Time for a change
I have nothing but respect for WordPress as blogging/CMS software and as an Open Source project. I just don’t have time to keep up so much stuff anymore. Every release means I have to upgrade plugins and core software for security, etc., and I just don’t feel like doing that anymore. It’s a pain. It costs time and money to have a self-hosted blog—two things I could do with a bit more of.
Tumblr alleviates some of those issues for me—I don’t have to think about security or plugins. Sure, I’m giving up some freedom for security (as you always must) but overall it’s worth the time savings. Soon, all of my websites will be under one roof here at Tumblr. No more jumping around between platforms to post or perform maintenance. It’ll be easy-peasy. The Tumblr bookmarklet will let me post whatever is on my mind effortlessly, and I’ll be able to bring my personal blog into the awesome world of the Tumblr community. Cool.
The migration from WordPress was mostly smooth, but not exactly straightforward. This is a serious failing on Tumblr’s part (how can they not import from WordPress, the premier blogging software on the ‘net?). I had to follow this guide to get all my previous posts into my new Tumblr home. My comments from the previous site are all backed up on Disqus, but unfortunately can’t be imported to this blog at this time. The good folks over there assure me they’re working on the issue (the fact that the permalink structure changed between sites) and will have it resolved soon.
Backup won’t be as easy or as automatic as my WordPress install either, but I hope to alleviate that concern by writing most of essays and posts offline in Markdown prior to publishing. I’ll also be making use of this tool once a month.
Changin’ up the look
Since I was changing hosting providers and blogging platforms, I thought it would be a great time to do a quick redesign. Since I’ve already learned a lot about Tumblr theming from hosting Minimal Linux and 4 Tracks here, it was a quick and simple affair to customize the default Tumblr template (which is pretty excellent in terms of giving you something to work with). First I picked my avatar, a pic taken by one of my friends. Then I used the colors from that picture as the palette for the rest of the site.
I made the brushed-metal background from this GIMP tutorial, and I modified the typography of the original Tumblr theme so that the titles are reminiscent of my old yellow-and-black look, but with more space between characters.
Overall, I was going for clean, simple, calming, low-key. I’m deeply indebted to the Tumblr team for making a great starting-point theme and a fantastic blogging platform.
