We just integrated a new tumblog into the website of our design studio, eljl. We’ve gone back and forth quite a bit on how and what technology we wanted to use for the studio’s weblog, and whether a full-fledged publishing system is really what we wanted at all. We were already leaning more towards something light-weight and flexible because the full functionality of a weblog or CMS would prove to be too much for this one little area of our site. We were also waffling on whether we should just code our own basic system in php that would serve our needs, or to look around for something that might fit the bill in being a small web-based app that we could integrate into the site in a relatively short period of time-something that would not take us away from other projects we were working on. Did we really need to go through the hassle of coding something form the ground up? We hoped not. So onto the internet we went…

… and enter tumblr.

Tumblr is perhaps one of the smallest and most straight forward publishing apps I’ve come across in a long time. On their homepage they make the claim that you can be up and posting on tumblog in 10 seconds, and after sitting down and getting into it, I think they were dead right. 

A tumblog makes posting easy in that it gives you seven options for post types (text, audio, pic, video, quote, link and chat). It’s a down and dirty method of blogging. You can have posts that resemble the a-typical weblog posts straight down to just simple quotes, links and other snippets of things you’ve found on the web and want to share. Once you piece of www gold is entered, the post is formatted with css by input type to help readers distinguish between content. Easy cheesy, right? They also have a great set of options and features available to customize your tumblog so it fits your needs.

The tumblr feature we liked the most was their ability to customize. In their template screen they give you the opportunity to replace the pre-formatted xhtml and css code in their templates with your own, thereby allowing you to skin your current website’s look and feel on top of your tumblog. Complete control over your content. That’s what it’s all about. tumblr is a complete publishing system in a very compact, little package. 

After seeing all of this we were sold. I mean if you use Wordpress or Moveable Type, but don’t want the bells and whistles, why not try tumblr, it’s essentially the same type of system, but for those of us who don’t need the power of the big dogs.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Business, Design, Review, Web, Writing, eljl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.