Are Tumblr Themes Necessary?
This post from nostrich got me to thinking. Evidently people were searching for themes. For Tumblr. Seriously, how often do you read other Tumblelogs on their own web pages? Yeah, me either. I read them through my dashboard, which has a default look that can’t be changed (as far as I know) so I rarely see someone else’s theme. If I do, it’s just for a brief moment until I click their ‘follow’ button.
Tumblr has totally blown up the standard blog paradigm. Cool.
I mentioned my problems with Media Temple a little while ago. (And a number of my followers were kind enough to offer me the necessary funds to rectify the situation; thanks guys!) As promised, once Christmas (and then New Year’s Eve) was over, I got into action and started to sort it all out.
Long story short, the Media Temple representative I spoke to got his facts wrong. My account was not suspended, it was deleted. So that’s that. Any files I had uploaded are gone, my Tumblr themes are gone, and so are all my blog entries (I’m not too cut up about that, there wasn’t much that I’d consider worth preserving, though feel free to disagree, it makes me feel sexy). With the situation what it was, it also wouldn’t have been easy to reclaim the domains I’d registered through Media Temple (nostrich.net and dunlop-walters.net), so I decided to just screw it and start fresh. And why not, right? I didn’t exactly have a huge empire going on or anything; most of my dedicated readers are also on here, and thus aren’t going to be lost, and are also (hopefully) empathetic to the situation.
So whatever. I’ve started fresh. I’ve ditched Media Temple in favour of Nearly Free Speech, and based on the evening I’ve spent with them, I would recommend them to anyone that didn’t have too many demands from their webhosting. I’ve taken the advice of many and kept domain registrations separate, and plumped for 123-reg. They’re certainly not the best in the business, but they make it easy, and it’s cheap. Plus I’ve used them before, so it’s easy.
I decided to register quisby.net (nothing there yet), and put this tumblelog on a subdomain of it. A decision I have Word Journal to thank for (and, by extension, myself, really, hah!). Turns out Word Journal is great inspiration for domain names. It’s fairly cheesy and not exactly inspired, but it’s appropriate, it’s short and easy to remember, and most importantly, it was available. (Haven’t set up e-mail yet, but I’m sure you guys are dying to know my new address, so I’ll make it known when it’s active.)
While I’ll miss nostrich.net and all attached to it - a fairly devoted readership, decent traffic, a nice pagerank (yeah, whatever) - I’m happy with my decision to start fresh.
The tumblelog’s content won’t change (the theme will eventually), though I will be trying to be a little more focussed, and take more care with presentation, since I’ve opted not to restart my blog outside Tumblr (probably), leaving this thing in the front seat with my public facing image, or whatever.
This is already too long and boring, so I’ll leave it there. Happy tumbling, dudes. (Oh, and my week’s holiday is over now, which makes me sad, but it also means all that soppy shit will be replaced by your normally scheduled grumpy English dude blogging. But I am still very happy, so fuck you.)
