Well, I finally caved. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so I went and created a Tumblr account and familiarized myself (at least vaguely) with how everything worked.
And you know what? It’s actually pretty cool.
What Is Tumblr?
If I had to describe Tumblr to you, simply calling it a ‘microblogging site’ would fall far short of the actual experience. The best equivalent I can give is that it’s as though Twitter, WordPress, and Photobucket got together one day and had a child between them. The interface is simple and streamlined, you can post videos, links, chat sequences, images, or musings.
There’s actually some rather excellent content on there to boot. Don’t take my word for it though, go on and experience it for yourself.
Getting Started
First up, create your account. Go to Tumblr.com and go through the signup process. Next, create your first blog and get yourself all set up with a theme you like. If you’re not too keen on any of the choices offered by Tumblr itself, you can find plenty of rather excellent designs just by doing a Google search. Setting up and tweaking your theme’s something that’s rather personal and is an entire tutorial in and of itself. We’ll come back to that in a later post.
You’ll also want to set up your Tumblr URL. Again, it’s pretty simple – no spaces or special characters. The url will, by default, appear as yourname.tumblr.com. Make it something that you think describes you or your blog.
Now, I may sound like I’m gushing a bit here, but Tumblr’s honestly so intuitive that it’s a little intimidating at first. For the first stretch of my experience, I kept feeling as though there was something I was missing. Eventually, I got into the swing of things, and now blogging on the site actually feels surprisingly natural.
Types of Posts on Tumblr
There are seven different types of posts you can make to your Tumblr – links, conversations, photos, quotes, audio clips, videos, and text posts (represented by icons on your Tumblr Dashboard). Each post type gets its own style of submission screen and pretty much all of them are incredibly simple to figure out – you should do just fine.
How To Post To Tumblr
Some websites (such as Photobucket and Deviantart) include a “Share to Tumblr” link represented by a “T.” In this case, the process is pretty much self-evident. Click on the link, set up how the post is going to look, write any comments you want to add in, then post away. Boom, you’re done.
If what you’re trying to share doesn’t have a “Share on Tumblr” link or button, all you’ve gotta do is go to your Dashboard, click on your blog title (it’s up at the very top of the screen, to the right of the Tumblr logo), and then click one of the icons based on what kind of content it is. Copy the URL of the content you want to share, past it into the “URL” section of the Tumblr post and you’re done. You can also upload content from your PC as well.
Likes, Follows, and Reblogs
Have a pumpkin. The eyes are like, the nose is follow, and the mouth is reblog.
Much like Twitter, you can either like a post or follow a fellow user’s blog. Somewhere on each post (it generally depends on the layout of the blog), there’ll be a small heart. Click it to like it.
When you’re viewing an individual page, there should also be a reblog button- it’s usually at the top right (it looks like two arrows curving around one another). Click it, and you’ll share the post to your own Tumblr.
Finally, you can also follow blogs whose content you like and their posts will show up on your dashboard’s main page. Somewhere on the main page of the blog, there should be a button that lets you do it.
People you’re following can be viewed on the right side of your main dashboard, and people who are following you can be found on the right side of your blog’s dashboard.
Messages
Finally, we’ve got messages. You can view your messages by either clicking the envelope on the top right corner of the screen at any time, or navigating to one of your blogs’ dashboards and looking at the messages in the sideboard. Note that you can’t send messages to everyone – they’ve gotta have messages enabled.
That’s all for now. Next time, we’ll take a look at how to customize your dashboard, and a few more advanced things you can do with your blog.
Image Credits: Tumblr, Dribbble, Social Keith, Ology.com
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