Tumblogs have been around for a very long time , and if you haven’t heard of it before the chances are you soon will. The popularity of microblogging and microblogging platforms such as Tumblr are on the rise and many small business’ are scratching their heads and wondering if they should get involved.
WordPress users don’t need to feel left out of the tumblogging phenomenon as most premium theme providers offer tumblog themes that bring the quick and simple publishing experience to your WordPress powered site.
What is a Tumblog
Tumblogs are microblogging platforms that allow users to post and share small bits of information and content (quotes, links pictures or video). The content shared is often shorter than that shared on a traditional blogging platform and can represent a dirty stream of consciousness with all the various small bits of content making up the whole experience.
Tumblogs in WordPress
Tumblog Themes for WordPress make use of Post Formats (introduced in WordPress 3.1) that allows you to have specific content templates applied to your posts. These content templates can be styled and structured to suit the type of content contained within the post. In example, if a post is indicated as a ‘video’ post format, WordPress knows that it is a video and applies the content template “video” to the post, displaying it with the video icon and whatever styling has been defined for video posts.
Read this handy tip for more on Post Formats in WP 3.1
Benefits of using a Tumblog Theme for your WordPress website instead of a Tumblr account
You can host your own site
Having your own WordPress website on your own server offers you protection against down time of the service providers.
WordPress gives you more control
Tumblog providers such as Tumblr and Posterous are great because they provide simple and straight forward quick blogging services. However, having a Tumblog theme for your WordPress website allows you to extend your tumblog with all the nifty WordPress plugins available. You can bolt on a eCommerce store, or get in depth statitsics on your blog with the use of Jetpack.
You own your content.
When posting content on Tumblr, they can do anything with your content. Let’s take a look at the Terms of Service for Tumblr.
Subscriber shall own all Subscriber Content that Subscriber contributes to the Site, but hereby grants and agrees to grant Tumblr a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable right and license (with the right to sublicense), to use, copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works and store such Subscriber Content and to allow others to do so (“Content License”) in order to provide the Services.
Tumblog Themes for WordPress
So you’ve come this far and you’ve decided that you want your business blog to be in a tumblog style instead of a traditional blog. You’ve weighed up the pro’s and cons of having a self hosted Tumblog against having one hosted on Tumblr or Posterous, and you’ve decided that you want maximum control and extensibility by having a self hosted WordPress install with a Tumblog Theme.
So the next question is: What theme do you choose?
Obox and WooThemes both offer very cool tumblog themes for WordPress.
