simblreen

2022 EDITION

A VISUAL GUIDE TO

Want to participate?

We wrote a handy dandy guide for those of you who wish to participate. If you are having issues reading this, please download this presentation and use acrobat reader and use the screen reader of your choice.

Gift ideas for simblreen

Simblreen participants usually give out the following

• Custom content for sims 2, sims 3, and sims 4
• Themed lookbooks with links
• Builds (rooms and lots)
• Short stories
• Sim dumps
• Render rooms, renders, and edits
• Halloween inspired games or challenges
• Riddles and jokes

Anything Halloween or spooky wise will do!

​

NOTE: Please do not link gifts behind locked patreon posts or via adfly links. If you are going to have paywalled halloween content, do not use the simblreen tag for advertising.

Hosting Your Gifts

Host your files at one of these FREE file sharing sites.

Simfileshare*** - preferred file host of choice. invite based but you can always find an invite somewhere. ***If you decide to use simfileshare, PLEASE host your file in a secondary location. Simfileshare is prone to outages during simblreen.

Megaupload - if it asks you for a encrypt code, right click on the link and copy it into your address bar

Dropbox - easy and no ads.

Googledrive - comes with your google account

Mediafire - great for hosting but has pop up ads

We Transfer - great for HUGE files like sim dumps and builds

​

Now it’s hosted! let’s post it!

Pick your method

​

Method 1

Creating a private post �and sharing that link.

​

Method 2

Creating a secret section of your tumblr and linking your private post in that section.

​

Creating your private post

METHOD 1

Protip

Make a draft post, save it, test your links, edit it, THEN save it as a private post. You’ll be less likely to edit the private post and break the link!

Making a private post

​

• First things first…make one private post with a gift (or lots of gifts, on account of you being generous and the rest of us being greedy lay-a-bouts).
• Click POST PRIVATELY.
• Check your dashboard and locate the post (it should be the first post you see)
• Click the three horizontal dots in the top right hand corner of your post to copy the link to your private post.
• This is the link you will distribute to people.

​

​

Step 1

Step 2

Method 1

cons

• If you edit the private post, you will break the link as tumblr forces a new hash to privatize the link. This forces those who didn’t download immediately to ask you for the link again.
• Sometimes you’ll get these asks all throughout the week even with a “porchlight closed” graphic posted.
• High risk of posting your gift publicly when you didn’t mean to (someone does it EVERY year)
• Simblreen trick or treaters will send asks, even if you made a porchlight closed post. Remember, not everyone sees your post directly and most likely are coming via a reblog link.

• Great for blogs that do not anticipate a large amount of traffic
• Quick and easy

pros

Creating a�secret SECTION

​

METHOD 2

Making new section of your blog to post your private link

1. Follow all the directions in method 01 and save that link (notepad)

​

• Go to https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/(yourusername)

​

• Click the giant grey button that says EDIT THEME

​

• Scroll ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM and click the words that say + Add a page (or whatever it translates to in your language)

​

• In the text box under the formatting bar, enter your cute graphic and link the private post we made in the previous slide

​

• Remember to hit SAVE when you’re done.

​

• Link trick or treaters to this page.

​

Method 2

cons

• Remembering to update that section with a “porch closed” graphic
• Honestly, this is the best method but you do you.

• Great for blogs that anticipate a flood of asks

​

• If you need to make an edit to your private post, you can update that post and repost the link in your private section. Your followers that have already received the link will only see the updated link and don’t run the risk of following a dead link.

​

• When trick or treating is over, you can remove the link and replace with a ‘porchlight closed’ graphic (great for timezones)

​

• Low risk of accidentally posting your gift publicly or breaking the link

​

pros

Porchlights and witching hour

How to announce “come and get it” effectively!

​

Turning your porchlight on

• When you’re ready to give out treats, make a new post announcing this with the words “porchlight is on.” If you want, you can include a timeframe and time zone for when you’ll keep your porch light on. A lot of us forget we all are scattered in different parts of the world!
• Specify if you prefer asks (off anon) or instant messaging(IM). Ims work a bit better if tumblr eats a link or if you don’t want to run the risk of answering publicly.
• Tag your post accordingly! As you can see, it is tagged “Simblreen”, “Simblreen 2021”, “sims4”, and “ts4″, as that is the game Mr. Pumpkins is offering treats for. If you aren’t offering gifts related to those games (a spooky but non sims related gift), you can ignore these tags.
• For the 18+ crowd - If you have adult / NSFW, content �with excessive gore / blood / etc, PLEASE specify that in your porchlight on post.

Answering asks

• Cut and paste the link into your reply
• REMEMBER TO SELECT “ANSWER PRIVATELY”. I’M REPEATING THIS. REMEMBER TO SELECT “ANSWER PRIVATELY”
• If tumblr eats your link, delete the url up to the word “/private/privatelink” and let the trick or treater know to cut and paste that portion next to your tumblr URL

Answering IMs

• Make sure your Tumblr IM settings are set to receive messages from everyone. See image below.

• Cut and paste the link into your reply
• If you’re overwhelmed with IMs, you can turn off tumblr’s IMs to “receive only from followers”

Turning your porchlight off

• When you’re done giving out treats for the night, make a new post announcing this with the words “porchlight is off.” You can turn off asks/ims at this point or announce when you’ll have your porchlight on again (be it that night or the following weekend)
• Delete your “porchlight is on post” or reblog with “porchlight is off” or put in the comments porch light is off. It’s your choice
• If you’ve set up your private post via method 2: you can take the private link off the private section and repost your “porchlight off” image there as well.
• Be polite to stragglers! Porchlight is off posts tend to get buried beneath your other posts. Either pin your post or be polite in answering that your porchlight is off.
• If you’re not swamped, consider leaving your porch light on for longer so others in different time zones can see your post

​

Some creators choose to do witching hour posts! These are first-come, first-serve treats (usually exclusive and not posted again on simblreen weekend). We’ve written up a post explaining this over here

​

​

Witching hour posts

• When simblreen is over, you can post your gifts publicly making your private posts public.
• If you did “witching hour gifts” you can choose to make those public or keep them exclusive
• We’d like to ask that you do not harass or argue with the creator over how and when they choose to distribute their treats***
• Everything will be available at the end of simblreen. If you missed anything you can grab everything then. Simblreenofficial will be reblogging as much as we can so you don’t miss a thing!

​

WHen to post your gift publicly

***unless it’s some tiring bullshit like forcing people to watch youtube or a twitch stream for treats or a “subscribe to my patreon for your treats” type scam.

​

THANKS

Any additions? Send an ask to simblreenofficial!

​

​

​

Please keep this slide for attribution

CREDITS: This presentation template was created by Slidesgo, including icons by Flaticon, and infographics & images by Freepik