Tumblr FOR DUMmIES PORTABLE EDITION
Tumblr FOR DUMmIES PORTABLE EDITION by Sue Jenkins
Tumblr For Dummies, Portable Edition Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Tumblr is a trademark of Tumblr, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETE- NESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITU- ATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PRO- FESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRIT- TEN AND WHEN IT IS READ. For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport. Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-ondemand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com. ISBN 978-1-118-33595-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-37080-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-37081-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-37082-7 (ebk) Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Author Sue Jenkins is a web and graphic designer, an award-winning software instructor, Adobe Certified Instructor/Adobe Certified Expert, fine art photographer, and founder of Luckychair. com. She is the author of several For Dummies instructional books on web design, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Photoshop, including Web Design All-in-One For Dummies (Wiley) and Smashing Photoshop CS5: 100 Professional Techniques (Wiley/ SmashingMagazine). In addition, Sue is the software instructor in seven training programs from ClassOnDemand.com and Lynda.com, a part-time instructor at Noble Desktop in New York City, and an Assistant Professor of graphic design at Marywood University in northeastern PA. For questions, tips, and inspiration, follow her on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
Dedication To Kyle, 8, for loving me all the way through, and for being the best son in the whole wide world. (Kyle s words, which express my feelings perfectly.) Author s Acknowledgments My first thank you is to all the people at Tumblr for creating such a cool micro-blogging platform that s not only free, but also super fun to use. Big giant thank you s go second to my awesome agent, Matt Wagner, who continues to surprise me with sweet projects like this book, which was such a blast to write. To acquisitions editor, Amy Fandrei, I thank for her help with getting the project off the ground and gently but firmly pushing things along. Praise also goes to my delightful project editor, Kim Darosett, who has an amazing ability to look at the big picture and move all the pieces around until they fit together beautifully. Special thanks also go to Barry Childs-Helton, my copy editor, and James Russell, my technical editor, for their excellent comments and suggestions. Generous thanks also go to my production coordinator, Kristie Rees, for all her hard work, and to all the other folks at Wiley who were a part of this project for their fantastic effort at making this book look great. This is goofy, but I d also like to thank Bravo and Lifetime for having such bizarre and wildly entertaining reality TV shows like Project Runway and Big Rich Texas that help me unwind after a long day of writing. Lastly, thanks to Kyle and Phil. You make me smile.
Publisher s Acknowledgments We re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies. custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following: Acquisitions and Editorial Project Editor: Kim Darosett Acquisitions Editor: Amy Fandrei Senior Copy Editor: Barry Childs-Helton Technical Editor: James H. Russell Editorial Manager: Leah Michael Editorial Assistant: Leslie Saxman Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case Cover Photo: istockphoto.com / Cienpies Design Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www. the5thwave.com) Composition Services Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees Layout and Graphics: Melanee Habig, Sennett Vaughan Johnson, Lavonne Roberts Proofreaders: Lindsay Amones, Rebecca Denoncour Indexer: Potomac Indexing, LLC Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director Publishing for Consumer Dummies Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher Composition Services Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
Contents at a Glance Introduction... 1 Chapter 1: Setting Up Your Tumblr Blog... 5 Chapter 2: Creating Your First Post... 21 Chapter 3: Deciding What Content to Post... 33 Chapter 4: Using the Dashboard... 41 Chapter 5: Managing Posts and Messages... 53 Chapter 6: Following, Liking, and Reblogging... 65 Chapter 7: Interacting with Others... 75 Chapter 8: Exploring Tumblr... 91 Chapter 9: Discovering, Modifying, and Designing Themes... 111 Chapter 10: Ten Useful Third-Party Apps for Tumblr... 129 Appendix: Tumblr Resources... 141 Index... 147
Table of Contents Introduction... 1 About This Book... 2 Conventions Used in This Book... 2 Foolish Assumptions... 3 Icons Used in This Book... 3 Where to Go from Here... 4 Chapter 1: Setting Up Your Tumblr Blog... 5 Creating Your Account... 6 Selecting Your Account Settings... 7 Setting Your Account Preferences... 11 Customizing Your Blog... 13 Selecting a theme... 14 Setting the title and description... 15 Customizing the appearance... 15 Creating pages... 17 Selecting Advanced options... 18 Chapter 2: Creating Your First Post... 21 Exploring the General Posting and Formatting Options... 21 Using the sidebar posting options... 22 Understanding the text formatting options... 23 Creating Different Types of Posts... 25 Text... 25 Photos... 26 Quotes... 28 Links... 28 Chats... 29 Audio files... 30 Videos... 32 Chapter 3: Deciding What Content to Post... 33 Exploring Topics to Post... 33 Creating versus Collecting Content... 35 Creating content... 35 Collecting content... 36
xii Tumblr For Dummies, Portable Edition Chapter 4: Using the Dashboard... 41 Using the Dashboard Menu... 42 Creating New Blogs... 43 New primary blog... 43 New additional blog... 43 Deleting blogs... 46 Searching for Help... 46 Editing Preferences... 47 Logging In and Out... 48 Getting to Know the Sidebar... 48 Launching Your Site... 50 Chapter 5: Managing Posts and Messages... 53 Editing and Deleting Posts... 53 Editing a post... 54 Deleting a post... 55 Reviewing Messages... 55 Adding the envelope icon to your Dashboard... 56 Viewing and managing messages... 56 Making Drafts... 58 Working with the Queue... 59 Creating queued posts... 60 Editing queued posts... 61 Using the Mass Post Editor... 61 Chapter 6: Following, Liking, and Reblogging... 65 Following Other Blogs... 65 Becoming a follower... 66 Viewing posts from blogs you re following... 66 Viewing notes... 67 Managing Followers of Your Blog... 68 Liking Posts... 70 Reblogging Posts... 71 Adding Tumblr Share Buttons to a Non-Tumblr Site... 72 Chapter 7: Interacting with Others... 75 Asking and Answering Questions... 75 Enabling the Ask feature... 76 Asking a question... 77 Answering a question... 78 Creating question posts... 79
Table of Contents xiii Making and Accepting Submissions... 79 Enabling the Submit feature... 80 Submitting to a site... 81 Responding to a submission... 82 Sending and Receiving Fan Mail... 84 Sending Fan Mail... 85 Receiving Fan Mail... 87 Attending Meetups... 88 Attending a Tumblr Meetup... 88 Scheduling a Tumblr Meetup... 89 Chapter 8: Exploring Tumblr... 91 Searching by Tags... 92 Exploring Tumblr by Category... 94 Exploring the Wire... 94 Exploring by listing... 95 Checking Out Sites Featured on Spotlight... 97 Searching for People on Tumblr... 98 Finding people using your address book... 98 Adding people to follow manually... 100 Discovering Tumblr s Goodies... 102 Using Tumblr s Bookmarklet... 102 Installing Tumblr for your phone... 105 Backing up your blog... 105 Linking to Facebook... 106 Publishing to Twitter... 107 Audio posting by telephone... 107 Embedding your blog on another web page... 109 Chapter 9: Discovering, Modifying, and Designing Themes... 111 Exploring Tumblr s Theme Garden... 112 Searching for themes... 112 Previewing themes... 114 Installing themes... 115 Editing a Theme s HTML... 116 Examining your theme s code... 116 Locating an element s class or ID... 118 Editing an element s class or ID... 120 Exploring the Basics of Creating a Theme... 121 Gathering the tools you need... 121 Following a theme creation workflow... 122 Submitting your theme to Tumblr... 124 Exploring Online Tumblr Theme Tutorials... 126
xiv Tumblr For Dummies, Portable Edition Chapter 10: Ten Useful Third-Party Apps for Tumblr... 129 HelloTxt... 130 Ping.fm... 131 Blip.fm... 131 TumblrStats... 133 Zemanta... 134 Missing e... 135 LinkWithin Related Posts... 135 Tumblr Tag Clouds... 136 Pikchur... 137 Postling... 138 Appendix: Tumblr Resources... 141 Index... 147
Introduction Welcome to Tumblr For Dummies, Portable Edition! This book is your personal guide to using Tumblr. In the following pages, you ll discover everything you need to create a Tumblr account, pick a theme, and start blogging. Did you know that Tumblr currently hosts more than 46 million free blogs on the Internet? With more than 18 billion (yeah, billion) total posts, that s more than 55 million posts or 545 million page views happening on Tumblr each day. Sounds like a hot trend, right? It is. Billed as a platform for self-expression, Tumblr is the fastest-growing, free micro-blogging social media service that is addictive and fun to use. No matter where you are in the world, no matter what time of day, you can share anything you want on your Tumblr blog including text, photos, quotes, chats, links, music, and video, all from the convenience of your browser, phone, computer desktop, or e-mail. What s more, with over a thousand themes to choose from, you can customize your own Tumblr page with different graphics, colors, and fonts, and even modify a theme s HTML. You can also connect Tumblr to your Facebook and Twitter accounts so that anytime you post to Tumblr, your other accounts will be updated automatically too. Talk about convenient. Another reason for Tumblr s popularity is the fact that you can like and reblog other Tumblr users posts. Finding out that someone liked your post or reblogged it is a special feeling that makes you want to post more. Tumblr users are interested in all kinds of things, making it one of the most fun sites to explore on the Internet. If all this sounds like it might be interesting to you, then read on to learn how to get in on the Tumblr action and become part of this exciting new world.