So guys, you know how I’m working on that minimalist Tumblr theme with a slant towards writers/authors? I just had a realization, that could possibly be awesome. And could be something you might love as a concept.

Let me back up.

So, I was sitting there trying to figure out how I would distribute this tumblr theme to make it available for everyone, while offering people a chance a secure, “pay-what-you-want” shopping solution. Now, there are a variety of solutions, but one stood out. I landed on Gumroad:

A former designer of Pinterest is behind the concept, and it’s been getting rave reviews.

Gumroad seems to have what I love: simple, beautiful UX/UI that won’t get in the way of my designs. And what’s even more awesome? you can use their javascript plugin to integrate it into your site if you don’t want your users leaving the page for another experience. It can either: 

• A- embed the shopping check-out directly into your webpage
• B- create a pop-over lightbox with the check-out

Damn sexy if you ask me. Read how it all works here.

So, what’s the idea, you may ask?

What if there was a single purpose Tumblr theme made, integrated with Gumroad, just for selling your digital wares?

A simple way to set up a social commerce experience maybe. Now the only thing would be that the author would need to know very basic html to add a special class to the “buy now” link that would make each shopping button work.

Also I specify only using the “text post type” for simplicity’s sake when creating the browsing layout for the index pages. Using the link post type could work, but you can’t insert headlines (with jumping into html mode) and directly upload images (text post type only). That would be an awesome feature upgrade, being able to format text into headers (h1, h2, h3, etc) directly with the post formatting toolbar.

So that brings up another proposal:

UI/UX feature request for Tumblr

Here’s how the post formatting toolbar looks now:

Here’s a UI concept of how it could possibly look:

Now, I don’t believe in unnecessary feature creep, or making things bloated. But that could save a lot of people time and grief, especially long form writers or people who like to break up their content with subheads. Just a thought. That would be a nice little touch, that would save power users so much time. Tumblr is awesome, I just wanna help it out a little more. Seriously, tell me if I’m off base.

Jumping back to the theme idea:

I wonder if i could just make a instructions document to go along and offer and html snippet template for the user to paste in…just thinking out loud.

Maybe it would/should be marketed towards more digital savvy people. Anyway. What do you guys think?

buildthemes:

jQuery Photoset Grid makes Tumblr photosets resizeable (no more chopped off photosets), breaking the constraints of Tumblr’s own photoset script which can only be set to widths of 250px, 400px, 500px or 700px .

This plugin was originally used internally in Style Hatch’s premium Tumblr themes, but has now being released for free use by the folks at Style Hatch.

Using Photoset Grid: the Basics

HTML

The HTML is based on the photoset block, remember to include photosets within the posts block:

{block:Photoset}
  <div class="photoset" data-layout="{PhotosetLayout}" data-id="photoset{PostID}">
    {block:Photos}
      <img src="{PhotoURL-500}" />
	{/block:Photos}

  {block:Caption}
	{Caption}
  {/block:Caption}
{/block:Photoset}

Be sure to reference the jQuery library and Photoset Grid plugin in your HTML:

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://static.tumblr.com/wgijwsy/jgemkyt9x/jquery.photoset-grid.min.js"></script>

jQuery

At the most basic level, the jQuery plugin simply has to be called like so:

<script>
$('.photoset').photosetGrid();
</script>

By default, the plugin generates a responsive grid without space (gutter) between images.

Be sure to check out the theme documentation to further customize your photoset with options, a lightbox plugin, plus HTML for a Tumblr photoset that links each image.

Download the plugin at Github

Read complete documentation

Very helpful.