Tumblr queue and more…

I’ve got an answer from Tumblr’s support team regarding the queue feature:

We experienced some issues recently around Queues and Drafts. Some Queues posted all of their posts and posted them with the timestamps of when they were queued rather than when they were actually posted. Many posts manually published from Queue/Drafts were also posted with the timestamps of when they were queued/drafted rather than when they were actually posted.

I was lucky. Until recently, I used to keep as much as 80 posts in queue. I simply like to pile them up when I have the time, so they keep being published when I’m overwhelmed by work. Two months ago, more than a dozen of the posts I had queued were published simultaneously. From an existential point of view, I’ll agree it’s not much of a big deal. Nevertheless, it was not what I had planned. So I stopped using the queue feature: I would only put one or two post at the time in Tumblr queue (it kind of defeats the purpose though).

Than, it happened again : last week, two days after I published a post about similar new issues, the only three posts left in my queue disappeared. At first, I thought they were deleted (I was not happy, but I didn’t panic since I use Tumblr’s amazing backup utility on a regular basis). It was not the case. Here’s Tumblr’s support again :

If a post is “missing” from Queue or Drafts, look through the Dashboard or search the Dashboard for it. You will likely find it has been posted at the timestamp of when it was queued/drafted rather than when it was actually posted.

Those three posts were not displayed in the dashboard, but they still can be find here, here and here. I found them using tags, since the search function has also been experiencing difficulties for a while (but that’s another story). If you’ve been struggling with vanishing posts, here’s Tumblr’s support team advice:

1. Leave the post as it is.

2. Copy the post content, delete the post, and then recreate the post. The recreated post could then be published now, queued, or placed in Drafts.

3. You can set a custom date and/or time for a post and that will change its ordering on your blog (but not on your Dashboard). To do this, edit a post by clicking the Edit link to the upper right of the post in the Dashboard, change “publish now” to “publish on”, edit the date and/or time, and click the “Create post” or “Save changes” button.

I was told they were working hard so it wouldn’t happen again. However, since they told me the same thing a couple of times in the last 9 months, I’ll only being using the queue with caution.

Tumblr may have some issues, but it also got some solutions. I’m thinking about Marco Arment’s backup utility. It’s an amazing tool, and could be a lifesaver if you’ve been publishing here for a while. There’s a drawback though : it’s Mac only.

By the way, Marco Arment left his position as a lead developer at Tumblr recently (he’ll remain a consultant). Meanwhile, the emais I got from Tumblr’s support team have changed (in their structure and layout). I guess Tumblr is evolving. It’s surely getting bigger (it passed one billion posts last month, according to Tumblr’s founder David Karp). Let’s see if it’ll get better.

Previously on Skandalon : Tumblr queue

The “queue” feature still is behaving erratically today and Tumblr’s servers seem to be experiencing intermittent problems.