A Rough Guide to the excellent Tumblr

I had a request from a long term client to design six different Tumblr themes, to be honest the first question I thought of was: ‘Why?’. Being a very good client I thought I had better looked into things, have an educated answer ready for all his questions, and then ask him again: ‘Why, oh, why?’.
I had a fair idea what Tumblr was, a lesser WordPress, maybe a more functional Twitter. I knew nothing. For those that read this blog, they will know that I love simple things, simple apps, clean and simple designs…etc. Tumblr fits into this category, its simplicity is what makes it a must for all. Really, go and have a look, it blew me away at how great it was.

First of all here is Wikipedia’s description of a tumblelog:

A tumblelog (or tlog) is a variation of a blog that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, tumblelogs are frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary.

What is a Tumblelog?

The idea of tumblr is to allow you to share with others, those little things from the internet, those wee things from your life, those few rambling thoughts in your head. It is most definitely not an all out blog, just a simple way to share things with others.

Sign Up and Dashboard

First of all go and signup here: Tumblr, give an email address, a password and type in your tumblr url that you would like. (Click here to view my tumblelog, speckyboy.tumblr.com.).
That is you signed up. Easy.
You are then presented with the dashboard. You will notice the options are far less than a WordPress or Textpattern dashboard. You have the seven post options you can choose either text, a photo, a quote, a link, a conversation (which is really cool), video, chat and audio.
To submit anything to your tumblelog couldn’t be easier, click on one of the icons and the interface for submitting is very simple.

CSS and Styling

You need a little bit of CSS and HTML knowledge to create a custom theme. Clicking on the options buttons, allows you to select the theme you would like to use. It was the use custom html link that got my attention, I’ve got to admit I had a lot of fun editing the themes, creating your own theme is easy as well. I would urge anyone to try this out, it is a lot of fun.

Video Tutorial

I found this Video Tutorial for Tumblr.

Tumblr Themes

I am struggling to find great themes for Tumblr, can anyone email me some links to some, please.