Google Blogger vs Tumblr Blog: Search Feature

What’s so useful and important about search boxes? Why should sites or blogs have a search feature? It’s important for sites and blogs to have a search function for the sake of their potential users and visitors.

People who come across your site and are searching for something specific should be able to easily find what they’re looking for by using the blog’s search box. They shouldn’t have to go through the entirety of your archives or articles list, if they don’t want to, just to find what they’re looking for.

You have to make things easy and convenient for your potential visitors and users because, otherwise, why would they bother to stay on your website or blog? With that said, you would expect platforms like Google Blogger and Tumblr to have a search feature, right? Let’s take a look at their search functions:

Google Blogger Search Feature

Google Blogger (blogging platform) has a built-in search feature, which you can easily add to your blog with no trouble or problem at all.

All you need to do is go to the design or layout part of your blog and choose to add a widget. Google Blogger offers the search feature as a gadget, which you can add in your site’s sidebar or footer. You can easily configure your search box by clicking on the edit widget link. You can name it and set it to search your blog, etc.

Tumblr Search = Laughable?

On the other hand, Tumblr’s search function, if you can call it that, pales in comparison to Google Blogger’s search feature. Seriously, it’s like they’re not fit to be mentioned in the same sentence. Why? What’s the problem with Tumblr’s search feature?

You Can Only Search for Tags on Tumblr

The biggest problem is how Tumblr only lets you search for tags. Who searches for tags? People don’t usually search for tags. Mostly, they search for keywords. Sure, some will search for tags, but they’ll also want to search for keywords alongside the tags.

Besides, it’s not like you can tag anything and everything on your Tumblr blog, so how can your visitors find what they’re looking for if they’re limited to searching by tags? Why does Tumblr set such an annoying limitation? How can this be useful at all?

If you want a decent and useful search feature, you obviously can’t make use of the built-in Tumblr search function, so you have to go through the trouble of looking around for possible alternatives and figuring out how to install or add it to your Tumblr blog. Needless to say, this is such an annoying and time-wasting hassle.

Update: Tumblr now lets you search using keywords, if you want to. However, from what I've experienced so far, it's just not as good as Google's search. Whenever I search for something on my Blogger blog, I always find what I'm looking for, even when I only type a single keyword.

Unfortunately, this is just not the case when it comes to Tumblr's search. Whenever I try to look for a post that I know is on my blog, I always have trouble finding it. I always have to try inputting several different combinations of keywords or look through pages of search results.

Sometimes, even then, I still won't end up finding what I'm looking for unless I go through each and every single page of my blog, which isn't feasible when I already have so many posts published.

Conclusion

Google Blogger definitely wins this round for having a superior search feature. Tumblr’s search function definitely needs a lot of improvement.

Your Thoughts and Opinions

What do you think? Feel free and welcome to share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below.

*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by Kazenokaze (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- Image is meant to symbolize someone using the search box on their Google Blogger blog and trying to find a decent search feature for their Tumblr blog
- YouTube video shows you how to add the search box gadget to your Google Blogger blog
- This was previously published elsewhere

Google Blogger vs Tumblr Blog: Adding Text on Footer and Sidebar

What kind of information or text content can you put on your blog's or site’s footer and/or sidebar? Is it really necessary to have text on your footer or sidebar?

Do platforms like Google Blogger and Tumblr make it easy for you to add any text you want on your website’s footer or sidebar? How can you add text to your Google Blogger or Tumblr blog?

What Kind of Content Should You Put on Your Blog's Sidebar and Footer?

You can put all sorts of information or content on your blog or site’s footer or sidebar. This depends on what you want those places to have.

For instance, you could have a copyright notice, a disclosure notice, a short list of your most popular posts, a list of your tags or labels, and more. You can even have a short introductory message there or even a mini bio about the blog author or some short tidbit about your site.

Take a look at the following screenshots from some of my blogs for examples:

The sidebar of the the Anime Meta Archives blog makes use of Google Blogger's Popular Posts Gadget. The blog's top 10 posts are displayed with large thumbnails. The post title shows up as an overlay on top of the image. If you hover your mouse over the title, a tooltip with a short excerpt from the post will show up.

My main Tumblr blog has a 2-column footer. Both have text content with links to the Disclosure, Disclaimer, Terms of Use, and Privacy Policy pages. The footer also includes a copyright and credits section.

Google Blogger Text Gadget

If you’re using Google Blogger (blogging platform), you can easily add any text to your site’s footer or sidebar. All you need to do is go to the layout part of your Blogger blog, then click on the “add a gadget” link.

From the list of widgets that will appear, just choose the Text gadget and click on the link to add it to your site (you can choose to add this to either your footer or sidebar or both).

Google Blogger’s Text gadget allows you to type any text message or content that you want to show on your blog or site. You can easily edit or delete this whenever you want.

Adding Content to Your Tumblr Blog's Sidebar and/or Footer

Tumblr (microblogging platform and social networking site), on the other hand, doesn’t make things easy for its users at all. First of all, it doesn’t even have any built-in gadgets or widgets, so if you’re looking for a Text gadget, don’t bother because you’ll just end up wasting your time.

I know, it’s horrible, isn’t it? Things would be so much better and easier if Tumblr was nice enough to offer its users a Text widget. Don’t you wonder why Tumblr isn’t user-friendly enough?

If you want text on your Tumblr blog’s footer or sidebar, you’ll have to take the time to search around for possible ways to get this done. So trying to insert text on your Tumblr blog footer or sidebar isn’t easy at all.

However, there are Tumblr themes that allow you to easily add content to the footer or sidebar of your blog without having to code anything. All you need to do after installing the theme is to go to the theme options page of your blog. Then just copy and paste whatever you want to add in the appropriate textbox. Have a look at the following screenshots for examples:

You can put anything you want on the Clarent Tumblr Theme's sidebar widget, including HTML, Javascript, or just plain text.

Clarent even comes with a carousel widget, which you can use to showcase your arts and works. Check out the demo blog here. Learn more about this theme here. Check out my Themes List for more responsive, mobile-friendly, and easily customizable Tumblr themes for your blog.

Conclusion

With Google Blogger, all you need to do is select the Text gadget, input your text, and that’s it. You don’t have to worry about HTML or codes or CSS. It’s no wonder that Google Blogger wins this round.

Looks like Tumblr needs a whole lot of improvement, right? Well, that is, unless you choose a Tumblr theme that comes with text widgets for the sidebar or footer of your blog.

What do you think about this? Feel free and welcome to share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below.

*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by hayashinomura (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- Image is meant to symbolize someone trying to add text on their Google Blogger or Tumblr blog’s sidebar or footer
- YouTube video shows you how to add a Text gadget or widget to your Google Blogger blog’s sidebar or footer; it’s really easy
- This was previously published elsewhere

Google Blogger vs Tumblr Blog: Widgets and Gadgets Feature

What are widgets? Why are they important? Why should Google Blogger and Tumblr offer their users gadgets to use on their blog or site? How does Tumblr fail to surpass Google Blogger when it comes to the use and availability of gadgets and widgets?

Widgets and gadgets are useful features or tools that you can add to your blog. For example, you can have a labels gadget, which can show all the tags that you use on your site. You can even have an archives widget, which can show a list of all the posts or articles on your website.

Let’s take a look at the gadgets and widgets offered by Google Blogger and Tumblr and see which of the 2 is better:

Google Blogger has Numerous Gadgets and Widgets

Google Blogger (blogging platform) offers you a lot of gadgets that you can use for your Blogger site or blog. These widgets can all be useful and helpful to you.

For instance, Blogger has a Contact Us form, so your potential visitors can easily contact you or message you if they want to. You can even have a Follow By Email feature so people can easily subscribe to your site or blog.

Blogger also has a Search Box, Popular Posts, Poll feature, and a whole lot more awesome widgets. You can also easily add a text message to your blog’s footer or sidebar with the Text gadget. If you want to add codes, you can do so by using the HTML/JavaScript feature.

The best part is how easy and simple it is to add whatever widget you want. All you need to do is go to the layout part of your Google Blogger blog then click on the “add a gadget” link. You’ll then be shown a list of all the possible widgets that you can choose to add to your site.

To add your selected gadget, all you need to do is click on the gadget name or the plus image next to it. It will automatically be added to your site, and you can then change its settings or configure it to your liking.

Tumblr has Zero Gadgets or Widgets

On the other hand, Tumblr (microblogging platform and social networking site) is not user-friendly at all, not when it comes to gadgets or widgets.

That's right. Unfortunately, Tumblr doesn’t have any gadgets or widgets. So if you want features like adding text on your sidebar or footer, then you’ll have to go to your blog theme’s HTML and figure out how and where to insert the text you want.

The same can be said for other features like the Follow By Email, Popular Posts, Contact Form, Polls, and more. If you want these things on your Tumblr blog, then you’re going to have to go through the trouble of researching and trying to find out how to add said feature to your site and it’s definitely not going to be easy.

Why does Tumblr have to make things so difficult for its users? If it offered gadgets and widgets like Google Blogger, things would be so much easier for people trying to fix and customize and modify their Tumblr blog theme.

With that said, Google Blogger definitely wins this round for having so many helpful and useful gadgets and widgets that you can easily add to your blog or website with a simple click.

*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by Kazenokaze (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- Image is meant to symbolize someone using the widgets offered by Google Blogger blog and trying to find working gadgets for their Tumblr blog
- Second pic is by Romain Toornier (CC:BY) from flickr
- YouTube video shows you how you can add Google Blogger gadgets to your blog; as you can see, you have what appears to be thousands of widgets to choose from
- This was previously published elsewhere

What to Like About Tumblr’s Signup or Registration Process?

Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking site with a pretty easy sign up or registration process.

Seriously, it’s really quite simple and easy to create an account or a blog on Tumblr. But that’s not the only thing to like about the site’s signup process.

It’s Easy to Register or Create an Account on Tumblr

Tumblr makes its account creation process easy for all its potential users by simplifying things and presenting the necessary information a few at a time. For instance, when you get to the register page, you’ll only see three textboxes that you have to fill up.

This is better than having to see everything all at once and being overwhelmed and overloaded with too much information.

It’s only after you fill up the 3 textboxes (which asks for your username, password, and email address) and click on the next button that you’ll be brought to another page where you can fill out the next set of required information.

Once you’re brought to the captcha page, you’ll have to grin at seeing the next button labeled as “almost done!”. And, indeed, the sign up process is almost over as you get taken to a ‘welcome to Tumblr’ page upon clicking the aforementioned button. This page asks you to make a blog.

Don’t Feel Pressured or Stressed About Having to Make a Tumblr Blog

You get to choose from a number of colorful headers, or you can just upload a photo. You can also add an avatar as well as a blog title and description.

But before you start panicking and stressing about how you’re not prepared to make a blog yet and how you thought you were just creating an account for now, Tumblr is quick to reassure you by saying “and don’t stress about it. You can change this stuff whenever”.

And that’s absolutely utterly perfect because, of course, you’d want to change all this stuff later on especially if you haven’t made up your mind yet on what your blog is going to be about or if you haven’t fully ironed out all of your blog details yet.

So you don’t even need to fill out anything on this page. You can just click on the “make it” button right away. After that, you can decide to follow some blogs or you can head straight to your Tumblr dashboard where you can start exploring and looking around already.

You can do a number of things now, but you do need to verify your email address before you can access the rest of Tumblr’s features.

You can check out my main Tumblr blog here. I also have a Harry Potter Plotholes Archives blog, a Hetalia Axis Powers Archives blog, and an anything-goes blog called Soyuz Mir.

I've also started making themes for Tumblr. These themes are all responsive and mobile-friendly. Check out my Themes page, Themes list, Themes blog, and my Author page.

Your Thoughts and Opinions

So, what about you? What do you think about Tumblr's signup or registration process? Do you like it? Do you have any blogs on Tumblr? Feel free and welcome to share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below.

Note: info mentioned on this post was true when it was written, but Tumblr’s signup or registration process are subject to change without notice, so the info presented herein may no longer apply should Tumblr decide to change their account sign-up process.

*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by clasesdeperiodismo (CC:BY-SA) from flickr
- Second pic is by Romain Toornier (CC:BY) from flickr
- This was previously published elsewhere

Why and How Tumblr’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy Can Make You Smile?

There are many things to like about Tumblr’s terms of service and privacy policy, one of which is how the site helpfully included annotations to help readers understand all the legal jargon.

Another thing to like is how Tumblr was able to inject some humor in some parts of its terms and policies.

Humorous Snippets in Tumblr TOS and Privacy Policy

Saying things like:

“Yahoo! owns us and we share”,

“Google search and the far superior Yahoo! search”,

“should we get acquired (again!)”,

or

“if we dissolve (no way)”

can certainly make you grin or smile in amusement, at the very least.

And this is why it’s not all that boring to read through all this stuff even if it is really quite long.

Tumblr Terms and Policies Are Easy to Understand

A lot of these terms and policies are also pretty easy enough to understand even without all the annotations, which is just as well since Tumblr’s minimum age requirement is 13.

So it’s good to see that this microblogging platform actually cares enough to make sure that all its potential users, no matter how young, will be able to easily understand and comprehend all these legal stuff as well as all their rules and guidelines.

Many parts of these terms and policies have been written in a friendly manner. You can really feel or hear the nice and friendly tone of voice, and it’s like having a conversation with someone who might not be your close friend, but who you wouldn’t mind listening to because of the friendly tone injected with the occasional fun humor.

Your Thoughts and Opinions

So, what about you? What do you think about this? Do you like the fun and humorous way that Tumblr wrote its terms of service and privacy policy? Feel free and welcome to share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below.

Note: info mentioned on this post was true when it was written, but Tumblr’s terms and policies are subject to change without notice, so the info presented herein may no longer apply should Tumblr decide to change its legal info.

*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by clasesdeperiodismo (CC:BY-SA) from flickr
- This was previously published elsewhere