I’ve come across many articles on the web about Wordpress, Drupal, Squarespace, Moveable Type etc, but I’ve never been able to find much written about the people that use tumblr as their primary site generation tool. It’s not like there are no serious respected bloggers are on tumblr. There’s plenty of people who seem to know their way around a CMS or two but still choose to make tumblr their home. (Adam Lisagor, Garrett Murray, and Neven Mrgan’s tumbl are some that come to mind.) So what do they see in the place? Why are they here and not on Wordpress or Drupal or some such fancy thing?
I’ve never asked them. I really should have. Instead I decided to struggle with the problem for months, weighing pros and cons of each service until I was under water. I’ve explored in depth first iWeb, then Wordpress, then Squarespace and dabbled with Virb, Flavors.me, and Blogger. I would jump from one tool to another, always convinced that someday I’d come across the one platform that had every feature that I could hope for and was dead simple to use. Man, I thought, once I found that one magic service everything would just get out of my way and I could finally really blog.
Screw it. I don’t think the perfect service is out there. What I’ve come to realize is, the more I learn about what I want out of a platform, the more my needs change. There will never be a platform that meets all of my needs forever because what I want is constantly evolving.
The thing is, while building sites with all of those other tools, I never once considered giving up my tumblr. Not once. Which begs the question why didn’t I just give in and say to myself “You know, if tumblr is the only service that you feel you just can’t do without, perhaps you’ve found where you belong.”?
So that’s what I’ve done. I’ve decided to stop crashing on tumblrs sofa so often, move my stuff in and start paying rent. I live here now.
Let me tell you, it’s fantastic. The community, features, and excitement I’ve found on tumblr are like no other service I’ve seen on the web. The difference between tumblr and WordPress to me is like the difference between art class and math class. Some kids, if they have the right mindset, can totally have fun in math class, even I could from time to time. However, it was always much easier for me to have fun in art class.
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It’s super easy to use post just about anything.
The perforated content types (text, photo, quote, link, chat, and audio) all work like a charm and are dead simple. You pick what type of content you are posting and Tumblr formats it beautifully. Tumblr supports markdown, which I’m learning and makes composing complicated from the iPhone a so much more pratical.
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In my opinion, tumblr is much easier to theme than Wordpress.
The main reason for this is because all the code you write for s Tumblr theme is all in one file. The html markup and the css all are on one page. You write the code that tells Tumblr how to layout your pages and all the complicated code is written by tumblr. All I have to do is put a little bit of bracketed text that says what dynamic element I would like Tumblr to insert at that point in the code and writes all that code for me. (Also, I don’t have to learn any php.)
If all this sounds like I’m speaking another language, don’t worry. Tumblr doesn’t require you to know what I’m talking about. In fact, I’d guess the vast majority of tumblr users don’t. Thats part of the beauty of Tumblr. It can be as complex or simple as you like. You can get a gorgeous website up with Tumblr in seconds without knowing a lick of code. All I’m saying is that if you do know about this stuff, tumblr lets you build practically anything with your knowledge.
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It’s got a great user community.
On the outside, my blog seems just like any other, there are occasional posts, a few comments on those posts here and there, an about me page, etc… but from the inside, behind the scenes, I’m constentlly getting feedback from my followers. Thru tumblrs beautiful dashboard I get questions, likes, reblogs, and regular followers. I cant stress that enough. On all of the other services I’ve used I’ve felt like I was stranded on an island. I would get almost no traffic from people I didn’t know and there was never any interaction with the few friends that did visit. On tumblr, it honestly is like I’m surrounded by friends.
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Tumblr handles all the traffic.
I don’t have to worry about my site going down if I ever get linked to by some high traffic blog. Tons of page views can cost an arm and a leg on other platforms and a sudden influx of visitors can take your whole site down. It’s a problem I never want to have to worry about, and on tumblr, I don’t.
Those are some of the biggest bullet points for me sticking with Tumblr. Every blog has different needs however, so check out their feature list and see what floats your boat.
The real reason I’m buttering up Tumblr right now is because I don’t want to hurt it’s feelings with the post I’m going to write next on the subject. Now that I’ve made tumblr my full time home, I’ve discovered that there is a big difference between visiting a place often and living there. Only after you move in do you start to notice the windows that don’t open all the way, or the one room that never seems to hold in any heat. That’s what my next post on the subject is going to be about.
This is the second part of a two part series about Tumblr. The other post can be found 
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