Because of the nature of my project - dozens of photos in each post - I found it very useful that Patreon allowed me to create each post in HTML and simply paste it into the HTML box. Suddenly that’s no longer possible. According to this new answer on the ZenDesk site, they removed that capability “to reduce confusion and allow creators a more seamless posting experience.”
I wasn’t confused, and now I am going to have a much less seamless posting experience. Plus, when I followed the instructions on this other new ZenDesk page to enable my account to use inline images in posts, it told me on my Account page that inline images would only appear as links on the Android app - and would not appear at all on the iOS app. So it’s entirely possible that when I make my next post, a few of my patrons will not be able to see any images when viewing it via their method of choice, and cancel their pledges.
What on earth could possibly have been the reason for disallowing HTML? If some creators didn’t know how to use it, that’s one thing - but HTML allowed me to post dozens of images at once without taking up any server space on Patreon, and without having to go through a ridiculous click-and-copy-and-paste process for every single individual photo in the post.
Ugh!! So frustrated. And Patreon supposedly wants to make it easier for us to earn money.
Agreed. In terms of tools for visual artists, Patreon is really coming up short. I’ve been working around the one image per post by using HTML to insert more images hosted elsewhere, but stopped when I realized that those extra images weren’t recognized by the app.
For the love of god, Patreon: give visual artists a way to show multiple images across all platforms!
(And hey, how 'bout adding Instagram to the default social media options on our pages, too.)
I’m going to make a stab at answering this, even though I’m not staff.
The new post creator looks pretty different from the old post creator. There are a lot of things wrong with the old post creator and I’m guessing that it was redesigned from the ground up to address these concerns. If this is the case, whoever designed the new one probably just decided not to implement HTML.
That said, I’m not here to be an apologizer…I’m here to say “me too”. I honestly wouldn’t even care if WYSIWYG editing were completely abolished; I would be happy with just editing HTML only when making posts. I get that not everyone wants this; not everyone knows it and not everyone wants to know it. I just want the choice. I hope to see it again soon. I’m so frustrated right now.
@toplessnewyork, Totally understand your frustration with this. We’ve heard from a lot of community members and are working hard to make sure that posting is an easy and intuitive experience for creators posting all types of content.
When we previously allowed HTML, inline images showed up as links on mobile as well, so that is not something that has changed due to removing this feature.
We’re still a pretty small company, but I know that our three mobile engineers are tirelessly working to make Patreon compatible with all platforms. I’ve shared all of this feedback with them, as well as the team who worked on the new posting features.
It’s super important to us that we are always working on the most impactful thing for creators on Patreon, so I really appreciate your candidness in sharing this feedback!
Thanks for moving it to the appropriate area; I didn’t realize I was starting the topic in #gettingstarted, I just hit the “new topic” button.
Anyway, I appreciate your response, but you didn’t actually offer any reasoning behind taking away HTML for creators. If the images showed up as links on mobile anyway, why take away our ability to create a post in HTML? What was supposedly so “confusing” to people that this tool had to be taken out of our toolbox? I certainly can’t imagine Lisa (above) and I are the only two creators who need to be able to publish multiple images at once.
I’d really like to have some understanding of what Patreon’s rationale was for making this change.
Sorry for not being clearer. The mobile apps have never been able to show custom HTML content such as inline images, so we updated our authoring tool to more accurately reflect the capabilities of all of the ways posts can be viewed. HTML unfortunately never worked well.
Well, that does make somewhat more sense, thank you for clarifying.
And for what it’s worth, I’m in the middle of creating a new post now, and it does appear that if you choose “text” as your option for the post, you can keep adding photos by hitting return and then clicking the camera icon again. I’ll confirm when I’ve finished it that it publishes as I want it to, but I’m optimistic again. (It’s a bit more of a pain in the ass, but if I can get it done, I’ll be okay with that.)
Please do let me know how this works for you! I’d love to let our support team know what has been working for other creators so they can offer recommendations to any who write in to them.
Hmm I am also having trouble with this. You said you can add multiple photos in a text post? When Im in a text post I cant find the camera icon you are talking about?
@nymla - Yes, I am now able to add multiple photos in a text post. When you’re typing in the text post, and you hit “enter” or “return” to start a new line, a small camera icon should appear just to the left of your text box at the same spot where your cursor is. Click on that camera icon, and it should open up a dialogue box that asks for a URL. If you’ve already uploaded your photo to the web somewhere - a photo storage site of some kind, or elsewhere - just paste the URL of the image into that dialogue box and hit return again.
Once that image has been added to your post, click your cursor at the bottom-right corner of that image, hit enter/return again, and you should have a new blank line with a new camera icon to the left of the text box. It’s not the most obvious thing, you do have to be looking for it, but it should be there.
I figured it out! I needed to go to my settings > account > and check “allow embedding inline images”.
Now the camera icon appears!
But as it says there, images wont be displayed on the apps. Hope that a better multi-image-post function is coming soon! They’ve said they’re working on it, so I’m excited for that!
Hey everyone (@nymla@toplessnewyork and others)! The iOS app can now show inline images Android still shows clickable links to images in the place of images. We’ll be updating the helper text in all the relevant places over the coming days. Hope this helps!
For my team, a formatting system similar to this creator community would be a game changer. One of the workarounds that we use for long-term, unchanging posts is to write them up in google docs, format, then copy/paste into post. This keeps almost all formatting the same and allows for easier editing if you ever need to update the post. Also looks well on at least android from testing.
Android still shows clickable links to images in the place of images. We’ll be updating the helper text in all the relevant places over the coming days. Hope this helps!