Soni Sarin, Gina Striffolino, Chioma Ihekweazu, Mary Rhee December 7, 2010 ENGL 393 0

Table of Contents  Introduction History ○ What’s different General Functions  Creating a Page Step-by-step  Navigation 1

Purpose  To make an easy to follow guide of how to use Tumblr that explains the following: How to create and set up a Tumblr page How to navigate the website and interact with other Tumblr users. 2

Introduction to Tumblr  Launched in 2007 in New York and has been rapidly growing ever since.  There are over ten million blogs on Tumblr and two billion posts.  David Karp, the founder of Tumblr, wanted Tumblr to be set apart from other blogging sites and social networking sites. He wanted users to be able to take the type of information that people shared on long-form blogs but make it as easy to publish as information presented on short-form services like Facebook.  Tumblr users can be of any age, but many users are between the ages of 18 and 30. 3

What Makes Tumblr Special?  Tumblr is very unique in that it allows for several different types of media to be shared within one site. It is a weblogging site that allows users to share text messages, s, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos with other Tumblr users. 4

General Tumblr Functions Tumblr can be used to share videos, music, photos, s, and texts. Tumblr allows for re-blogging. – Reblogging lets users take information presented on another user’s blog and re-post it on their own Tumblr page. Tumblr can be integrated with other sites like Facebook and Twitter. You can automatically import feed (RSS/ATOM) content from other sites as posts on your Tumblr blog. Tumblr has a submission feature that lets anyone on the web contribute to your blog. All Submissions are added to your messages page, where you or other blog member's can approve or deny them. Question posts are also available to let anyone on the web answer a question you have. 5

Create Your Own Tumblr Page 1. To get started with Tumblr, visit to open an account. This requires your address, a password and a subdomain name – your page will have the title of com. 6

(Continued) 2. After submitting your information, verify that you are human. 7

(Continued) 3. Tubmlr will prompt you with several options to add bio, photo and to customize your blog. Feel free to complete those before moving on or add that information later. 8

(Continued) 4. Done! 9

Customizing Your Page 1.Login with your Tumblr id, visit your Tumblr blog and click on ‘Customize‘ in the upper right, as shown below: 10

(Continued) 2.Choose a ready- made theme from the Tumblr Theme Garden, or build your own. Let’s start with the easy option – Installing a ready made theme! 11

(Continued) 3.Click on the ‘Info‘ menu item in the upper left, and locate the ‘Description‘ section, as shown by the arrows. 4.In the Description box, paste the code copied at step 3 above 12

(Continued) 5.Click on the ‘SAVE + CLOSE’ button in the upper right, as shown below: 13

Preview 14

How to navigate around Tumblr 1. To navigate around Tumblr, click on the “Directory” button on the top of the page. This will bring up a list of the categories to choose from. 15

(Continued) 2. Use search button on the top right side of the page to go directly to the topic. 16

Interact with Other Users  What is reblogging?  It’s analogous to YouTube embeds.  The "reblog" button on all Tumblr posts allows a meme to spread rapidly across thousands of blogs with just a click. 17

(Continued)  You can also “Like” a post by clicking on the heart.  It’s analogous to the ‘like’ function on facebook. 18

Conclusion  Tumblr has an extensive help webpage that aids users  FAQs: There are some FAQs that users can choose from  Troubleshooting—  Problem: Cannot search in the search box on Tumblr  Cause: Error in the system. Probably too many users  Solution: Wait for the website to reload. Log back in a few minutes. 19

Troubleshooting  The main issue we found with Tumblr was that it has many page errors. This may be due to the extensive amount of users.  For example, we tried to access the webpage last night, and it was down this afternoon as well.  These error pages request users to remain patient while Tumblr support detects the problem. 20

References     tools/ tools/  

Questions??? 22