The emphasis of MicroBlog is very much on simplicity. You start by giving MicroBlog your Tumblr handle (username) in the settings. When your webpage is published, your most recent Tumblr blog entries will be shown.

MicroBlog benefits from many customisable settings and the ability to display a sidebar of blog links. Ample HTML selectors provide scope to further customise the appearance of your embedded blog. MicroBlog supports regular, photograph, quote, link, conversation, audio and video post types.

Example

Please take a look at the blog page on the Stacks4Stacks website. This is built using the MicroBlog stack and provides an excellent example of what this stack can do.

Setup

To get MicroBlog setup in your website, follow these instructions
  1. Download and install the MicroBlog stack into RapidWeaver and Stacks. Once installed, drag and drop a copy of the stack into your page.
  2. Open the RapidWeaver Page Inspector and make sure the page you are putting MicroBlog into has a .php page extension, not a .html one.
  3. In the MicroBlog settings, enter your Tumblr username (handle). If you are not sure what this is or where to get it, see the information below.
  4. Customise any of the settings shown to you in the stack. For example, you can change what heading level is applied to headings, create a blog sidebar and customise the width of the content and sidebar containers.
  5. Preview the webpage to check it is working as expected. Save or publish your website as normal, when ready.

PHP (which this stack depends upon) is software that runs on your web server. Your web server needs PHP 7.1 or above and either cURL support or allow_url_fopen enabled.

Your Tumblr username

To enable the MicroBlog stack to fetch your posts from Tumblr, you must provide a username in the stack settings. Please refrain from using Tumblr accounts you do not have permission to reproduce on your website. To get your Tumblr username, go to tumblr.com and login to the website. In the toolbar at the top, click on the Account button. On the profile page shown, your username will be presented right at the top. This is the same username that you enter into the stack settings. Usernames are also sometimes referred to as handles. Both are the same thing.

Posting new blog articles

Unlike the RapidWeaver blog plugin, your blog articles need to be published via the Tumblr website. We then fetch the articles from Tumblr® and display them within your webpage. There are many tools and apps available for posting or sharing content on Tumblr®; which is one of the reasons it has grown in popularity. You can post new blog articles by logging into your Tumblr account, on the Tumblr website. Alternatively you can create new blog posts using any of the Tumblr smart phone apps, or by sending an email to a special email address. SMS is available in some regions of the world, whereby you can 'SMS' new blog entries or media to a particular phone number.

Note

MicroBlog makes use of the Tumblr RSS / API for fetching and displaying blog content in your website. By making use of the MicroBlog stack and Tumblr services, you agree to the terms and conditions outlined on the Tumblr website. Stacks4Stacks is in no way liable for changes to the Tumblr API or service which may result in the MicroBlog stack being limited in function or failing to work. Tumblr is a registered trademark of Yahoo.
 

Contribute

If you find this stack element useful in your personal or commercial web projects; please consider making a small contribution towards ongoing support and updates. There are many different ways you can contribute to the Stacks4Stacks project, and benefits for doing so.