The Wooteam brings Tumblr functionnalities to your blog

In the past year, Tumblr has become a popular social network thanks to a couple of very simple, yet very useful features. These features have even pushed many bloggers to abandon WordPress for Tumblr.

But today, Woothemes changes the game (once again!)

Tumblr dashboard is very easy to use: a menu proposes you different types of content, and you simply have to click to the one you want to post, and you are rbought to an interface where you have the tools to upload a photo, a video, add a link… This simplicity has convinced many users, and allows tumbler users to blog and reblog very quickly.

However, for those of us used to all the functionnalities from WordPress, and familiar with theme development with our favorite software, have wanted to port such features to WordPress instead of starting all over with a new blogging platform.

And today, the Wooteam introduces us with two great tools to do just that: an iPhone app and a free Tumblr plugin.

Using Custom taxonomies to transform the admin panel and the Front-end of your blog

Jeffikus from the Wooteam has released a free plugin that does a few things to transform your blog into a full tumblog:

• It adds new custom taxonomies to your backend
• It creates a new dashboard widget allowing you to post easily from your dashboard
• Thanks to the addition of a few template tags, the front-end of your blog will display the additional elements, and add an icon to show to your readers in which taxonomy you’ve posted.

I like this approach to tumbling, since it is much less hassle than previous attempts I have seen and tried myself: instead of using custon post types, and consequently have to mess up with the loop and with your feed output, it uses custom taxonomies and consequently integrates quickly and easily with your posts.

See the video of the plugin in action on the announcement post: Tumbling along | WooThemes.

Blog from your mobile in a few steps

What about mobile will you say; and you’re right: those of you who have experimented with custom post types and custom taxonomies before know that it is not handled by the iPhone application developed by the Automattic team. No problem, the wooteam planned everything, and releases an iPhone app together with their plugin:

These two new products will surely bring more users to Woothemes in the future. And you, will you try this plugin? Do you use another similar tool to customize the way you blog?