How to Create a Tumblr Theme (Code Structure)
Matthew Corner
As we have previously seen, Tumblr allows its uses to create custom themes giving the owner of a tumbleblog the ability to truly customise their tumbleblog to be their own. While tumblr coding is fairly easy to pick up compared to other more complex blogging systems, I want to give you an insight into the code and structure we are going to be deploying next time around when we set about converting a psd to tumblr.
Understanding the basics
Before we get stuck into the Tumblr code itself, you need to first know what a Tumblr theme looks like. Gone are the gazillion template files of other CMS’s; Tumblr uses one and only one. A single page of html, with the css and scripts in the head of the file is all you’ll need.
Now that you know how a theme looks, we are going to look at two simple concepts that make our single html page into a fully dynamic tumblr blog. These are variables and blocks.
Variables are exactly what the name suggests. A place-holder tag that our data is dynamically inserted into. They are used all across the theme in anything from titles to our dates. They use curly brackets and look like this :
Blocks on the other hand are a sort of step up from variables. They are used to display chunks of html and variables for different occurrences, e.g. for each different kind of Tumblr post. They can even be used conditionally to display stuff such as next and previous page links. Like variables, blocks use curly brackets, but are defined as a block, and open and close in a manner similar to html elements.
Put these blocks and variables to user together within html, and you will end up with a theme!
Html head
As always in Html, there are several pieces of information you are going to want to include within the head of your html document, and Tumblr does not let us down. It provides us with several variables that can be deployed with great ease.
{Title} – The html safe title of your blog
{Meta Description} – An html safe description of your blog for use within the meta tag
{Favicon} – A dynamically generated favicon url from your portrait photo
{RSS} – The url to the RSS feed of your tumbleblog
<head>
<title>{Title}</title>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="{Favicon}">
rss+xml" href="{RSS}">
<meta name="description" content="{MetaDescription}" />
</head>
Basic Variables
Before we start displaying our posts and content, there are certain things we are going to want to display around our tumbleblog. Most of these are likely to appear in our header, such as our blog name, and logo / photo. Here are some of the variables that make this possible.
{Title} – The html safe title of your blog
{Description} – The description of your blog which may include html
{PortraitURL-64} - The url to your portrait picture. Different sizes are available (16, 24, 30, 40, 48, 64, 96, 128)
<div id="header">
<h1>{Title}</h1>
<p>{Description}</p>
<img alt="{Title}" src="{PortraitURL-64}" />
</div>
Display Posts
Now that we have set up the easy stuff with some basic variables, it’s time to get stuck into the more dynamic posts which are rendered with the help of both blocks and variables. The posts block is placed in the area that all our different types of posts will be displayed.
Within our posts block, we can start to branch out into our many different kinds of posts. Each of these are shown below.
{block:Text}{/block:Text} – Displays Text posts
{block:Photo}{/block:Photo} – Displays Photo posts
{block:Photoset}{/block:Photoset} – Displays Photoset posts
{block:Quote}{/block:Quote} – Displays Quote posts
{block:Link}{/block:Link} - Displays Link posts
{block:Chat}{/block:Chat} – Displays Chat posts
{block:Audio}{/block:Audio} – Displays Audio posts
{block:Video}{/block:Video} – Displays Video posts
{block:Answer}{/block:Answer} – Displays answer posts
Each different type of post has several different types of variables and further blocks that are relevant only to that type of post, but there are several variables that are likely to be used in ever post such as the link, and tags.
{Permalink} – The exact url for a single post
{ShortURL} – The sharing friendly short url for a single post
{PostID} – The unique numeric post ID for a single post
{block:Posts}
...
{block:Text}
<div>
{block:Title}
<h2><a href="{Permalink}">{Title}</a></h2>
{/block:Title}
<div>
{Body}
</div>
</div>
{/block:Text}
...
{/block:Posts}
Moving down into each specific post type itself, variables and blocks become far more specific to the post type. I won’t go into any of them as there’s a lot of them to remember, but if you feel you want to take a look at the them now, then here’s where to learn more.
- Text posts
- Photo posts
- Photoset posts
- Quote posts
- Link posts
- Chat posts
- Audio posts
- Video posts
- Answer posts
Next / Previous Links
The other majorly important feature you are going to want to include is pagination for your posts and pages; in both cases Next and Previous links, and lo-and-behold, Tumblr caters for both with variables and blocks.
An initial block is used to conditionally display the full pagination html, with two further conditional blocks to conditionally display each Previous and Next link. Finally, two variables are used to display the relevant destination url.
Single posts have different blocks and variables for pagination than those for pages, so here they are.
For pages, these are the blocks and variables used for pagination.
{block:Pagination}{/block:Pagination} – Only displays if there are previous / next pages to link to
{block:PreviousPage}{/block:PreviousPage} – Only displays if there is a previous page
{block:NextPage}{/block:NextPage} – Only displays if there is a next page
{PreviousPage} - Url for the previous page
{NextPage} – Url for the next page
{block:Pagination}
<ul>
{block:PreviousPage}
<li>
<a href="{<span class=">PreviousPage</a><a href="{<span class=">}">Previous</a>
</li>
{/block:PreviousPage}
{block:NextPage}
<li>
<a href="{<span class=">NextPage</a><a href="{<span class=">}">Next</a>
</li>
{/block:NextPage}
</ul>
{/block:Pagination}
Similarly, for posts, these are the relevant blocks and variables.
{block:PermalinkPagination}{/block:PermalinkPagination} – Only displays if there are previous / next posts
{block:PreviousPost}{/block:PreviousPost} – Only displays if there is a previous post
{block:NextPost}{/block:NextPost} – Only displays if there is a next post
{PreviousPost} - Url for the previous post
{NextPost} – Url for the next post
{block:PermalinkPagination}
<ul>
{block:PreviousPost}
<li>
<a href="{<span class=">PreviousPost</a><a href="{<span class=">}">Previous</a>
</li>
{/block:PreviousPost}
{block:NextPost}
<li>
<a href="{<span class=">NextPost</a><a href="{<span class=">}">Next</a>
</li>
{/block:NextPost}
</ul>
{/block:PermalinkPagination}
Further Reading
There are several further features that you may want to add into your theme, and as usual Tumblr caters for many of them. However, I simply wanted to go over the basics here, and not flood you with unnecessary information while learning. If you do want to continue reading, take a look at the official Tumblr documentation for these features listed below.
What’s up Next?
Next up is a tutorial that will teach you how to take a psd design of a tumbleblog, and turn it into a fully fledged Tumblr theme. Keep your eyes open for that, but for now, here’s a sneak peek at what we’ll be creating!
Click on the image to see Full Size
For Further Reading:
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tony
Posted 4 days ago 62I’ve customized my tumblr theme, mostly to make it look similar to my website. What I want to know is, how do I package my theme so that others can use it?
I’m not finding any information googling about for that.
Jayesh
Posted 11 days ago 59Did the follow up tutorial to design a psd and then code it to HTML written?
Please provide me link for that post.
Jayesh
Posted 9 days ago 60I am waiting…
Jayesh
Posted 7 days ago 61come on.
Galen Gidman
Posted 13 days ago 58Nice writeup — I actually created a framework that speeds up Tumblr theme development by a lot. Let me know what you guys think of it: https://github.com/galengidman/tumblr-framework
Rach
Posted 30 days ago 57wats with all those random letters like and stuff, i want to be a theme maker so i neeeeeeeed to understand these
Jonathan
Posted 104 days ago 51Can someone just make a dang program that does this for you? I never will understand all this programming stuff.
Jacque
Posted 47 days ago 54Yah it’s to fucking long who’s gonna read all this?
Michael
Posted 39 days ago 56Can’t tell if trolling…or lazy.
Jonathan
Posted 104 days ago 50After the first part they said now we are done with the easy stuff, now let’s get into the more complicated. I’m sorry, but all of that was confusing as Hell.
Jill babeyy
Posted 96 days ago 53ahaahhah yeahhh!
Hotele Karpacz
Posted 108 days ago 49Thanks for the write up! Also, just a heads up, your RSS feeds aren’t working. Could you take a appear at that?
Sara
Posted 121 days ago 48Please please post the psd follow up!
Thea
Posted 244 days ago 46This is basically the same as the Tumblr tutorial. It helps, but only if you know the very basics and stuff.
PixelTunnelVision
Posted 262 days ago 44A decent primer, I suppose, but all in all there are some gaps and open-ended concepts here. I take it the planned sequel article was shelved?
Rean John Uehara
Posted 262 days ago 45Unfortunately you are correct. It’s been almost a year since this was published, but we’re keeping tabs of articles that needs updating as of late and will do something about them soon. :)
Dapo
Posted 96 days ago 52Please do the sequel article. I think a lot of people would be interested in how to take a psd design of a tumbleblog, and turn it into a fully fledged Tumblr theme. Thanks.
alejandra
Posted 284 days ago 43this, is all too confusing. I did not understand any of this, at all, whatsoever.
qwerty
Posted 43 days ago 55this is pretty helpful: http://thumlog.com/how-to-create-your-own-custom-tumblr-theme
angel
Posted 284 days ago 42Hi…this post is pretty old and I can’t find the next tutorial, do you still thinking do it?..I hope you do because is hard found good tutorials about tumbl thems
fernando
Posted 337 days ago 41I was waiting for the tutorial to take a psd design of a tumbleblog, and turn it into a fully fledged Tumblr theme
GSB
Posted 374 days ago 39Any intention of expanding on this or posting up your PSD tutorial? I’d love to read it.
Chris M
Posted 361 days ago 40I was wondering the same thing, it’s over 6 months ago that this was published =\
Angela
Posted 380 days ago 38Hi, how do I make the code to show the number show this?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 BACK
it’s like, visitors can just choose to skip to page 4 of my posts.
Nicole
Posted 163 days ago 47Use jump pagination: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/custom_themes#jump-pagination.
raeraerae
Posted 383 days ago 37Does anyone know how to edit the distance between posts? i.e. I want all my photos and text posts to look connected… and the source of my reblogs to be hidden until they click on the permalink. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks so much!