Taunting French Guard

The number one tip to imgflip is to have fun. If you're only here for points and to make the front page, you likely won't succeed at either.

1. The biggest tip from my person perspective to become an active part of the community. Post on other member's memes, reply to people who reply to your memes.
2. Spelling is important, but even more important is grammar. Memes can make the front page with minor spelling mistakes, but grammar mistakes are much harder to overcome and often make your meme confusing. Take time to proofread your submissions just like it was a school assignment!
3. If you submit a meme on an established template at least 15 minutes before the hour, it'll likely post the upcoming hour.
4.Custom templates only get approved several times a day, and it's really a guessing game when those times will be. It's very hard to know when the best time of day to submit a meme is. Custom templates also seem to have fewer approval times on the weekends.
4. Ever heard of a Page 9 Party? Every Monday at 9 p.m. Eastern time we head over to Page 9 of the newest pages and upvote all the memes there and comment on them all as well. We do this to help get newer or lesser known members more visibility by giving them a big boost. Many weeks multiple memes that were featured during a page 9 party end up on the front page. It's also a good way to earn points and get known by other established memers.
5. Using the right picture and word choice count. The more concise you can make your text, I feel the better it will do.
6. If you put too much text in your meme, and it's really tiny when people scroll through the newest or hot pages, they very well may just scroll past your meme with tiny text.
7. Sarcasm does not translate well to the written word. Try to avoid it unless it's a template known for sarcastic remarks.
8. Did you know can use custom colors in your fonts? Google "Custom HTML Color Codes" and you'll find sites that give you the code to paste into the box. Sometimes you want a dark green font, not that default neon green one!
9. You can submit blank replies by typing any character into either text box and changing the font size to zero.
10. You can add custom tags to your memes to make it easier for others to find.
11. Don't be afraid to comment on leaderboard members memes, we don't bite. We're memers just like you.
12. There is NO logic for what will make the front page. Any top user will tell you memes they thought would make it barely got 5 upvotes.

13. When going through a meme for comments, the original poster (OP) will have their name colored in green, this makes it easier to find their specific replies in their memes.

14. Use the more options button. It lets you add additional text boxes which are extremely useful and serve multiple purposes. You can change the font, but in my opinion in most cases for most memes the default Impact font is perfect. You can change the font size to 0 here. This is the easiest way to submit "a blank meme." You can toggle off font shadow, ALL CAPS, and if you're on mobile this is where you can enable drag/drop and resize which is always available on desktop. You can also use original resolution of a template image, but in my opinion bigger pictures can lead to users skipping over if you can't read everything at one time.
15. As mentioned, adding text boxes and using additional text boxes can be impactful. Did the lowercase "imgflip" in my meme's main picture catch your eye? To do that I used two different boxes. Manually typed everything in all caps except "img" and used a second text box to make font red for "flip"

when i was in power lol

16. I've seen this question asked a few times in the week or so: "When do your meme submissions for the day get reset?" You currently get your fresh set of submissions at midnight Pacific time, so 3 a.m. Eastern. Sorry international folks, you'll have to do the time conversion yourself and don't forget to look up how the U.S. daylight savings time might be different from your time zone when it's in effect.

A lot more tips than I thought! Pretty useful though!

18. I can't help you with Custom Templates that you'll use only once, those are always going to be a gamble as to when they'll actually feature. Feature times seem to depend on what imgflip mod is working at the time. However, IF YOU'RE GOING TO USE A CUSTOM TEMPLATE MORE THAN ONCE, there's a great way to guarantee that AFTER YOUR FIRST SUBMISSION, your future submissions with the template will post within 2 hours.

If you save an image to the public directory (so that anyone can use it, and then it shows up in your "My Templates" tab), and then use that image in a submission initially, then from then on out it doesn't get treated like a custom submission. Once it's been approved and featured once, it's what I consider an "established template" and established templates get featured just as quickly as the popular templates. For example, if ANYONE used any of my 10+ Halo/GhostOfChurch templates they'd feature almost immediately because I've made submissions with all of them in the past.

Examples you can look at are any of my custom memes tagged with "My Templates Challenge" When you look at them you'll see they've got at least one feature under their belt so they'll post quickly.

The same works for when you're searching the img template database. When you click on the template you can figure out if it will post right away, or be treated like a custom submission based on if it has any featured memes tied to it. An example of this (as of 11/13/16) is "sniper dog." Right now there's 3 "sniper dog" templates out there, and two of them don't have any features. These would be treated as custom templates. If you find the 1 that has my "Grumpy Cat Got You Down?" caption, that would get posted right away. LONG STORY SHORT, if you see multiple versions of the image you want to use, look use the one that already has been featured!

17. After a painful realization, the maximum number of custom templates that load into your "My Templates" tab is 200.

Thank you it helped me!

Can you recycle out one's that were a one time only to make room? On my custom templates I have double to triple of the same photo (errr).

Yup! Go to your profile page, click my templates, then you can delete them from there. MAJOR SUGGESTION - click view template to get the delete button, but make sure you are deleting the ones that don't show featured memes. That way if you want to submit a meme with it in the future, and you've already submitted a meme with it, it'll post much quicker. If you have questions send me links to all three template pages in question and I can help you out.

[Insert happy cat picture here] You're welcome!
I keep meaning to download various cat and dog pics for replies just like this one, but have been so buys I haven't had a chance to do so.

So I heard- congratulations on your marriage!

Thank you. Not sure how I missed this notification.

19. Expect to be criticized over typos and making memes that don’t make much sense at Every. Single. Corner. Trolls here are abundant, some smarter than others, so be on the lookout for any trolls. If a troll does show up, you have two options: Ignore it, or roast him into Bolivia.

LOL@the pic. It'll always be in my profile tagline, so feel free to visit it anytime.

A prior resource you can check is H2O's meme, found here: https://imgflip.com/i/168g11
I believe Socrates may have one out there too, and if I'm able to get a link to it, I'll link it.

Please add your own below!

Let me get started by start by saying I've barely been here for over 3 months, but that this is best online community I've ever been a part of. Sure there's trolls and hiccups along the way, but this community here does a good job of self-regulating.

I plan on leaving a link to this to my profile tagline as an easy resource for all newer members, or those who don't visit often. If someone asks about imgflip etiquette, you can just tell them "ghostofchurch has a good one in the tagline on his profile, go check it out."

First, let me say the site is about fun, and for me about the community. If points and upvotes are important to you, it will really help if you're a respected member of the community. You don't have to be on the leaderboards to be a "top user." To me, a "top user" is simply a good member of the community. Granted, in order to make the leaderboards you really have to be a good member of the community.

I'll try to point out some of the site etiquette as I've encountered it.
1. As the gentleman with the hat points out, be polite. We're all here to have fun, and who wants to bicker back and forth? No one comes out ahead in that.
2. One of the main things new users don't catch onto right away is upvoting users who comment on their memes. If someone takes the time to recognize your meme, it's a good idea to upvote that comment. Replying back also has benefits of getting you more well known. If someone says something mean, you're not obligated to upvote them.
3. When you reply to someone else's meme, or a comment on someone else's meme, it's customary to upvote the meme and/or the person's response that you're replying to. Sometimes people forget to upvote when they comment, I know I've been guilty in the past many times!
4. It's ok to disagree with someone, or for someone to politely disagree with you. As long as it's still a civil conversation I would recommend upvoting each other along the way.
5. Don't intentionally repost something that someone else has created, even a comment. If you see something you think might be front page material, encourage the original creator to submit it!
6. Don't become an imgflip troll! If you see a meme you don't like, just keep on scrolling. Leaving a nasty comment only hurts your reputation.

I don't agree with #5. "Don't intentionally repost something that someone else has created, even a comment."

On the contrary, there's nothing that I like better than to see people repost my memes or post my comments as memes. It's the highest form of respect possible on a meme site, and I wouldn't want anyone to discourage people from doing that.

Good point, I still feel it's polite to ask first.

No harm in that.

Great job, ghostofchurch! Well thought out, and a wealth of information. I always wondered how page 9 parties worked.

For new users that are concerned with points...try not to make too many memes with polarizing ideals, until you are an established user. You will only make a host of virtual enemies, that will likely seek you out, and downvote all your stuff.

Curse words in your memes will cause them to be marked Not Safe For Work. Lots of users don't have that box checked for obvious reasons, and will not see your submission. So try to find a way to word it that is clean.

Lastly, be yourself. Imgflip has an astute community for the most part, and they will see through the bull crap eventually.

Okay, last tip for sure....if you aren't finding much humor on a given day, just take a break. You might be in a bad mood, or memes that day may be rife with current events you don't agree with. Do Not take out your anger in the comments section. People always remember negativity.

Great points SWM! Definitely agree about the polarizing ideals (politics and religion mostly). Like pointed out in H2O's link above, some people are great at that, but in my opinion it's difficult to master. It also invites many opposing views who may not be so polite in their responses.

Actually, not all curse words get flagged NSFW, and even some seemingly benign words do. I did a meme for the community to help make a list of "safe"/"unsafe" words...

imgflip.com/i/188f3m

Thank you!

So many of my questions answered! Thanks for the guide! I'm gonna check out the link to the other one as well.

You're welcome! It'll always be in my profile tagline if you forget. I'll dig through Lynch's memes and see if I can find hers too. If I do I'll add them in the comments section.

Nice

Thank you for the input!!!

Another great tip! Make sure you're properly caffeinated before making memes!

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Nice!! These are all great tips, and I personally did a lot of these thing to help my memes get noticed. Very good!

Last main point, any user should feel free to ask me any questions about the site. If I don't know the answer, I bet I know someone who does and will try to find out for you.

Yeah, you definitely should. I asked a question and it became one of the most viewed memes on my profile...

Thank you sir.

Thanks from a noob for the tips and tricks:)

You are more than welcome sir!

:)

:)