#it makes me want to have sims host a block party or something especially since the weather where i live hasnt been very warm lately lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dramallamadingdang · 4 years

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Pillowfort Features.

I’ve seen some questions in various posts about the differences between Pillowfort and Tumblr, so I thought I’d make a post of what I’ve observed. Bear in mind that I’m a new Pillowfort user, so any more experienced users should feel free to chime in if I’ve gotten something wrong or if you have something to add. Basically, the platform is attempting to be a fusion of the good things of both Tumblr and more traditional journaling formats (i.e., LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, etc.), with an emphasis on fostering community that Tumblr just doesn’t have. I’ll break it down between what I see as good and not-so-good about Pillowfort. You may have a different opinion about whether something is a good or not-so-good thing, of course. :) And do bear in mind that the platform is still in beta, so features will likely be tweaked/added, especially now that it's in a more open release.

Good stuff:

Direct, drag-and-drop image uploading. Just like Tumblr, without have to create links to images in order to have images in posts, and no dealing with flaky 3rd-party image hosts that might decide to blur all your images next week.

Reblogging, liking, and commenting on posts, as with Tumblr.

Threaded commenting. Meaning, you can reply to someone’s replies on posts without having to “mention” them. The comments on posts appear in proper threads, with nested indents, and the person you reply to gets a notification about the comment on their dash sidebar, so they’ll know you’ve said something and can just click a link to go to what you’ve said and reply to it if they want. This is virtually the same functioning as on LJ, et. al.

Journaling-style communities. Meaning, you have your own individual blog, but you can use it as a jumping-off point to create or join any number of communities you like. So, your own blog can be just about Sims, but you can join communities of something else that you’re a fan of, and you can make posts directly to those communities. So, if you want to post about many different things but keep your own journal about one specific topic, you can easily do that via communities, without having to create separate sideblogs and/or logging in and out of different accounts to do different things. You can have one account (and one dash) for everything.

No corporate ownership, entirely user-supported. This means no advertising at the moment, though that could change if the platform takes off. It also means that it behooves users to donate if they use the platform (and if they can, of course) because this would decrease the likelihood of having to make some features not-free in the future. (Everything is free, so far as I can see, at the moment, unless you join without an invite code, in which case it’ll cost you $5 or the equivalent in your local currency, of course.)

I'm not sure, but I don't think there's an anonymous ask system? There is a private messaging system, but I'm not sure if you can use it anonymously and/or without having a Pillowfort account. Of course, this may be a not-so-good thing as well, particularly for people who are extremely socially anxious, but if I'm right it also means no anonymous lecturing/haranguing from other users when you post something they don't like.

NSFW is OK. Which could also be seen as not-so-good, of course. However, people who post the stuff are supposed to flag any NSFW posts as such, and you can opt in or out of seeing such posts if you are over 18. (You can’t opt-in if you’re under 18...unless you lie about your age when you sign up, of course.) Since it is (currently) a small platform with a small amount of users, I don't think bots are a concern.

Blacklisting You can create lists of words/phrases to blacklist, so that you won’t see posts containing -- in either the tags or the text of posts -- the words/phrases you block on your dash. For example, if you don’t want to see posts about Sims 4, you can block that phrase and, assuming that people have tagged properly, you will see no Sims 4 posts. This gives you more control over what you do and don’t see on your dash. On Tumblr, you can do this with 3rd-party extensions like X-Kit, of course, but it’s a native feature of Pillowfort’s platform.

More formatting options for text and cuts on posts and comments. Among other things, you can change font sizes, and you can have multiple cuts on one post, so you have more options for setting up your posts. Tumblr lacks this, and it annoys me, but maybe it doesn't annoy other people. :)

Not-So-Good Stuff:

No queueing posts or the ability to save posts as drafts. Honestly? This is the only thing that’s bugging me about the platform. If this is added, I’ll be a completely happy camper.

No themes. So, if you’re into having a fancy format for your personal blog, you can’t do that...yet. Pretty sure that’s in the hopper, from what I’ve read, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ll have to pay a premium for it.

Possible server slow-downs and whatnot now that there will be more users as the platform is moving towards being out of beta.

No chatting. For me, this is actually a very, very good thing, as I’m really not very fond of chatting. I’m guessing more people would see this as a not-so-good thing, but maybe I’m wrong about that.

#i promise this will be my last hard pillowfort-pushing post #i just really like the format #and would love to have a strong active old-skool Sims community over there

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