Wellfire Interactive

Tumblr recently release a new standard module to its suite of micro-blog tools, the Page module. Tumblr is already a great user-friendly service for blogging, for even the most inexperienced technophobe. Having the ability to create static pages within your Tumblr site is a huge step forward towards gaining more marketshare. Having created Frankenstein Tumblr sites with static content before, its great to see Tumblr listening to their userbase and its needs. So, lets take a look at what the Pages module has to offer.

The module is a simple interface, such as we've come to know and love with Tumblr. Simple areas to declare a Page URL, Page Type, and to show a link to the page in any navigation you set up. Of course, depending upon your settings, your content box may be set up for RTF, HTML, or Markdown. All in all, quite simple and familiar.

There are three types of pages: Standard Layout, Custom Layout, and Redirect, each with their own uses. The Standard layout will be the one most used, as it uses the same interface as regular Tumblr posts. So, what it produces is very similar to clicking on the title link of a blog post in the feed, but you have a place to enter non-entry content. Probably best used for About pages, Services pages, and anything of the regular content type.

The Custom Layout allows for you to control the whole of the page; consider it very close to a separate Tumblr theme. Custom doesn't piggyback on your site's main Tumblr theme, so you'd need to copy and paste the theme code into this HTML area to get the same styles. And here's the rub: the only Tumblr specific tag/logic that I see running is the custom page navigation and linking. So you'll not be able to modularize your posts from the main section, nor use any of the cool user variables here. I would consider then that Custom Layout is onyl for users confident in their code-reading and -generation abilities.

Redirect is a page type to redirect to permalinks or other lengthy posts (and old style Tumblr "static" page hacks) within your Tumblr site. This does not actually redirect to anywhere outside of your Tumblr environment. Of course, to do so, you could created a Custom Layout and use Javascript or HTML meta controls to redirect instead. Redirect seems to be mainly a use case for those intrepid Tumblr users that found ways to create static pages in previous Tumblr versions.

I really see users sticking to the Standard Layout option, which puts Tumblr on equal footing with vanilla versions of Wordpress and its page system. I'd like to see the Custom Layout evolve to have the page processed by Tumblr's logic controls and add the ability to modularize the various parts of the main page. This would allow for modular footers and sidebars and take advantage of the already solid blogging capabilities that Tumblr has. Also, if Redirects could push to links outside of the site's Tumblr environment, non-HTML minded users would be able to link around to various other sites.

Overall, this is a step in the right direction. Tumblr continues to push forward and gain converts in all areas of blogging. I look forward to seeing new Page module iterations, new developer-created Goodies, and what the Tumblr community produces with this exciting new module.