Static Previews

It was a surprise to me how often I get questions about static previews from how to what. Hopefully this will help confused theme users and makers out there. I not only explain what they are and why theme makers need to use theme more but how to create them.

What are they?

• Since tumblr tends to crack down on ‘URL hoarding’ and not theme stealing theme makers who have a lot of themes have recently used static previews as an alternative.
  
  Static previews are previews that are on pages instead of actual blogs - hence why URL hoarding could be an issue if it was actually legit and bothersome for theme makers. The more themes you have the more sideblogs you have to make for live previews. This can be problematic in upkeep not to mention imagine if you have over 20+ themes and you click to show the sideblog dropdown. Messy.
  
  The only draw back of the static preview vs. live preview is that live previews allow you to see what the permalink pages are like. Because static previews are on pages it can’t 'call’ a post via the permalink. You can kind of do this if you wish (which I’ll explain later) but that will mean more pages as well.

How do I make them?

• Making static previews are kind of like just creating new pages. Simply copy and paste.
  
  STEP 1: Create a test side blog.
  
  STEP 2: Install the theme you made on the test blog. Make it up pretty like a live preview - so make sure there are posts on there. I would also recommend having more than one page so the page navigation will appear as well.
  
  STEP 3: Once you’ve made sure everything is proper on the test blog (because it’s annoying to have to fix it on static previews) right click > view source. 
  
  STEP 4: When the view source tab appears in your browser you need to make sure to select ALL the contents in that window. I mean ALL. You can easily do that by clicking in the window and doing CTRL + A. 
  
  STEP 5: Preferably you’d have your static preview blog set up already. If not go ahead and create yet another side blog for where all your static previews will be (or if you are ok with dealing with a lot of pages on your main blog you don’t have to).
  
  STEP 6: Create a page! You can do that by going to customize theme and below appearance there is the page section. Click it to expand it and click Add a page.
  
  STEP 7: When the page window pops up you want to make sure you select 'CUSTOM LAYOUT’ from the drop down instead of standard layout. If you don’t have this option you need to follow some people on the blog/create some dummy posts. Don’t worry these posts won’t appear on your static previews.
  
  STEP 8: In the HTML window you will paste the view source code from your actual live preview. Click save. And there you have it!
  
  

Hopefully that clears most of it up and will be helpful to those who need to do this so your blog doesn’t get suspended if someone is mean and reports you.