January 05, 2022

F2 Tumblr Widget Plugin

This widget displays recent posts from a tumblr blog.

The F2 Tumblr Widget displays recent posts from the provided tumblr blog.

It allows the user to select how many posts to display, to restrict which
posts are shown by type and tag, and to render the posts as either a list
or a slideshow.

Posts can be displayed in full, as title only, or with an excerpt. Photo,
video and audio posts will have the media displayed when the display type
is not ‘title only’.

The audio player in posts can now be automatically resized to match the
selected media width – this is enabled by default, but can be deselected
in the widget setup.

Installation

This section describes how to install the plugin and get it working.

Upload the f2-tumblr folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory, or install directly through the ‘Add New’ option in the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu
Include the F2 Tumblr Widget widget on your pages through the ‘Appearance’ menu

Screenshots

Widget configuration

FAQ

How is the title for a post determined?

Tumblr does not allow all post types to have a formal title defined. For
those post types (such as photos), either the first HTML header in the caption
will be used (h1 to h3) or, if none can be found, the first sentence.

Why do I see strange characters instead of quotes?

If your tumblr posts contain ‘smart quotes’, these can sometimes be rendered
as strange characters to some users. The plugin will attempt to convert these
to plain quotes, unless the ‘Replace “special” characters’ option is unticked.

My blog has an SSL certificate (https://) and I’m getting ‘unsecured content’ warnings?

By default, this widget pulls data from Tumblr over http; this results in
displayed images also using this protocol. If you have an SSL certificate
installed on your blog, you may see warnings from your browser about ‘unsecured
content’ which refers to the images from Tumblr.

If you change your Tumblr URL setting to be preceded by ‘https://’, the widget
will access Tumblr over https and the resulting images will also be served
securely.

This will one day become the default approach, but for now is left up to the
user as it can potentially cause problems on badly configured web servers.

My widget is empty!

Due to some changes to Tumblr’s API, the data can be interrupted by a GDPR consent notice. From version 2.12, there is an advanced setting to change the ‘user-agent’ string sent to Tumblr – this currently defaults to a value which works, but as Tumblr may change things at any time it remains configurable by the user.

If you’re experiencing an empty widget, please post on the widget support page, and we will work out what it needs to be set to!

Changelog

0.2.16

Removed deprecated ‘create_function’ call, which can cause failures for later PHP versions.

0.2.15

Fixed to accomodate changes in the Tumblr data (they have changed the case in the post type field, for some reason!)
Updated the WordPress version.

0.2.14

Images included in tumblr posts marked as ‘text’ will now be displayed, when the content type is set to “Whole Post”. These images will be limited to 100% of the widget.
Posts without titles or slugs will no longer have the post type used as a ‘stand in’ title when the whole post is set to clickable.

0.2.13

Merged all latest changes; this should force an update to become available via WordPress.org

0.2.12

Added an option to specify the user-agent used to fetch data from Tumblr. This defaults to ‘Wget/1.18’, which prevents Tumblr from disrupting their API with a GDPR consent notice. This has been set to be configurable, in case Tumblr makes further changes to their servers.
Added an option to make the entire Tumblr post clickable, rather than just the title.

0.2.11

Suppressed large volumes of XML warnings, generated by Tumblr hiding their v1 API behind a GDRP warning page. This doesn’t actually resolve the issue, but will stop your error log filling up with masses of messages.

0.2.10

Added a new option to make the whole post clickable, rather than limiting the link to just the displayed title or media.

0.2.9

Increased the maximum number of posts displayed from 20 to 50, which is
the maximum that the Tumblr V1 API will provide.

0.2.8

Will how honour the HTTP protocol of the source tumblr, if provided. This
means that if you have an SSL certificate on your blog, you can avoid
the widget generating ‘unsecured content’ warnings by providing your Tumblr
URL with a ‘https://’ prefix.

0.2.7

Fixed a bug in the caching code, which resulted in excessive calls to
Tumblr.

0.2.6

Added a new Content Tpe of ‘Media Only’, which shows photos / videos without
displaying post titles.
Added a new Display Type of ‘Horizontal List’ – this will show posts side
by side if the widget has sufficient space. Works best with media-only
posts.

0.2.5

Fixed some bad comments in the stylesheet which prevented some styling from
getting properly applied. Thanks to jchriscook for spotting this!

0.2.4

Added an option to replace “special” characters such a smart quotes, which
can cause display problems for some users. This is on by default, but can
be unchecked if for some reason desired.
Added a ‘Title And Media’ content type option; this shows just the title
and any media – essentially it’s ‘Post Excerpt’ but with no text.

0.2.3

Bug fix, to prevent the widget failing when processing a Tumblr photo post
that contains no caption.
Moved the widget script loading into the footer.

0.2.2

Added the option to adjust the width of the player in audio posts to match
the chosen media width.

0.2.1

Added CSS to ensure that media posts with short text are properly separated.
Improved handling of the provided Tumblr URL to be less picky.

0.2.0

First public release.

0.1.0

Internal version.