The Ultimate Tumblr Toolbox

These days Tumblr has turned the question, “What can it do?” to “What can’t it do?”. Tumblr’s simplicity, refined user interface and streamlined approach are some of the reasons for its skyrocketing popularity among geeks and the masses alike.

As Tumblr has become one of the most popular blogging platforms online, we’ve put together a list of useful resources that can help you enhance your tumblog and the micro-blogging experience in general.

Free Themes

ColorBars

Despite having a colorful name, this free single column theme is not so colorful at all. It’s mostly all black except for the date tags which come in random, bright colors.

Chrome

Chrome is a two column theme designed as a homage to Google’s Chrome web browser.

Vertigo

Vertigo is a dark single column theme that supports custom colors, so you can change the orange shade to a color of your choice.

Twittr Inspird

Yep. Twittr Inspird is a three column theme that looks a lot Twitter, well at least before the newest version that is.

Has a Portfolio

Has a Portfolio is a fantastic portfolio theme with a slider effect. It is an ideal theme for those looking for a minimal yet beautiful site to showcase their work.

Cliche

If outrageous designs and colors are not your cup of tea, Cliche theme is the one you should opt for.

Franklin Street

Franklin Street is a theme with a modular design. All the content is wrapped in neatly stacked boxes.

Panda Classics Recycled

Panda Classics Recycled has the look and color theme of a Penguin Classics book. The theme is 100% compliant with the copyrights of Penguin, so you can use it without any issues.

ScreenShot

ScreenShot is a two column portfolio theme with light color shades and a high resolution.

PressRow

PressRow is a two column, black and white theme with a magazine like fonts and supports Flickr and Twitter streams.

Knight

Except for the image of a Knight in the header, there is nothing that justifies the fancy name. However, the stacked box like design of this two column theme is just gorgeous.

Humachine

Humachine is a single column theme with a fully equipped header which displays everything from your profile to the latest Twitter update.

Dayvan Mini

Dayvan Mini is a single column theme that is more about putting your content forward. There are no flashy color themes and design elements to distract your audience.

Strict

Strict is a two column Tumblr theme and is a great choice for people who prefer light colors. The second is dedicated to date stamp and tags and is good to look at.

PhotoBoard

PhotoBoard is a beautifully designed free theme that is a perfect fit to showcase photographs than any other type of content. The designer should be credited for the old school photoboard on the wall look.

Aldus

Aldus is a single column theme that is designed to promote all types of content in your Tumblog. Cute little icons depicting the content type accompany the posts.

Last Stand of Stupidity

With a quirky name, Last Stand of Stupidity is a three column that looks like a cross between a Tumblr and a WordPress theme.

Arithmetica

Arithmetica has no boxes borders or colors. It is just like a huge white canvas and all your posts show up in it. Awesome!

Boston Polaroid

Boston Polaroid is a magnificent theme that is primarily designed for posting photographs. The color choice and design elements make your photographs stand out and make a statement.

Royal Cameleon

Brilliant textures, great color choices and awesome icons mark Royal Cameleon and this gorgeous theme is available for an unbelievable price – free!

Premium Themes

Savory

Savory is a two column premium theme with a gorgeous hand stitched look. The theme is extremely customizable right from the texture, fonts to the background colours. Savory costs $49.

Carte Blanche

Breath taking! That is how I would describe Carte Blanche theme. The $49 theme takes it design inspiration from 1960s business card and postage design.

Themblr

Themblr is a fresh, clean and versatile three column Tumblr theme packed to the hilt with custom functionality. You gotta love the semi transparent left column that hosts the Twitter stream.

Time Goes Back

Time Goes Back is a grid based theme with a clean and functional design. The theme comes with 3 custom pages and Wufoo form integration to gather leads.

Marigold & Patchwork

Marigold & Patchwork is a Tumblr theme inspired by the colors, style and texture of products from famous brands like Pottery Barn, Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie.

My Corner

Contrasting colors, cute icons and big fonts are what make My Corner such a great theme to gawk at. It handles all types content perfectly and is the right choice for a personal tumblog.

Nova

Nova is a two column theme with a dark tone. It handles all kinds of posts and the right column showcases your likes and the Twitter stream.

Monochrome

Monochrome Tumblr Theme features some nice, fancy javascript rollover effects to make the theme feel more interactive to your viewers and you have eight different colors to choose from.

Backburner

Backburner comes with three unique design styles and more than 40 appearance options to tweak the look of your Tumblog.

Mori

Mori is an Asian inspired theme with bamboo, beautiful greens and vivid browns as design elements. The theme sports 2 sidebars for plenty of self-promotion, social media streams and links.

Marber

Marber is a spacious single column theme with easy on the eye color scheme, great icons and full featured footer.

Forma

Forma offers a new concept and style in Tumlr theming. It gets rid of the regular post icons, the typical blog design and focuses on real content, presented in a refined design.

• 30 Gorgeous WordPress and Tumblr Themes

• 20 Interesting Tumblogs to Follow

• 22 Brilliant Tumblr Themes

• The Best Premium Tumblr Themes

• Top Twelve Tumblr Themes

Desktop and Web Apps

Followers Counter

Followers Counter is a free service that delivers simple statistics about your Tumblr blogs. Just click on the “Login with your Tumblr” link on the homepage and you will see your stats instantly. You will also get a small widget to showcase how influential you are for everybody to know!

Some Lemonade

Some Lemonade is a free web app that lets you share and discover new media across Tumblr and your other favorite social networks.

tumblr cloud

Just like in the case of WordPress, tumblr cloud allows to you generate a cloud of the words you blog about the most. The cloud generated is visually stunning with few vital stats about your tumblog.

HyperImage

HyperImage is the best way to stay up-to-date with the blogs you’re following, and find new photos to reblog! With a single click, this Mac app can download the top 250 photos from your dashboard and present them in an instant slideshow.

Pikchur

Pikchur is a web app that lets you post photos to Tumblr and among other popular web services at the same time from your phone, email, or via MMS.

blogo

blogo is a Mac app with which you can easily publish text, images, videos, slideshows etc. to your Tumblr and other leading blogging platforms.

Tumblenote

Tumblenote is a dedicated Mac dashboard app for posting all types of posts using the simple yet intuitive interface.

MarsEdit

MarsEdit is a popular Mac desktop app for blogging and with its WYSIWYG editor and truck load of other features, you can add posts to your tumblr from the comfort of your desktop.

Grumblr

Grumblr is a Tumblr micro-blogging client for Linux. With Grumblr you can post text messages, links, quotes, chat logs, upload photos, audio and video files right away from your Linux desktop.

Opentumblr

Opentumblr is a cross platform Tumblr desktop app with advanced posting options.

myTumblr

myTumblr is a gorgeous Tumblr client for Mac OS X and the sexiest way to blog without a browser. You can just drag and drop files right from the local disk and it’s ready for publishing.

Zootool

Zootool is a web app that lets you collect, organize and share your favourite images, videos, documents and links from all over the web. With a Zootool account you can share Images, videos, documents, and links saved in your “Zoo” automatically to your tumblog.

Twit Menulet

Want to be on top of your Twitter and tumblog all the time? With Twit Menulet you can watch your twitter stream and the images from your tumblog as well.

Tumblr Gem

Ok, this one is really a gem. For the nerds out there, we have a command line utility for simple publishing to Tumblr.

Jott

Jott is a Phone-based voice recognition to execute tasks where you just call a phone number, speak your notes, messages, or updates and hang up.. Make text posts to Tumblr using your voice.

Dial2Do

Dial2Do is a handsfree assistant for creating reminders, send text messages, listen to and send email, and access your favorite 3rd party services – all while keeping your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. You can use this service to post articles to your tumblog.

Tumblr Integration

With Facebook

After logging into your Tumblr account, go to www.tumblr.com/cutomize and select Service to begin integration of your tumblog to a lot of popular social networks.

Once you click om the Facebook setup link you will be taken to the Facebook app approval page. Once you approve Tumblr acces to your Facebook account and your tumblog URL, all your Tumblr posts will show up in your wall automatically.

With Twitter

Twitter integration is even more simple. All you have to do is allow Tumblr access to your Twitter stream via OAuth and links to your Tumble posts show up in your tweets. You can also decide not to submit the link to your Twitter stream while posting the article.

FeedBurner Integration

FeedBurner integration happens in two ways. the first being the ability to integrate the RSS feed of your existing non Tumblr blog to your tumblog by submitting the FeedBurner URL. In the same manner, it is also possible to make your tumblogs to show up in your blog.

WordPress Integration

While integrating your WordPress blog with a Tumblr is possible from the Dashboard itself, tumblrize is a WordPress plugin that can add a bit more features to the integration. Whenever you hit the “publish” button This free plugin uses Tumblr’s simple API to keep posts in sync. When you edit a WordPress article, the changes are instantaneously updated in your Tumblr post. You can also set email notifications to know when the posts are up.

Other Social Networks

From the services menu, Tumblr lets you integrate and post from your social media accounts like Del.icio.us, Digg, Blogger, YouTube, LiveJournal and Vimeo. You can decide whether the posts should be as is with links as well as content or just links or photos or only the text without any title.

Mobile Apps

• 15 Apps to Enhance the Tumblr Experience

• Topnotch Microblogging with Tumblr

Tumblr Theming Resources

Tumblr themes are asweome to look at and are simpple to create too. If you happen to know HTML and CSS, you can create a fabulous and unique theme to your liking. Now that Tumblr is getting very popular, there so many resources out there to help you learn to code a Tumblr theme.

Creating a custom HTML theme

This is the official Tumblr theme codex ala. the WordPress codex. While it is not so full of resources like that of WordPress, all key dependencies and functionalities are discussed in detail here.

Tumblr Theme Design – Start to Finish

A comprehensive and in depth tutorial on Tumblr themeing written to help both beginners and seasoned coders alike. Written by our very own “Tumblr Ninja” and Justin Beiber fan Jeffrey Way, the tutorial comes with a lengthy screencast and source files to download.

Get Started with Tumblr

Web Monkey from the stable of Wired.com is a fanatstic place to learn about everything Internet right from technology news to in depth tutorials. The tutorial runs through the basics and then gets into the heavier stuff, like custom themes, custom URLs and comments.

If you are looking for more Tumblr tutorials, do check out these links too.

• How to Create a Tumblr Theme

• Getting started with Tumblr custom theme design

• Tumblr Theme Design

• A Rough Guide to the Excellent Tumblr

• Things to know about Tumblr Theme Design

Theme Tumblr like a Pro

In this one of the kind ebook, Nettuts+ manager, Jeffrey Way, shows you just how much you can do with Tumblr while still maintaining its core principle – simplicity. In addition to a completed Tumblr theme and all the asset files needed to put it together, purchasing the ebook allows you exclusive access to a series of screencasts, where the author takes you through the entire process from start to finish!

Share Your Resources

What are your thoughts on the roundup? Think a link should have made the list? Share it with us in the comments section.