Can I Tumbl by myself?

May 27, 2010 5:30 AM

I like Tumblr. Is there blogging software out there that can do the same thing on my own hosted space?

Just for a personal blog - along the lines of installing Wordpress on a site, not running a whole bunch of them/letting people sign up/etc. I'm not interested in the community aspect so much as the mechanics of posting - I really like the simplicity of picking text/photo/quote/link/chat/audio/video and having easy forms to fill in, instead of a freeform blog post.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that my server space has all of the things I could possibly need (MySQL, PHP etc). Is there a wordpress mod or other blogging software out there that could give me the Tumblr experience while hosting it myself?

posted by teraspawn to computers & internet (7 answers total)

You can actually point tumblr to a custom domain, though it works at the DNS layer, no hosting required.

But no software (at this point) is going to give you all the social aspects of tumblr if you're self-hosted.

Check out HOWTO Use Wordpress to Create a Tumblr-like Tumblelog, which is pretty thorough.
posted by artlung at 6:15 AM on May 27, 2010

I used to use (and quite liked) chyrp, but it is apparently dead. Which means you could still use it, but it won't see any updates or security patches or whatnot - not the best of ideas.
posted by namewithoutwords at 6:27 AM on May 27, 2010

Check out MNML and Tumblelog for Wordpress: both Wordpress-oriented.

If neither suit it might be worth a bit of googling on the terms Wordpress, tumblelog; and Wordpress, tumblr.

Shame about chyrp. I liked it.
posted by nthdegx at 6:47 AM on May 27, 2010

Sweetcron might do what you're looking to do, although it's dead (possibly forked as LifePress)
posted by schmod at 6:49 AM on May 27, 2010

Also, a collection of Wordpress tumblelog themes, though I'm not sure if or how they affect the back end so YMMV.
posted by nthdegx at 6:49 AM on May 27, 2010

Also, Chyrp seems to still be alive on Github.
posted by schmod at 6:53 AM on May 27, 2010

Chyrp is technically "alive", but without a real maintainer.
posted by misterbrandt at 7:41 AM on May 27, 2010