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by ~JuDesIgnEr

No wonder; millions of people have chosen Tumblr as their blogging service, and the average Tumblr user creates 14 original posts every month. Half of those posts are photos, and the rest consist of text, links, quotes, music and video.

Tumblr is nothing to sneeze at. It has proven itself worthy of receiving cash infusions from two venture capital firms and a number of angel investors.

If you’re thinking of climbing on board the Tumblr train, this article is your golden ticket. We’ll discuss what Tumblr is and how it works, then we’ll look at how to customize it. We’ll cap that with a few miscellaneous bits of wisdom—things I wish I knew when I got started with Tumblr. All aboard!

What Is It?

Before diving into customizing Tumblr, let’s hammer out what Tumblr is and how it works. If you’re already familiar with Tumblr, skip down to the “Customizing Tumblr” section below.

Tumblr is a unique microblogging platform that bills its service as “the easiest way to blog”— and ease of use is certainly its main draw. Sharing the usual suspects (text and links) is dead simple, but Tumblr really shines when sharing media such as photos, video and music. Heck, even sharing quotes from other websites is easy.

And Tumblr is growing fast; at the time of writing, Tumblr had 951,860,971 posts created by 7,068,516 bloggers.

Tumblr has developed a unique vocabulary to describe the platform. A “tumblog” is the word insiders use to describe a Tumblr-powered blog, and to “reblog” is to repost content from another tumblog.

You can also “like” other tumblogs, and a tumblog can attract “followers” (as on Twitter), who receive updates each time you post content.

Admin Interface

Tumblr’s admin interface is sleek. It’s simple and not graphics-heavy, but you can tell a lot of thought went into the layout. Across the top are seven buttons for the different types of posts you can create. Each one looks like a torn piece of paper, and its tear—if you examine it closely—matches the one on the paper to its left.

In the right sidebar, you can see how many people you are following and how many are following you. You’ll also find links to your messages, drafts, queue and customization menu.

You’ll either love or hate the “Radar” in the sidebar, which features content from the Tumblr universe. If you don’t want to see it, you can minimize it by clicking the “Hide” link directly below.

The main attraction of the admin page is the content that gets sucked in from people you are following. Unfortunately, Tumblr automatically subscribes you to the “Staff” account, which means you’ll be subjected to news, announcements and promotions from time to time.

In the main information pipeline, you’ll also see your own posts and notes when people become your followers or reblog or like your content.

Ways to Post

There are plenty of ways to post on Tumblr. The conventional method is to log into the admin area, but you have other options. If you prefer to publish on the go, you can use the free iPhone app or simply text posts in from a mobile phone.

If you are an email fiend, you’ll appreciate Tumblr’s sophisticated email publishing capability. To use it, simply email the unique address provided. It automatically detects the type of content you want to post and formats it accordingly. You can even use mark-up in email posts.

One of my favorite ways to post on Tumblr is to use the bookmarklet, which makes it easy to share anything you’re looking at on the web. For example, by highlighting text on a page and clicking the bookmarklet, it detects that you want to quote it.

Types of Posts

Tumblr features seven types of posts:

• Text,
• Photo,
• Quote,
• Link,
• Chat,
• Audio,
• Video.

For the most part, these are self-explanatory. One cool feature worth highlighting, though, is the way Tumblr handles pictures. You can post a single photo, of course, but much cooler is the “photo set”—basically, a slick photo gallery that doesn’t require any programming.

Customer Service

This is one of the few areas in which Tumblr disappoints. I’ve had to contact customer support at least twice and didn’t hear back either time.

Platform features are documented to some extent, but you wouldn’t know a lot of things unless someone told you—like how to find the permalink to one of your posts in the dashboard (see the “Miscellaneous Bits of Wisdom” section below for the answer).

As it is, you’re better off asking a friend or searching through a forum to find the answer to your question than contacting Tumblr directly for help. It’s sad, but Marc LaFountain hasn’t been much of an ambassador to the community, at least not in my view.

Free (for Now)

One of the best things about Tumblr is its price: free. I’m a little puzzled by how Tumblr makes money (perhaps it’ll introduce the equivalent of a sponsored tweet sometime).

It doesn’t make you pay for storage or bandwidth, and you don’t have to upgrade to get “advanced” features such as the ability to customize your website or use your own domain name.

It’s nice, but will it be free forever? That’s a question you might want to ask before rushing full-speed ahead into developing your own Tumblr theme.

No FTP Capabilities

Unfortunately, Tumblr does not have file transfer protocol (FTP) capabilities. To make changes to your theme, copy and paste your code into a window in the customization interface.

It’s a bit of a pain, but you’ll need to make the trade-off in order for Tumblr to work with your design.

Using the Queue

The queue feature is a great way to keep fresh content bubbling up to the front page of your blog and holding the audience’s attention.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work as you’d expect. There are times when it works perfectly, but on more than a few occasions my entire queue has been published at once. It’s very nice when it works, but it can be a huge frustration when it doesn’t.

The Mega-Editor

The mega-editor lets you make batch adjustments to multiple posts (adding a tag, for example, or deleting several posts). In the mega-editor view, content can be sorted by week or by month.

Customizing Tumblr

Building a Theme

And now for the good stuff: customizing a Tumblr theme. Check out the official Tumblr documentation on theme customization. You might also want to glance at Tumblr’s Theme Garden to get a sense of what others have done with the platform.

You’ll probably want to create your own theme only if you’re good at writing HTML by hand. If you use Dreamweaver or another WYSIWIG editor, this might not be for you.

Coding Structure

Tumblr uses two operators to render specific types of content in your HTML, and you’ll need to familiarize yourself with both. These operators are “Variables” and “Blocks.” To quote Tumblr directly:

Variables are used to insert dynamic data, like your blog’s title or description, while blocks are used either to render a block of HTML for a set of data (like your posts) or to conditionally render a block of HTML (like a “Previous Page” link).

Basic variables include In-Depth Review of Tumblr’s Custom Theming Ability, {Description}, {RSS} and {Favicon}.

Let’s say you want to render a pagination block. This is how you’d do it:

{block:Pagination}{/block:Pagination}

Each type of post is made up of numerous variables and blocks, so you’ll have to style each type separately with CSS. If you plan to release your Tumblr theme for free or for cost, be sure to enable custom colors, fonts, text and images, as well as the custom CSS.

Using Your Own Domain Name

Your blog won’t be completely customized until you’re using your own domain name, and fortunately this is very easy.

Simply follow your domain registrar’s instructions to point your domain’s A-record (IP address) to 72.32.231.8—it will be the same for every domain you want to use. No need to mess with the name servers for this.

To make sure your domain is set up properly, click on the Custom Domain Test tool. To finish up, log into the admin dashboard and click Customize → Info → Use a Custom Domain Name. Enter your domain name, click “Save Changes,” and you’re good to go.

Miscellaneous Bits of Wisdom

Social Integration

The built-in Facebook, Twitter and FeedBurner tools are definitely worth using if you don’t want to mess with third-party solutions.

Unsurprisingly, integrating social media is a snap. Navigate to Customize → Services, and enter your account information.

Tumblr can send posts to your Facebook news feed and Twitter account automatically. If you want to integrate FeedBurner, Tumblr can redirect your blog’s regular RSS feed to a designated FeedBurner feed.

Letting Users Submit Posts

One nifty built-in feature of Tumblr is the ability to let users submit posts; for example, to set up a users’ news section on your blog.

To enable this feature, go to Customize → Community, and check the “Let people submit posts” box. Your readers will then be able to contribute to your website. You can display submission guidelines, decide what kinds of posts people can submit and pre-populate tags.

Finding Permalinks

When you hover over an article in your dashboard, the top-right corner of the box folds down; clicking in that area reveals the permalink for that post. If someone hadn’t have told me about this, I never would have known.

Your Primary Blog

Be cautious: your first Tumblr blog will be your primary blog by default, even if you create another one down the road. Every time you log into the admin panel, this blog will show up first. Use the drop-down menu in the sidebar to switch to your other blogs.

Favicons

The favicon is basically your portrait, and it can be changed by clicking Customize → Info.

Setting Your Time Zone

This may seem minor, but if you plan to use the queue, then make sure your time zone is set correctly. Go to Customize → Advanced.

1. The MacBook In Black

2. Aluminium MacBook Pro OSX

3. HydroPRO -HP- Mac Edition

4. Stainless mac

5. The Mini. Mac Mini

6. Concave Mac Icons

7. Capital Icon Suite

8. Apple mac mini icons

9. Slick Drives

10. Mac mini Icon

11. Mac Pro Psd + Png + Ico

12. Mac Box Icons

13. iMac

14. Apple iMac icons

15. iMac 2008

16. G5 System

17. Float

18. TiSystem

19. Agua

20. iMac icon

21. New iMac 07

22. Icons 2 by Lecoupdulapin

23. Refresh Snow Leopard

24. Macbook and remote iKons

25. Nimble Folders

26. The Pro. MacBook Pro

27. Slick Drives Remake

28. Apple Mug Icons

29. Black Leopard Icon Set

30. Onibari Leopard Made

31. PoleStack

32. W R E N

33. Wooden Slick Drives

34. Ive Drives

35. HD StorageBox

36. Platinum Drives

37. Exempli Gratia

38. Lacunae

39. XIII

40. DA ID

41. 27″ iMac Icon OS X

42. The MacBook In White

43. The Anodized Behemoth

44. Carbon Light Folders

45. Mac USB Icons

46. Wireless Mighty Mouse

47. Smoothicons 14

48. eWorld X: eHardware

49. Totem Pole

50. Nano icon set

AW Conqueror

(to download, click on Solutions > Typefaces in the left menu)

Alt Tiwo

Alt Matey

Doughboy

The Olney Font Family

Geomancy

Paper Boat

Neu Eichmass

Oh! Mai Mai!

Ingleby

BS Konstata

Cute Balloon

Cute Balloon is a jQuery script that allow you to easy make a beauty tool tip balloon, also with ajax content.

Captify

Captify is a plugin that displays simple, pretty image captions that appear on rollover. The goal of Captify is to be easy to use, small/simple, and completely ready for use in production environments (unlike ImageCaptions at the moment). Also, it’s only 2.3kb!

gvChart

gvChart is a plugin for jQuery, that uses Google Charts to create interactive visualization by using data from the HTML table tag. It is easy in use and additionally it allows you to create five types of the charts.

jmapping

This plugin is designed for quick development of a page that implements a Google Map with a list of the locations that are specified within the HTML.

jQuery.validity

jQuery.validity is an elegant and powerful jQuery plug-in you can use to setup client-side form validation. Instead of writing validation manually or balancing some unwieldy server-side framework, validity allows you to design client-side validation in a manner that feels natural and straightforward.

Animated table sort

This plugin allows you to animatedly sort a table based on a column’s

s, or on the content/value of a child/descendant element within those

s. The various

s fly to their new homes, giving a nice effect.

Flare Video

This plugin gives you the ability to easily add an HTML5 video player with Flash fallback.

Coin Slider

Coin Slider is a jQuery image slider plugin with a unique square transition effect.

Blockster

Blockster is a Javascript transition effect designed for ‘featured content’ rotators or slideshows. Its underlying concept is to transition between one element to the next block by block. It is highly customisable in terms of how many blocks are involved, whether they fade in or simply appear, whether they appear in order or randomly, and more.

Colortip

Colortip converts the title attributes of elements withing your page, into a series of colorful tooltips. Six color themes are available, so you can easily match it with the rest of your design.

Photoshop Stripe patterns (20 patterns)

Free Vector Seamless Backgrounds (6 patterns)

Seamless Paper Patterns (6 patterns)

Patterns .38 (25 patterns)

Patterns 17 – Fancy (4 patterns)

Woven Plaid Swatches (25 patterns)

Seamless Polka Dot Pattern Swatches (25 patterns)

Pretty Plaids (30 patterns)

Halftone Patterns (52 patterns)

Retro Tartan (10 patterns)

“404 Not Found.” These three little words can make any Internet explorer an unhappy camper. After all, who hopes to click on a broken link or stumble upon a moved or deleted page while cruising around the web?

Luckily, some web designers have chosen to end the misery of encountering a 404 error page. Instead of letting their site readers bump heads with a nasty dead-end error message, they’ve managed to squeeze a little entertainment out of it.

Below you’ll find some of the most entertaining 404 error pages on the web. We’ve listed them alphabetically to avoid playing favorites, but they’re all worth a look. Share your favorite 404 error page designs in the comments below!

1. 501st Legion

501st Legion is a Star Wars costume organization. It only makes sense that its 404 page would play on Obiwan’s famous jedi mind trick with a “weak-minded” stormtrooper.

2. Abduzeedo

Yes, Houston, a 404 is definitely a problem.

3. Apartment Home Living

A nice ol’ chap comes to your assistance on ApartmentHomeLiving.com if you run across a 404 error page. Click the lovely lady peering from behind the frame for proper navigation suggestions.

4. Astuteo

“Uh-Oh! SpaghettiOs!” You know you’re a part of pop culture if your jingle makes it into a 404 error page. The popular SpaghettiOs marketing jingle is here to stay.

5. Blippy

Head over to Blippy’s 404 page for an adventure. Keep clicking on the boy dressed in a unicorn outfit to discover a triple rainbow! Who knew a 404 page could be so fun?

6. Factor D

In an ode to early horror films, Factor D features an appropriately horrific 404 error accompanied by a beautiful, yet terrified scream queen.

7. SureDev

Many 404 error pages apologize for the error. Not this one. It’s obviously your fault.

8. Blue Daniel

This 404 error page is a beautiful depiction of “Track 404,” a fictitious NYC subway line. Check it out to experience the full animation.

9. Brandstack

“You can click anywhere else, but you can’t click here.” Love it.

10. Center’d

Bottom line: You can’t go wrong with cute kittens.

11. Chris Jennings

Most of us would like to run into a 404 error page just as much as we’d like to run into the Grim Reaper.

12. Colour Marketing & Design

When you’re facing “sharks with laser beams attached to their frickin’ heads,” what do you expect? Definitely a 404 error.

13. CSS-Tricks

Well, that can’t be good.

14. CSSscoop

Picking a 404 error page design that is consistent with your name is an appropriate move. CSSscoop chose a melting ice cream cone, with a scoop of ice cream, of course.

15. Digitalmash

Sarcasm in dire situations is always appreciated, right?

16. Good Old Games (GOG)

Try not to make any missteps on GOG, or you’ll end up lost in the cosmos.

17. HomeStarRunner.com

Insulting your readers doesn’t usually help, but this 404 made me chuckle.

18 Hoppermagic

Hoppermagic chose to stick to its brand imagery when creating its 404 page.

19. iFolderLinks

There’s just something about a really frustrated baby that catches your attention. And if you’ve made it to this 404 page, you probably feel his pain.

20. Itchy Robot

If you can’t think of something clever to say on your 404 page, just write exactly what your users are thinking.

21. Jackfig

Jackfig added a creative touch to its 404 error page, with an inspirational haiku.

22. Jolie Poupée

Jolie Poupée, creator of eco-friendly children’s clothes, serves up an audience-appropriate 404 on its site.

23. Mark Dijkstra

This 404 error page is reminiscent of the kitschy tourist shirts that your lousy friends and relatives buy you when they visit amazing places.

24. Merge

Prithee, go medieval on your site’s visitors if need be.

25. Milrayas

Imagery always makes a 404 more entertaining.

26. OrangeCoat

Some 404 error pages do a wonderful job of explaining to users exactly what caused the 404 error. OrangeCoat provides a fun decision tree for lost web surfers that is sure to help them along their merry ways.

27. Oroza

Have fun with colors, shapes and exclamations.

28. Sick Designer

Sick Designer captures the depression that a 404 can cause on its error page.

29. Student Market

How fitting that a student-centric site would feature an addition problem on its 404 page.

30. The Brand Surgery

This page just pops. We like it.

31. The North Face

For true entertainment value, why not just tell a story? The North Face does just that by creating a tale about link-eating mountain goats.

32. Tinsanity

You might have been pwned, burned, punk’d or rickrolled recently, but have you been 404′d? Click here to join the party.

33. TK Designs

Excitement! Adventure! Ahhhhh, where I am?!

34. Urban Outfitters

Our sentiments exactly.

35. Urban Pill

If, after searching for hours, you still can’t find the page you were seeking, Chuck Norris probably has it.

Follow these straight forward steps, and you’ll be on your way to acquiring Internet presence.

Step 1 – Register a domain name
A domain name is the URL visitors type in the address bar of a browser to visit your website. Choosing an appropriate domain name is essential because it gives a hint about the identity of the site. It could be your full name (e.g. www.johnsmith.net, www.johnsmith.com), your nickname or the name of your business/company (e.g. www.google.com).
Registering a domain name will cost around $10 per year – price may vary depending on the registrar and the extension of the domain (.com, .net, .me, etc.). In order to register visit HostMonster, check your chosen domain availability then follow the site’s instructions.

Step 2 – Hosting Options
While going for a paid hosting plan powers your site with special features such as online storage space, email accounts, simple site builders and online support, it’s not necessary and if you don’t go for this option, it won’t stop you from getting your website up and running.
Paid hosting will cost you around $6 per month. It’s very important to go for good web host that offers excellent support, and features. HostMonster is one of the best web hosting companies there is, it offers a free domain name with every hosting plan.
I don’t recommend using free hosting plans with any of your websites because they often show adverts on the pages of your site and they provide little or no support.
Site builders make building websites easy and save you a lot of hassle avoiding HTML editing and technical tweaking. Usually the web host provides a site builder where you can easily create the front page, edit the content, choose a preset layout and design, change the colors and fonts, add photos, and do the same for every sub-page.
Another option worth considering is Wordpress, a blog publishing application and content management system. The content of your website can be changed and rearranged without the need to modify HTML or PHP code. The beauty of Wordpress is its simplicity – you can build great looking websites without the working knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript or PHP.

Step 3 – Building your website
If you choose to go for paid hosting, use the site builder provided to build your website. The first thing to do is choosing the template of the site from a list of templates. Then you can change the layout of the content and the color theme used with the selected template. Your website should at least have a Frontpage, Contact page and About page, make sure you create those pages with the builder.
Wordpress on the other hand, gives you more control over the site, and saves you money from paying for web hosting. Create an account with Wordpress, all you need is an email address for verification. Login and start building your website by changing the Theme, add categories, and start writing your content.
Note that if you build your website using Wordpress, they will provide you with a link to your site (e.g. http://you.wordpress.com). In this case to make it work with your domain name, redirect your domain to point to the link provided by Wordpress (check with your web host to learn how to redirect).

Step 4 – Spreading the word
List your website with the major Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, in order for it to show in their results. Whether your site will have good rating is a whole other topic involving Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and is strictly for advanced users. However, increasing the rating of your website depends on the number of visitors, and the number of your site’s links found on other websites. In other words, invite as many people as you can to visit your website, and share your website’s link on as many sites as you possibly can. Join forums related to your interests and join active topics, write comments and include your link to your website. Also spread the word amongst your friends on Facebook and MySpace, your followers on Twitter and on as many social networking sites as possible.