A way to a girl's heart is through, well...its complicated. But for this girl, its definately through beautiful photos. So when I stumbled on Tumblr, a micro-blogger as powerful as they come, about a year ago I was instantly in love. So I thought, what better than a blog post explaining one of my favorites and what its used for?! I'll even hit my 3 favorite features at the end.
What is tumblr?
Tumblr is a "mirco blogger". This means most tumblr posts are under 300 words or 1 photo. Unlike other blogging platforms *cough cough* tumblr allows you to post a wide range of media quickly and easily.
The interface (or dashboard) of tumblr is what most users will interact with on a daily basis. For example, there was a 4 month period I didn't even know what my personal blog layout was because I didn't ever look at it. The main dashboard is where all your photos show up and the photos of other people you follow as well. Its also super easy to see how many people you follow (highlighted in green), photos you've liked, photos/posts you reblog (number of posts), people following you, and how many posts you have in your queue.
It might sound like a lot now, but really, its a VERY user friendly site. Now a layout, layouts look more like this:
As you can see, there is a huge difference between the dashboard and your actual layout. Now, for me, I use tumblr more like a social page, rebloging my favorite photos, or posts, and not at all like a traditional blog. That's what Rusty is here, so I'm more interactive with the dashboard. If you wanted to use tumblr to make your blog, however, it is possible and there are tons of blogger-friendly layouts you can utilize.
Posting/Reposting
For easy use purposes I'm highlighting how to post a photo. First, have a photo you would like to post. Then, click on the Photo button on the top dash. It will bring you to this page below:
Click Browse to upload the photo from your computer. Of course you can add a caption and links to websites or sources if you'd like to. And then there's tags. Tags are one of my favorite things on tumblr. Of course, you can do what I do on fycd: if the photo is of Persuasion, the tag is #persuasion. Or you can do what people call "the hipster" tags like: #OMG I'd marry him or #I can't breathe looking at that hotness or #I will live there some day. You can use as many tags as you want, but if people reblog you, your tags do not follow your photo.
Reposting is a little different. This is when you find a post on tumblr you really love and want to post on your own blog. You start by clicking the reblog link:
You will then be taken to a page that looks just like the post a photo page. Add your own caption and tags and post! And its that easy for anything you'd wish to post.
The Queue
The Queue is another one of my absolutely favorite things. When you post a photo, you can select if you want to post it now or add it to the queue. For fycd, I use the queue religiously.
The queue automatically posts for you as many times during the day as you'd like. For a blog like fycd, which is centered around daily posts about costume drama, the queue offers the freedom and flexibility to run a photo-centered blog. As you can see, I publish 1 post a day between 7am and 8am. And I have 13 posts yet to publish.
I realized this is not the concise all about Tumblr; I think of it more like a highlight reel, but hopefully, it proves a useful get to know you about my favorite blogging site. Twitter's wonderful, Blogger's been invaluable, but Tumblr...tumblr's my guilty pleasure. I hope you've enjoyed!
EDIT * As of 6-8-2011 Tumblr has updated their site design. Good timing on my part, I know. New blog post, maybe? Follow to Explanation Tumblr -- take 2 to see how the new layout works.