How to make a Tumblr more like a regular site?

October 5, 2014 7:08 AM

I have a Tumblr on which I post Carter family songs. Some of the songs are better than others. I'd like to be able to have a sidebar that orders the songs both alphabetically and chronologically, plus a sidebar that has a "top ten" or "top twenty," so reader-listeners who don't want to sift through three years of songs can just click on the best ones. How do I do this?

I am not at all tech-savvy. I chose Tumblr in the first place only because it was easy to set up. (I think in hindsight Wordpress might have been better.)

I'd also like a search function, so someone can search for say, "Cannonball," if that happens to be their favorite Carter family song.

IS this something a non-tech-savvy person can do? If not, what kind of person am I looking to hire, what am I asking for and about how much would it be?

[link is in profile if you need to see what I'm talking about]

posted by Ollie to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Unless you can find a new tumblr theme that has what you need, a non-tech-savvy person probably can't do this.

Anyone who knows web design or HTML/CSS will be the person you want to hire. Tell them you want some navigation menus on the right. A skilled person could do it in an hour or two. Tumblr themes are weird and sometimes confusing if you haven't designed them before. Cost would be between $30-$50/hour depending on the skill of the person.
posted by royalsong at 7:30 AM on October 5, 2014

Maybe you could put the music on soundcloud, and then display the data about popularity on your tumblr?
posted by oceanjesse at 7:50 AM on October 5, 2014

If you want to use tumblr, my idea is that you should use a tag widget like this one. You can put it on a separate page of your tumblr, but I think you can also put it in the sidebar in some themes. You might have to play around to see what the options for each theme are.

Then you tag all your songs with whatever you want people to be searching. You could tag the top twenty posts with "top twenty," for example.

If you choose a theme with a sidebar that lets you add links you can add links to the most important tags pages, like "top twenty," "top ten," etc.

Some tumblr themes already have a search function built in.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:07 AM on October 5, 2014 [3 favorites]

Kutsuwamushi has got it. If you look at my Tumblr, for instance, on the right sidebar I have links to collections of things. I did this by tagging using those tags. Then just tag all your top-ten songs with "top ten" or "topten" and make a link to that tag.
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:09 AM on October 6, 2014