Start blogging @ Tumblr

Choose the right platform

Blogging is one thing, but how can I integrate with my existing website?

Next to the basic functionality of a good blogging platform, I am also searching for something to easily integrate into my own website. A quick investigation using the almighty Google search engine told me that tumblr seems the closest to meeting my extra requirements. So let’s give it a try with this first blogpost.

What’s up next?

Let’s get started..

1. Why do I start blogging?
2. Post this blogpost (hopefully I can update this afterwards?
3. Try to integrate into my own website
4. Come back and write how I managed to do it.

Why do I start blogging?

In less than a week, I’ll leave for three months of seclusion to the French Alps. I’ll be combining some of things that I love most in my life: being surrounded by nature, snowboarding and - yes - creating digital content. Focused, away from everything else. (more about this in my next posts).

To keep people up to date about what should become the most inspiring period of my life so far, I think I may have something interesting to share now and then.

Post this blogpost

First step down..posting is easy! Just click the post button and you are up and running!

Next up, I chose my avatar and my header image (the long image on top of this article). Clicking on the dots below the article gives you a permalink which is visible from the Google Chrome Incognito browser, which means that the blogpost is visible for everyone, also for people that are not logged into tumblr.

Website integration

Before

Next thing I noticed after posting, is the Embed-button. Is it easy as that to integrate into my website? But will this meet my exact requirements?

Let’s check it out!

Afterwards

I managed to easily embed the code into my website, but did it meet my requirements? Well… only partly..

• I thought Tumblr would have the feature from where people could comment on a blogpost..right from the embedded code on my website..but it doesn’t. On first sight it doesn’t even seem to have this feature at all! This is a showstopper..
• When a user clicks inside the blogpost, he will automatically be routed to the Tumblr website..which I want to avoid by all means.

Conclusion

Promising looks, nice platform, easy to work with, but doesn’t completely meet my requirements.

Well, this doesn’t seem the right tool for me.. Time to check out something else..let’s say..well Wordpress?!

Written by Jonathan Dierckens who lives and works in Ghent, trying to build useful things.