The TypePad Knowledge Base has a new look!

Last Thursday, we released a new design for the TypePad Knowledge Base. We're excited about the design as the entire Knowledge Base was created using TypePad and is a great example of what you can accomplish with an Advanced Template Set.

Highlights of the New Design

TypePad's blog search provides better results with the best matches at the top of the results page. You too can utilize the Blog Search on your own blog. Each article also has related keywords added to make sure the article appears in search results even if you don't know the exact terminology.

Hover your mouse over the Help Topics menu items to open a pop-up box with quick links to featured articles by topic.

On the Knowledge Base front page, you can get a quick glimpse of the current topics in the TypePad forum at GetSatisfaction. Click the GetSatisfaction icon to go directly to the forum to submit your question, see if anyone has the same question, or answer another blogger's question to become a champion.

The list of Top Issues and tips for resolving problems are listed on every page. Click the top issues heading to see if the problem you are encountering matches an existing topic. We'll try to include tips for resolving any browser related issues or other problems and include updates on the status of any issue in the related thread.

Brianna, who works in TypePad support, developed the site. She also works on custom design services for TypePad bloggers, and you can see an example of the work done by Brianna and other members of the support team in the blog services portfolio.

The entire TypePad support team - Laura, Colleen, Kymberlie, Jen, Melanie, and Brianna - wrote and transferred the articles to TypePad as new Pages.

Is there a tip or article you would like to see added to the Knowledge Base? Let us know in the comments or the forum.

Known Issues

• The Knowledge Base search and a couple links in the Help section of your TypePad account are not working. While we work to resolve this, go directly to help.typepad.com to search for articles.
• We know some broken links in the Knowledge Base are still eluding us. We're continuing to go through articles double-checking links and making corrections.
• Any links to Knowledge Base articles you may have saved should still work if the link includes help.typepad.com. However, old links using help.sixapart.com will redirect to the front page of new Knowledge Base. Using the Knowledge Base search, you can look up the article and get the new article URL.

Did You Know?: Adding the Search Module to Your Blog

As your blog grows, you’ll have more and more content added to your blog. While this is great – after all, your readers want to read more! – it can make it harder for them to find specific posts or content that they’re looking for. A great way to do this is to add the TypePad search module to your sidebar.

Adding the search module is very easy to do! For people with classic layout blogs, just go to Design > Content, choose the Search Module category, select Search, click the “Add this module” button, and save your changes. If you have an Advanced Template Set, you can find the code you need to add in our Knowledge Base.

Once you do that, you’ll see the search module in your sidebar, just like this:

We hope you found this useful! Check back every other week for more "Did You Know?" tips to help make your blog even better!

Featured Friday: Let Us Entertain You!

By now, you're probably familiar with Featured TypePad, the blog where we showcase the best TypePad blogs. There are several things that can make a blog special, from design to content to narrative style - or a combination of all three. Each week, we endeavor to bring you a variety of great blogs in hopes that they'll inspire you - and become a new favorite read! This week we're featuring great blogs with a variety of topics including entertainment (music and TV), theology, design, and marketing! Read on and find your new favorite:

Music Swims Back to Me

Note To Self

 

Influential Marketing Blog

 

[I] Love Life

 

Bill's Faith Matters Weblog

 

Eureka Unscripted

We look forward each week to your suggestions on blogs to feature, so keep them coming! Submit your blog, or another great TypePad blog - it might just end up here!

Keep It Simple: Try out TypePad's design tips on a test blog.

Are you interested in trying out a new design for your blog? Do the weekend project posts intrigue you? Perhaps you've thought about tackling a design project but are worried that tinkering with the look of your live blog will cause things to look funky. Well, if you're a TypePad Pro level blogger, your worrying days are over. All TypePad Pro plans allow you to create multiple blogs, so you can create a test blog specifically for developing your design. Let's get started!

Create a New Blog

Open the Blogs menu and select Add A Blog. You'll be prompted to enter a blog name and folder name. Choose a blog name which makes it easy to identify the blog as your test blog. Since we're creating a test blog for designing only, uncheck the Publicize this blog box, and click Create Blog.

You also have the option to password protect your blog. While unchecking the publicize option will keep search engines from crawling your blog, the site will still be visible if accessed directly at the blog address. Adding password protect at Settings > Basics will add a password prompt to you site further limiting who can view the site while you are designing it. See the article on setting up password protection.

Start a New Design

On the test blog, you have the option to start a new design from scratch or start with a copy of an existing design.

To create a new design, go to the Design tab for your blog and click the Create a theme button. Choose one of the left menu options to reveal the different pre-made and advanced design options. Under Customizable, you will find the Theme Builder and Advanced Templates custom design tools. After selecting a theme, click Choose to start working on the design.

Check the box to Apply the design to your blog and click Save Changes.

To start with an existing design, you'll first need to create a copy of the design. Go to the Design tab and scroll down to the list of designs in your account. Next to the existing design, open the Actions menu and select Duplicate.

The list of designs will refresh with the new design added as a "Copy of..." the original design. Open the Actions menu next to the copy and select Apply to begin using the design for your test. You may also want to Rename the design to distinguish it from others.

Now, you can edit the design to style the Navigation Bar with CSS, add a rotating banner, display recent photos in sidebar, or try out any other tips in the Knowledge Base and at Everything TypePad.

While you are working on the design, click the View Blog link anytime to see how your blog appears in a browser.

Apply New Design

Once you have completed your design on the test blog, you can apply your new design to your existing blog in a few clicks.

Go to the Blogs menu and select the blog to which you want to apply your new design. Click to the Design tab and scroll down to the list of designs. Next to the new design, open the Actions menu and click Apply. That's it! The new design is applied to your main blog. Click View Blog to see your new design applied to your blog.

Weekend Project: Faux Columns with Custom CSS

CSS is a great tool for adding customization and flexibility to your blog's design. However, it does have its limitations. One limitation you may have run into yourself if you use the Theme Builder looks like this:

Notice how the border to the left of the sidebar stops prematurely? This is because the border can only extend as far as the content. This is the expected behavior with CSS but it doesn't look great. How can we get around that?

The solution is surprisingly simple - use an image behind the columns to fake the look of the background colors and borders extending beyond the content. A List Apart introduced this concept years ago and called it Faux Columns. Today, we're going to adapt that idea to work with your TypePad blog.

First, you'll need a background image. For reference, the image we're using for our example is available here. Go to Blogs > Design > Theme and see how wide each column in your design is. Your blocks of color should be those same widths, with borders between if you'd like. The overall width of the image should match the width of each column in your Theme added together. You can use solid colors, gradients, patterns, etc. It's up to you but keep legibility in mind!

Next, upload the image in Library > File Manager. You'll need the URL for the image later.

Now, go to Blogs > Design > Custom CSS and add this code:

#container-inner { background: transparent; }

This will remove the existing color from behind the container so your image will be able to show. You'll also need to make the existing colors behind each column transparent. The exact code for this depends on which layout you've chosen. For a two column layout with the sidebar on the right, the code would look like:

.layout-two-column-right #alpha-inner { background: transparent; }
.layout-two-column-right #beta-inner { background: transparent; }

Finally, you'll add the code to put your image behind the container, repeating vertically.

#container {
background: #FFFFFF url(http://example.typepad.com/bg-gradient.png) repeat-y;
}

The result should look something like this:

Notice how the border and background behind the sidebar extend beyond the content? This concept allows for a lot of flexibility in design from simply having a border extend all the way down the page to elaborate background patterns. Have fun!

Literal Mom Blog Gets a Facelift

Missy created Literal Mom as a place where parents can talk honestly about the issues important in their lives. Several months ago, she requested a Tune-Up Service to optimize the blog but after awhile she realized that she wanted to take the design to the next level. While the Tune-Up includes the creation of a banner image, it's only a small part of the overall service. Missy was looking for more options and a deeper collaborative process. She found that in our Banner Design Service. Working with Missy's preferences for fonts, colors, and overall style, and taking inspiration from several of Missy's favorite blogs, our designer created the gorgeous banner you see above. She also adjusted the navigation bar, footer, and link colors of the design to match the new banner. Missy is thrilled with the beautiful, professional, new look for Literal Mom.

Interested in something similar? Contact our Services team to learn more about the Banner Design Service and our other options. And be sure to check out Literal Mom for some real talk about parenting.

P.S. You can view this and many other great blogs in our portfolio.

Did You Know?: Adding a Form to Your Blog

While comments are a great way to interact with your readers, sometimes you need to gather more information from them. This can be useful for polls on what your readers would like to see on your blog, for gathering demographics on your readers, and more. An easy way to do this is by adding a form to your blog.

If you’d like to put a form in your sidebar, you can do so with a paid subscription via Formstack. They have a widget that will add one to your sidebar with just a few clicks. You can read more about this here.

You can also use other third-party services like Google Docs or Jotform to create a free form.

To add your form to your sidebar, you would go to Blogs > Design > Content. Select Widgets and then the “Embed your HTML” option and click the “Add this module” button. You would then paste your code into the new pop-up window. We have more information on this in our Knowledge Base.

To add your form to a post, simply click the HTML tab, choose the Convert Line Breaks option, and paste your code in. You can read more about how to do this here.

You'll want to make sure that you're keeping your blog's column width in mind when creating your form so that it displays properly for your readers.

We hope you found this useful! Check back every other week for more "Did You Know?" tips to help make your blog even better!

Featured Friday: The Best of TypePad!

From foodies to crafters to film critics and business experts, our Featured Blogs have been keeping us captivated lately! We hope you've been paying attention, but if you've missed anything, here are some great blogs to add to your favorites and start your weekend off with a little inspiration!

Cole Smithey: The Smartest Film Critic in the World

Pulp Sushi

Once Upon a Chef

Freckled Nest

Content Mastery Guide

We really dig these blogs, and we hope that you do too! Do you know of a blog that should be featured, or is your own blog the bees knees? We're looking for the best of TypePad, so what are you waiting for? Suggest a site!

Unable to post? Blog loading slowly? We're here to help!

The tools available to enhance your online experience are constantly changing. While some of the changes are good, some tools can negatively impact your experience with TypePad. A few recent changes to online tools which may require adjustments to your blog or browser settings are:

Does your blog load slowly suddenly? Popular tracking tool MyBlogLog was shutdown earlier this year. MyBlogLog provided a variety of widgets which could be added to your blog. If you have added one of the MyBlogLog widgets, the widget will not load because mybloglog.com is no longer available. The result is a delay in loading of your blog.

To remove any broken widgets, go to Design > Content, click the red x icon next to the module, and click Save Changes to update your blog. Not all MyBlogLog widgets are called MyBlogLog. Look for any tracking widgets which do not load on your blog as the culprits and remove these.

Additional tips are available in the improve your blog's load time article.

Are you unable to save a post or help ticket and are using Firefox as your browser? A recent update to the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox Add-on does not work with TypePad. We highly recommend disabling this add-on at Tools > Manage Add-ons in Firefox for the best results.

If you are using Internet Explorer 9, instead of Firefox, and unable to upload images or make other edits to your blog, you may need to switch to compatibility mode in Internet Explorer 9 by clicking the broken page icon to the right of the browser address bar.

We have additional tips for troubleshooting display issues on your blog in the Knowledge Base, and you can reach TypePad support 7 days week by clicking the Help link in your TypePad account and opening a new ticket.

Weekend Project: Style Your Mobile Blog with Basic Templates

You may remember a post we published last month about styling the mobile version of your blog with Advanced Templates. This weekend's project is how to style your mobile blog without Advanced Templates. This is a great tip for those of you who want a custom look for the mobile version of your blog, but don't use Advanced Templates, or only know enough CSS and HTML to get yourself into trouble.

First, let's begin with our test subject--Swoonish. This just so happens to be my personal blog, which I hadn't gotten around to designing the mobile view for yet. (You're helping me be productive when I'd rather be eating pizza, so thanks! :D)

This is what Swoonish looks like in your standard browser, via your standard computer:

If I wanted to, I could ignore that not everyone has an iPhone, or other compatible device that (usually) shows you how the blog should look. Unfortunately, I, and the rest of the support staff, are completely aware of the frustration that can come when you're trying to read a blog with an amazing, fully decked-out design, lots of photographs, scripts, and content, that just takes forever to load.

The purpose of this project, then, is to:

1. retain some aspects of your blog's design so that it's still visually linked to the full version of your blog; and
2. provide a slimmed-down, content-only (note: post content, not sidebar content) view that is easy to read and browse.

Excited to get started? Me too!