Here is a short history of Adri in the still-ongoing blogging world.

Before I discovered this super-powerful blogging/CMS platform which I refer to as WordPress, I started in to the blogging trend back in the late ’90s with Blogger (now owned by Google, which very soon they will be getting rid of the name and call it Google Blogs or something like that). Back then, Blogger was completely web-based, as I used to create its core blog themes using good ol’ Adobe Photoshop, upload the files in to the server and then use Blogger’s web-based panel for me to write my entries. In short, I had to go to Blogger’s website all the time just for me to publish my blog entries and then cross-post it to my site (privately-hosted with a subdomain).  Some months or so later I graduated from the simple web-based system in to something a lot more independent and robust: Greymatter. For all the youngin’ bloggers out there, if you’re unfamiliar with Greymatter, here’s a quick down low. Greymatter is (or was?) as CGI/Perl-based software that was the in-thing system for bloggers back in the early 2000s in which webmasters can download its own software, upload and install it at their own domains. Apparently this software stopped development by its owner as a whole more advanced, more robust software (not to mention it’s the rise of PHP-based platforms too) such as b2, the predecessor baby that lead to the creation of a future great blogging platform that we now know as WordPress. Still though, before WordPress, I did get in to yet another cool and slightly more advanced CGI/Perl-based platform: Movable Type. Even today I still think Movable Type was one of the best blogging/CMS platforms out there with a very easy templating system that made me a true master of custom themes with Movable Type. Sadly though, I had to force myself to ditch Movable Type when its originally Open Source software licensed changed in to commercial-based software. In other words, I had to pay to get the latest version of the software along with the tech support. I’m a supporter of open source software that you can get something fully-featured without every having to pay for it, and with Six Apart’s move on Movable Type, that was when I had to migrate to that awesome yet still difficult-to-understand-system that, again, what we call now as WordPress.

Sometime in the middle of last year with all the social media hoopla is still on the rise I signed up for a Tumblr account. I was getting used to Twitter for my microblogging system, but there was this whole hoopla about Tumblr being another microblogging system that’s somewhat similar to Twitter except it resembled a lightweight blogging system. When I started getting used to my Tumblr I also learned that I can create my own custom theme to match the personality and purpose of my account, however my impatience of learning the development side of site customization got me all confused on Tumblr’s seemingly (definitely, should be) easy template system. It was bad enough that I still couldn’t get the whole theming concept of WordPress with its PHP-based template system, but somehow I couldn’t seem to figure out Tumblr’s template system.

Not this time though. I found a few tutorial sites that broke down the entire Tumblr system that was easier to follow and easier to understand than the tutorial that the Tumblr site itself provided. I would probably do what many designers are doing by modifying existing frameworks and pre-built templates, but somehow my pride as a designer was preventing me from doing that. I could do the modifications thing with WordPress themes, but with Tumblr?

So here’s one of my few goals in order to populate this portfolio site. I would like to contribute and provide free Tumblr themes for hardcore Tumblr users to use and customize to their own liking. I can finally utilize my almost-dusty Tumblr account in to something a lot more productive and worthy. That would be something.

Along with Tumblr, should I ever get around it, free WordPress themes. Maybe free Blogger themes also if Google would remain Blogger’s system similar as it is now. When I do come around, I’d also like to make free themes for Movable Type. Greymatter’s pretty much non-existent now, not to mention that it’s one of the most insecure scripts that still exists (I also did use Cutenews and Fan Update before… I wonder what happened to those…) and you know how it is with spambots and hackers these days…

Once after I’m finished migrating some sites I’m currently maintaining to this new account I can finally dig in to studying Tumblr themes. Yay!

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