe a bit too realistically.” PSA for everybody: Warcraft is a story about broken people and violent racism.
Their God Tier: For the people who are fan of Homestuck too. (Homestuck itself is good. The fandom is weird)
Garrosh’s 37 ghost children: By which they became more or less canon on this blog, a regular stuff which is to be counted with.
How do they insult people: The most recent popular post.
Interview with Azshara: My personally favorite thing I have ever written for this blog, as in, I don’t think I am going to peak it.
Interview with Luxien: Because I want to press Taedal’s story and “expansion” to everybody, read the interview with his older evil sister.
Top 10 favorite characters: I suppose you are a bit curious who my faves are, so here you go.
Top 10 changes to the story I would do: By heart I am a storywriter. I give such things a lot of thoughts. But as I’ve mentioned earlier, lack of dedication is… making things hard.
Other cool stuff to check out (maybe?):
Taedal’s expansion wiki, of course. I have a lot of thoughts about that world and story and… I would love to went about it a bit, too.
This very cool fanfic on AO3.
The official portrait of Taedal.
The official portrait of Authormi.
The description of this blog, as taken from my personal blog:
wowheadquarters (WoW HeadQuarters, World of Warcraft Headquarters, WoWHQ) is by far my most popular blog, despite being younger than SNTS. I add new content twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday. I never thought I’d make more than 10 posts in total, but there we go. I admit that the original idea comes from bleachlists, but it has sort of evolved since then. I am trying to keep the blog not contradicting the canon, but some things in the HeadQuartersverse might not always agree with the official lore
Final words from Authormi:
Oh my fucking god, this is really unbelieveable that this thing is still going on. I never expected this blog to live beyond a month. I never thought I’d get more than 20 followers. I have 1000 now? That’s… is that Tumblr-famous? I’ve never had this many followers. Do you all read this? All the stuff? Am I shaping your view on the Warcraft universe? This is too much power for one person to have.
You want to know what’s actually my happiest memory connected to this blog? It was actually some time back (because my memory is a mess, I can’t tell you how far back), I had a really, really stuffed couple of weeks. A lot of to do, but also mentally exhausted, I was in a bad place for a bit there. Usually I am able to kick myself in the ass, sit down and make up the list on the go, even if it is bound to be miserable wreck of text, I write it. Sometimes when I am super done and tired, I write it on Saturday evening and pretend it’s Friday and so far everyone’s been so kind and there’s been no comment to that. But in those two or three weeks I just… couldn’t. Even clinging to this self-made structure was too exhausting. I wasn’t on Tumblr for basically the whole time (my main blog was fuelled by the queue). Sometimes when I am in a good place, I write lists in advance and schedule them, but at that time no such a thing took place, so this blog went silent without announcement and I couldn’t care less. When I finally found it in me to come online, my inbox greeted me with various people who were asking me if I was okay and whether or not I am still alive written in a very worried manner. And you know… reading that helped me a lot at the moment. It was a reminder that somebody here cares for me and cares for what I do and… Yeah, it was a damn motivation to get myself together a bit and write stuff and do some stuff. Since then I’m trying to announce in advance if I think I am not going to make it, and even then I am still trying to write the list as soon as possible when I am fit to.
A story for your amusement on this “write it when possible” note. This summer I was with my 4 younger siblings (my oldest sister, still younger than I, turned 18 last Thursday, the youngest sibling who also happens to be a sister is 4, but I don’t live with all the siblings, blah blah divorced parents blah blah, not related) and dad and grandfather in the beautiful village (or town?) of Au in Austria. I took my old laptop with me (I’ve got a new one recently) which had battery that could live on it’s own for, like 10 minutes. The house we were living in had no wi-fi, but there was a village-wide public wi-fi… which din’t reach the house. The nearest was at the bus stop, but that one was shaky, and the good reliable hotspot was at the park, 10 minutes of walk away from the house. Now, it was nearly Friday and I needed to post the list. So I wrote it int he laptop’s notepad, then turned off its life support, took it and dashed across all of Au to the wi-fi hotspot, formatted the document into a list, and hit post. About 2 minutes later, the laptop died.
I am thinking about making another blog directly meant for the asks, request or not, and those would stay there. What do you all think? Maybe I would lose things there, I am quite capable of it.
I’d love to talk about Taedal and his demons and his entire story a bit more. But I haven’t got, like, a reason to do so. I am sort of insecure in this matter, I sort of have the feeling that nobody really cares for Taedal here. “What are you thinking, a ‘good demon’ OC?” (Ask me about Taedal and his faction and the Broken and Distant Worlds expansion. I have an expansion and half planned in my head.)
There is some kind of an expectation or anticipation in me to have someone from Blizz discovering this blog and some big consequences happening. I am not sure whether I want it to happen or not. I mean, I am a bit… too-critical of their work in attempt to please the crowd here. (It’s easy to search for flaws when you take the good stuff as the norm. You are actually doing a good job, Blizzard, in the terms of game developing and marketing. But there is that one post going around which says that Warcraft lore/story is written by 9 people who cannot talk to each other. In this spirit, I am sure that there are 4 people writing charcter psychological profiles who don’t know of each other’s existence. Your animation is a snack, though.)
Wow. I suck at summaries. This is as brief as it gets.
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inky-thoughts · 6 years
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How to Organize a Zine 101 #8
Hi there!
As I’m currently covering the whole application process, today I’ll talk about
Good FAQ Pages
They are basically the backbone of your zine’s internet performance if you don’t have a full info page about it, and generally just good to have.
FAQ, for everyone who isn’t familiar with the term, is an abbreviation of Frequently Asked Questions, it’s most common use is for troubleshooting sections etc. because the admins of the website are tired of answering the same question over and over again.
And believe me, there will be a lot of people who will ask the same questions over and over again, despite the fact that there are ten asks with the exact same question right on the first page of your blog. It happens and there isn’t much you can do about it except either ignoring the repetitive asks at some point, comment with a snarky remark that you already answered that question for the nth time and yes please read our FAQ first PLEASE and thank you, or copy-pasting the answer from a previous ask.
If you haven’t gotten a bunch of asks before the application process when you just introduced the zine, at the very least when you start to take applications you will get bombarded with questions. It easily is probably the busiest time of the zine because everyone wants to know as much as possible about your zine, how the chances are that they’ll get taken, what your requirements are ... yadda yadda. With your FAQ you’ll try to cover as many (plausible and actually valid) questions before anyone actually asked these - despite the name of “frequently asked questions.” However, that doesn’t mean once you have your FAQ page, you don’t need to reply to asks at all as there are actually some very important questions that you probably didn’t think of yourself.
So with this very long intro, we finally get to the actual topic of this post.
First and foremost, you should think about these two questions throughout the entire time:
What do applicants want to know about this zine? and
What do potential cutomers/supporters want to know about this zine?
Things I believe you should cover:
Who are the mods/admins of this zine? Introduce yourselves, perhaps add your roles/responsibilities and motivation as to why you want to have the zine in first place so people know who they need to deal with. (It is a common red flag for zines when the mods don’t put the info out there as nobody knows who the mod actually is, and that’s just plain shady.)
Where is the zine based? Kind of optional but important if you plan to sell physical copies so people can estimate shipping costs and prepare saving up for the zine.
What is the topic of the zine, is there an additional theme?
Physical or e-Zine?
What else will your zine entail (merch)?
Charity, for profit, or free? If not free, how will contributors be compensated? If Charity, where does the money go?
Any specific requirements your applicants should meet? Do they need to have one portfolio piece meet specific standarts? Do you want only POC contributors, or queer, disabled, ... because of the zine’s theme? Do they need to be at least 18?
Where can you find the zine’s schedule? Everyone wants to know if they’ve got time for your zine.
What is and what is not allowed in your zine? Explain how explicit you allow the content to be, what your zine’s main focus is supposed to be, what forms of art (e.g. comics, photography, etc.) /writing (e.g. fiction, poetry, etc.) are allowed, and what is not.
How many contributors do you plan to accept? This is so applicants can estimate how good their chances are and for possible supporters to know what they can expect from your zine.
Who will get an e-mail and when? Applicants want to know how long they need to wait for their acceptance/rejection e-mails, or if there even will be any rejection letters.
Any already known zine specs? Especially for writers it’s important to know what their wordcount limits are, and artists also like to know how big their canvas is supposed to be.
Where can you apply? Link to your application posts or directly to the forms!
If you have anything you think is important to your zine and not covered by these questions, just put it on your FAQ page!
Now to the more stylistic side of the FAQs:
Keep your tone professional. Be polite and try to keep relatively neutral and positive/friendly. You want to convince people to work with you, or to buy/support your product.
Be honest. If you are unsure about a specific point or simply haven’t heard back from others who supply you with that information, be honest about that, or don’t include it in your FAQ at all (though I wouldn’t really recommend that either.)
Be cohesive. This was one of our biggest mistakes as the application rules on our form were much more lax than on our blog. Don’t do that. Triple-check all of your facts and statements before you announce anything. It’ll save you a lot of trouble.
Think about a good structure. It doesn’t matter whether your FAQ is more of an info sheet or actually [Question] - [Answer] styled, the more important thing is that it’s well-structured. If you have all your questions/info you want to put on there, seperate it into sections so that people can find their needed info more easily (e.g. info for applying artists and applying writers would be easiest to seperate).
Make it easy to find. Some websites have the talent that you’re looking for information X and get linked to page Y which links you to page Z which links you to page A which links you to page Y, without ever actually giving you information X. Don’t do that. You can navigate a good website with as few clicks as possible. Also remember that mobile tumblr doesn’t show tumblr pages! To evade masses on questions you already answered in your FAQ, make your FAQ a tumblr post instead of a page. It’s annoying but definitely effective.
If you know enough HTML, put your FAQ prior to your ask box so people are forced to read it before they ask stupid questions.
Remember to keep your FAQ up-to-date with ANYTHING you’ve got going on. Fix broken links. If requirements change, put it on there IMMEDIATELY.
Also remember that while there will be repetitive asks, there also will be questions you actually never asked yourself but might be quite important nevertheless. If you have such a question sitting in your inbox, don’t hesitate to add that answer to the FAQ.
I think that’s to it about FAQ! I’m sorry this took so long to post, I had written almost everything quite fast after the last installment but after that I never really got the time to finish it off. But here we are!
Also if there are any topics you really want to be covered in this series, don’t hesitate to tell me so! My ask box is also open for anons.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
If you enjoyed the read, please consider tipping me a coffee!
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