Many of you have heard of Tumblr, a microblogging platform and social networking website which allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. In fact, some of you might even have your own Tumblr blog.
But did you know that you can build your own Tumblr-style blog with WordPress?
Digital Sharecropping
Before I explain how to build a tumblelog with WordPress, I want to point out why you should do this. And once I do, my guess is that you’ll fully understand.
There’s a term running around the internet right now called digital sharecropping and it can ruin your business.
Here’s how Nicholas Carr explains the concept:
One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few.
In other words, when you submit content – textual and images – to social media networks such as Facebook, you grant the right for them to retain it. In essence, the content belongs to Facebook.
From an analogy standpoint, you are leaving your field and dropping seeds into their field. You’re carrying a hose and helping them with their harvest.
Not Owning Your Content
More or less you are doing the same thing when you setup a Tumblr blog. Not only are you relinquishing ownership of that content, you are also losing the ability to do what you want with your content.
What if Tumblr goes under? What if they shut down their website? What happens if the theme you are using is suddenly removed from their inventory?
While all of those scenarios are unlikely, the probability still exists that one day something bad could happen to you and your blog.
And you’d be left out in the cold. With an empty field.
WordPress and Post Formats
A Post Format is a piece of meta information that can be used by a theme to customize its presentation of a post. When WordPress 3.1 was released, they added the ability to publish various “types” of posts – similar to the way Tumblr allows you.
Here’s a list of the post formats that WordPress currently supports:
- Asides – status update similar to Facebook
- Audio – an audio file
- Chats – a transcript of chats
- Gallery – a gallery of images
- Images – a single image
- Links – a link to another site
- Quotes – a quotation
- Status – short status similar to Twitter
- Videos – a single video
Using WordPress and Genesis
Below you will see how easy it is to build a Tumblr-style blog. WordPress makes it easy to do, and the Genesis Framework makes it even easier to do.
Keep reading.
There are two separate functions you need to write in order to add post formats to your blog. One enables post formats, and the other will output the post format icons. These need to be placed in your child theme’s functions.php file.
Below is the code that you can use to add post formats to your site:
/** Add support for post formats */
add_theme_support( 'post-formats', array( 'aside', 'audio', 'chat', 'gallery', 'image', 'link', 'quote', 'status', 'video' ) );Below is the code that you can use to add post format images to your site:
/** Add support for post format images */
add_theme_support( 'genesis-post-format-images' );This code will look for images located in the images/post-formats/ directory inside your child theme. Those images need to be called aside.png, audio.png, etc.
In an upcoming post, I’ll get into greater detail on how you can implement the post format icons. There are a number of ways to display them, and I’ll explain that.
Introducing The Mindstream Theme
Today we have released another Tumblr-style blog theme over at StudioPress. It’s called Mindstream, and supports all of the post formats that WordPress offers.
With 9 unique post formats, from “asides” to “videos” and everything between, you can easily display your most inspired content with a mobile responsive, tumblelog layout.
Click here to view the Mindstream demo site.
Additional Resources on Post Formats
perfect timing Brian – we have a potential client to respond to that wanted JUST THIS – a tumblr blog on WP that they could manage easily, customize to look like their small business – off to check out the new theme and THEN hit the gym!
Woohoo, great to hear! The Mindstream theme should be easy enough to customize, depending on what the client wants. And of course, let me know if you run into any issues with it!
I really like the layout and the little extra — good work, as always! & I will, don’t you worry!
so far I have only had 1 issue using Genesis/StudioPress and it was MY mistake. haha.
And let me know if you use the theme at all, always enjoy seeing what people do with things that I design.
I’m glad im still awake past midnight to see the new theme of studiopress. Checking the demo.
My site’s in maintenance mode as I redesign and switch over to Genesis and the News theme.
I want a category page for Charlotte breweries on the menu. When you click through, I’d like that category to have images of all the local breweries that would then link to pages for those individual breweries.
Would this be better done through a gallery post instead?
Thanks. Love this theme and the new post formats.
-Daniel
Yeah, I’d probably go with a gallery page in this context. I can’t remember if you’re able to specify an outbound link on the image in the gallery though.
After adding the post formats as listed above, I’m not so sure the gallery approach is what I’m looking for — and mainly for the reason you’ve listed. I actually want each image to then link to separate pages, and I don’t think you can do that with a gallery.
I’ll keep messing with it. I am glad I added the post formats. Even though they may not work in this instance, I think I could have a lot of fun with them in the future.
Thanks for the write-up, and the response.
Daniel
Interesting. Trying to figure out how this could impact church websites and Christian blogs. Good stuff.
(And I guess this means we can expect a redesign of the BrianGardner.com website pretty soon, too.)
Something like this can be added as a “mindstream” category on a Christian blog, where folks drop links to interesting church articles, videos, images, etc. I don’t think it would be best use as the primary engine of a church site, rather an addition to it. This would result in ongoing content being produced, and more activity on a site.
As for a redesign – not right now. I’ve switched things up a couple times over the past month or so, and want to keep things as is for now.
But yes, at some point…
Had to Google “Tumblr style WordPress themes” – I had no idea what it was all about.
Strange how quickly we learn – now I know what they are and after reading this post, I know why we should be using them.
Also know something about “digital sharecropping”.
Useful info, well explained.
Now you know what it all means, eh?
Google is my friend, and it’s safe to say that most of the knowledge I’ve gained on “how to do things” came from searching for “how to do things.”
Hey Brian, this post is really excellent, and the point on ‘digital sharecropping’ is dead on, you and the Copyblogger team definitely got that 100% right.
One needs to look no further than Posterous: a blogging platform that got acui-hired by Twitter and will likely shut down in the not so distant future.
Do you really want to risk good content on platforms you don’t control?
Not me.
What you said.
I get that a lot of folks aren’t technically advanced enough to install WordPress. If that’s the case, they should hire someone for $50 to do it – if for anything, just to avoid any potential disaster down the road. And this doesn’t include how I feel about business or professionals using a Blogger or Tumblr address as their website.
Hey Brian, I still cannot understand the difference between a Post Format “Link Post” and a “normal” “old” regular post format where it is possible inserting links since long ago.
The post format “Link” is just a way to drop a link to a site in the context of a brief post.
tumblr on wordpress WP. that’s really cool. i can see many of us here will start copy the idea.
Great article and even better timing. Being concerned about the ownership of images I wanted to start a similar concept about a year ago and so I ended up customising the Expose theme (http://elmurphy.co.uk/category/tumblr/) but I can definitely see a few changes being made over the next week or so!
Good stuff Emma, let me know if you do anything with this – and how it turns out.
Looking forward to “In an upcoming post, I’ll get into greater detail on how you can implement the post format icons. There are a number of ways to display them, and I’ll explain that.”
Armed with that and this one, I’ll be unstoppable! I’m gonna shake up the world!
It’s something that I’m hoping to push out this week Mike, just a matter of “findin’ time”, ya know?
Hm, that sounds like the title of a country song…
nice theme, Brian..
I can’t see post formats catching on until the admin interface adapts to the format being created – otherwise there’s too much room for user error, or we resort to using custom fields / meta boxes all over the place, in which case a custom post type would allow a more streamlined interface…
interested to see where post formats vs post types goes from here..
PS, ta for the icons!
What actually happens when you choose the “Audio” post format?
Is there a player built in?
Do we need our own HTML5 player?
If it’s just a post that links to a real audio, that really, really lame
PS – that post talking more about the icons and what you can do w/ them is really needed