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Comment by llimllib | Hacker News Reader

Well, at the risk of derailing the conversation... I've extensively customized tumblr. I have beefs about some other elements of their service, but what sort of customization are you talking about that's not possible with tumblr?

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Honest question, can you upload a script file (PHP/Perl/Python/ASP/Whatever) to tumblr and integrate it with other parts?

When I was freelancing I used to get a lot of requests like this: I want blog/comments/sharing, image gallery, video, and --insert business specific thing here--.

And Wordpress and its plugins make this easy(ier).

No server-side code allowed, but you can work all the jquery magic you want and they have a facility for static pages with arbitrary URLs. I'd probably not recommend selling it to a business, because, for example, here's how I'd do an image gallery:

1) upload the pics to flickr 2) use jquery to grab the pics 3) make a static page to display them

Also, because it's clear that their service is designed for single-person blogs, their group blogs have some annoyances that range from minor to severe.

As I understand it, with Tumblr you can't customize your URL structure, you need to use external commenting systems, and your themes can't run non-js code. Also, many people use Wordpress as a hybrid CMS/blog; the ability to have pages (again with a defined url structure) is important.

In order:

1) your blog will have to use their URL structure, /post/:id/:slug . But who is really bugged by that? Seems a sane structure to me.

2) fact. If disqus comments are a showstopper for you, you've got to find a different service.

3) fact, but I see that as a positive, not a negative. Why in the world do you want your themes running native code?

4) Tumblr has static pages with arbitrary URLs. Here's a screenshot of the interface: http://img.skitch.com/20100507-edeg31uwc25t9hkumww2j9hk4b.jp...

Tumblr has a great bookmarklet, a good iphone app, a good community, reasonable uptime, and a good admin and customization interface. I don't recommend their group blogs, though I have several, but I highly recommend their service for one person.

llimllib, thanks for the reply. I can think of a number of reasons that you might want to have dynamic elements in your theme. I understand the concern over themes running code, but if you want things like breadcrumbs and your CMS doesn't come with them as a native function then you need to be able to run native code. Ideally, the CMS would include a wide and extensible array of native functions that themes could take advantage of, but tumblr certainly isn't that CMS.

Good to know about the pages.

One other issue is file uploads. Say I want to host my CV at domain.com/CV.pdf. I don't think I could do that with Tumblr. Is that too much to ask?

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