Tumblr and Themes
After having seen the Notepad Chaos WordPress theme by Evan Eckard on Smashing Magazine, I wished I had a blog to use it on. Then I realized I had a Tumblr blog that I was using a plain looking Tumblr theme on and have been wanting to make it look better.
I had never touched the code in Tumblr themes, so I didn’t know if I could port a theme over to Tumblr. Fortunately, it was very easy because the theme author had created a single file that had all of the theme code in it, minus the CSS of course.
The Tumblr code is pretty easy to understand and they provide a useful help page that explains each variable and even includes some page examples.
I did eventually learn that I couldn’t upload images on Tumblr, so I had to upload the images elsewhere and point them to the right location in the code.
Once the theme was ready on Tumblr, others started noticing it. In less than 24 hours, my blog was on the Sweet Themes Tumblr page.
So, if you are tired of the Tumblr themes provided, seek out a theme that wasn’t made for Tumblr and customize it for Tumblr! I’m glad mine doesn’t look like everyone else’s (except for the WordPress blogs using the theme). Here are a few sites that offer Tumblr themes:
Interested in a custom Tumblr theme? Check out tumblize.
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Andrew Acomb on August 30th, 2008
I saw this post and I also decided to converted the Notepad Chaos theme over to Tumblr. I changed a couple of things on it that I thought would make it better. Here’s my post about it:
http://www.andrewacomb.com/blog/2008/08/29/tumblr-theme-notepad-chaos/
Here is my wife’s Tumblr page that is using the theme:
http://jenniferacomb.tumblr.com/
Andrew
http://www.andrewacomb.com/blog
Alisha on August 30th, 2008
To answer your post, the only reason I didn’t share it was because I didn’t have permission yet to do so. I now have permission to do so and am working on preparing it for releasing.
The reason I left the recent posts on the right is because it’s a much shorter list (a summary) of what is there on the left side to quickly look over instead of scrolling down the page to see. Of course since tumblr doesn’t handle things the way it should, when you go to a post, it will show only that post’s title on the right. I’m hoping tumblr will be able to handle it better in the future.
You said you changed a couple things that you thought would make it better, but I only saw that one change.
Also, I replaced your link above to the correct link to your wife’s tumblr blog. You had put the same link that just points to the post about it.
Andrew Acomb on August 30th, 2008
Thanks for replacing that link! I didn’t even realize I did that.
Please don’t get defensive. I was inspired by what you did so I decided to do the same. I completely understand why you didn’t share it. I read about that on your blog post. That’s also why I’m not sharing mine yet either.
As for changes. Most are with the formatting of the posts. Little things like adding a line under the title and centering the pictures in the post column. I will add more stuff to it when I have more time. I just wanted to finish most of it so she could start using it right away.
I hope to see more themes from you!!!
Alisha on August 30th, 2008
You’re welcome.
I apologize if I sounded defensive. I wasn’t trying to! I’m running on almost no sleep, so I am extremely tired!
There are lines underneath post titles, only if it’s from Tumblr itself, such as a regular post, photo or video, but not a feed that is being imported into Tumblr. The reason I did that was because if it was just a link or a few words, it did not look good at all. Otherwise, I did have the lines there initially and couldn’t stand it. ;)
I’m glad to see another variation of the theme though. It will be interesting to see if anyone else comes up with something different.
Being that I don’t actually design themes myself, there probably won’t be many from me, but I love porting themes to WordPress and now Tumblr. =)