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Tumblr Archives
One of my biggest gripes with Tumblr has finally been improved with V5 and that has to do with how the system previously displayed your archives.
If you came across a blog that you enjoyed and felt you attained value from and wanted to explore more, it was just completely daunting having to horizontally scroll through the archives, which consisted of a page of endless squares that lacked organizational structure to them. A room-for-improvement feature that others might have considered inconsequential but it was an often overlooked component like this that annoyed me until now.
The new layout is much simplistic in nature and actually inviting to use, mainly because as a reader, you have more control as to what you’re interesting in seeing based on the month you select to explore. I love it!
Tumblr has done it once again with these more than subtle enhancements. It’s exciting listening to the last sentence of the video released depicting all the other new feature: “We promise, we’re just getting started.”
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Garrett’s screenshot has awoken my curiosity in knowing how much popularity you carry among other Tumblr users. Take a screenshot of the amount of people that follow you and vice versa and subsequently upload it to Tumblr Followers Group. Get on it, what are you waiting for! These are my stats.
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Comments and Titles
When I first began blogging, aside from the daily writing, there were 2 other elements to the craft that as far as I was concern were standard to having a blog and that there was no exception to the rule. First ensuring you have an appealing title that would attract a web surfer to want to read your entries and second the availability of a comment system for readers to react to your writing. What if you opted not to have both? Garrett expressed his feelings on the subject:
I said it back then and I’ll say it again: Getting rid of post titles and comments is the best thing you can do for your content. I’ve been without comments for over two years and I don’t ever plan on bringing them back. I turned titles on for the last design and immediately regretted it. I am so thrilled they’re gone again.
I enjoy receiving feedback on anything regarding my writing but I’ve grown so accustom for it arriving via email that even though the option to add comments to Tumblr is available, I haven’t had the urge to incorporate it. As for titles, I would think that by not having them, it would force the reader to have no option but to read your entries to make sense of what the subject at hand is and because there’s no introduction established with a convention title. -
Tumblr Recommendations
Since the inception of my little web space here, I’ve experimented with several CMS from Blogger, TextPattern, Wordpress, Simplelog (installation was a b*tch so I gave up on it) and now Tumblr and out of all of these, Tumblr stands out to me more because of it’s simplicity in use and variety of formats to publish. So while it’s great and it serves it’s purpose for me, it still has room from improvement in other areas. Here’s some recommendations for their next update:
- Display of archives: not particularly appealing the way Tumblr displays archives at the moment. I would prefer something more in the realm of Justin Blanton’s Smart Archives plugin for WP and the output is nice and clean.
- Search feature: Not everyone has the patience to sift through archives especially if your entries surpass the amount of men Paris Hilton has been with. For more straightforward findings, a built-in search feature should be implemented although Garrett managed to include a Google version to his blog (bottom of the page) but it’s not the same.
- Blog hosting: The ability to host your own blog is a feature to be much desired with Tumblr. There’s always issues that can arise during maintenance from their end but it’s more about knowing that all your content is secured on your own server. Blogger already has this feature available. Although I do have to commend Tumblr with custom domain allowability.
