Get the Franklin Street Tumblr Theme

Posted on 10 March, 2009 at 12:27am

Very early on in the process of setting up the new Some Random Dude, I mentioned that all work done on and for this site would be made available as open source and/or free. It is something that I feel very strongly about and am deeply committed to following through on for as long as this blog is active. As a small first gesture, I am offering up the theme used for the Some Random Dude Tumblr site. Feel free to use it, alter it and improve upon it as you see fit. If you do not have a Tumblr account yet, I highly suggest that you get one — it is a genuinely great service.

About the Theme

This theme was designed specifically for this site’s Tumblr offshoot. The interface is intended for media in particular (such as videos and images), but it is still plenty flexible to handle all other types of Tumblr content. The grid will definitely not appreciate large-copy posts, but it will not break. The theme uses jQuery for just about all of the Javascript and should be very easy to follow. My hope is to continue improving upon the theme when it seems both useful to myself and to the community members using the theme. The most recent version of the theme (that is not customized particularly for myself) will always be at franklinstreet.tumblr.com.

Short Video Run-Through

You need Flash Player 9 or above to view this video.

Basic Features

Here are a few reasons you may like using this theme:

Fully customizable color scheme using Tumblr’s appearance tab
Various javascript interactive effects to make the experience a bit more enjoyable
Images in image posts open up in a lightbox
Uses Cufón font replacement library for better looking headers
Handles all Tumblr media formats appropriately, including video (tested with YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr embeds)
Support for notes (new as of 0.9.1)

Use This Theme

If you have a Tumblr account and want to install this theme, just go ahead and preview, then install the theme through Tumblr’s interface. Otherwise, download the source file and manually paste the source into the custom HTML field under the theme tab.

petersebastian

11.03.2009 5:59 pm

would it be too much to ask if you made this with notes? because I really love it but I do want the notes feature.
somerandomdude

11.03.2009 6:07 pm

Good idea. I’ll see what I can do in the weeks to come. Also, I would highly suggest using the updated them here. It’s frustrating, but Tumblr doesn’t seem to update pre-existing themes very often.
petersebastian

12.03.2009 11:47 am

Thanks! You are a God. I was just thinking that the theme is not functional because there are no permalinks and viola! I’ll be expecting the notes version soon, I understand that it’s a breeze for such a talented guy as you. Thanks for the update!
somerandomdude

12.03.2009 12:19 pm

You have way too much faith in me. ;) Still, I’ll see what I can do about notes – I just have to figure out the right way to do it.
52 Faces

15.03.2009 2:54 am

Thank you so much for this theme! (It’s on my uber-secret tumblr site that I can’t post here, but feel free to email for it…not that my version would be interesting, considering I don’t know enough CSS to customize it all purdy-like.)
Kai Lo

17.03.2009 5:26 pm

This template looks very professional. It looks like it should cost users atleast $20. I appreciate you for giving this out.
merovingian

23.03.2009 10:12 am

Awesome theme. Great colours and interface.
Rank Higher Make Money

25.03.2009 10:52 am

Good looking theme!
dshan

28.03.2009 8:13 pm

quick question…this page has a section at the bottom for recent posts, categories, etc…and a sidebar with tags, recent traffic etc. is that a part of the theme, and am i just a tumblr novice, or is that your personal design and the theme is scaled down a bit.

because i love the entire look of your page here, and i’d like to replicate it if i could.

full credit to you of course.
dshan

29.04.2009 8:29 am

by the way, my last question wasn’t thought out. i do realize this page isn’t Franklin Street, per se. i dig the theme as it is.

your tumblr has a color bar cross the top of entries on mouse over – how can i implement something like that?
somerandomdude

29.04.2009 8:34 am

dshan – You know, I’ve noticed some of the people that are using my theme don’t seem to have that horizontal bar, and I am completely lost as to way that is the case. Try downloading the latest version of the theme – it should have the horizontal bar functioning correctly.
Matt

29.04.2009 10:24 pm

Hi there. I love your Franklin St tumblr theme and am using it, it just seems to blend with my muddled mind really well. Anyway, is tere some way I can move the search box from the bottom of the page to the top somewhere??

many thanks.
Justin

21.07.2009 8:53 am

Really lovely looking theme. Very keen on it. Though seems to to be having a few problems handling Tumblr’s new community submissions feature. Great work.
czarina

30.09.2009 9:49 am

your theme is very nice :)

i have a question though. if you post more than one photo in a single post, the photos are not in the center. how would i be able to fix it? thanks a lot :)
Aria

13.12.2009 2:04 pm

Hello, I’ve been using Franklin Street for my blog — I wanted my blog to be an inspiration board, and I wanted to be able to see many images at a glance — this is perfect. I have a couple questions though.

1 – What’s changed with your new update? I’m scared about losing all the customization I did by installing the update. Is there some way around that?

2 – Do you know of any way to add a link sidebar? I’d like to include a list of blogs I follow, but I realize that may not work with this theme.

Thanks so much. Really wonderful product.
Ptown

10.01.2010 12:42 pm

from your sample video, its looks like it crops video posts. Thats too bad. Would be nice if it came up like the light box images. Im in the motion graphics industry. So showing video is just as important as images, if not more so