Wanted: One Support Superstar

You're an active, happy Typepad blogger with a passion for helping other bloggers. When it comes to engaging your audience you've got all the right moves, with stellar communication skills and plenty of experience with social media. Your customer service skills are bar none, and you dig making other people happy. You love design, HTML, and CSS, and you're pretty good at it, too.

Sound familiar? Then have we got a job for you.

The Typepad Team is looking to grow by hiring one new Community & Support Administrator. It's a part-time position, which is perfect if you're looking to fill your extra time with a fun, challenging job that will net you the camaraderie of a great team - oh, and some cold, hard cash, too.

Check out our official listing below, and if you think the job is for you, head over and apply right here.

Typepad Community & Support Administrator (part-time)
Customer Service | US - Remote, United States

We are looking for an active blogger who has a passion for helping others blog with Typepad by responding to questions from the community. The right person will elegantly answer questions from bloggers with a wide range of product expertise. Issues can include helping users sign in to Typepad, troubleshooting code errors, providing recommendations for updating a blog's design to name a few. This is a remote position and equipment will be provided.

Responsibilities:

• Prioritize incoming inquires from the Typepad community
• Answer questions about getting started with and using Typepad
• Troubleshoot and resolve customer issues

Requirements:

• Extensive knowledge of the Typepad blogging platform
• Excellent customer service service skills and desire to delight
• Ability to provide instructions for both new and experienced bloggers
• Excellent communication skills - email, social media, forums, chat, etc
• Experience with Windows and Mac operating systems
• Experience with Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari browsers
• Familiarity with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social media tools
• Availability to work Saturday and/or Sunday for at least 8 hours each week
• This is a part-time position for 20 hours per week

Preferred Skills:

• Previous experience in web or email based customer support
• Experience with CSS, HTML, and website design
• Knowledge of mobile platforms - iOS, Android, etc.
• Knowledge of SEO
• Actively blog using Typepad
• Availability to work evenings and weekends

Typepad Release Notes: Theme Builder updates!

Today we are happy to announce some much needed updates to the Theme Builder. We have even more updates we'll be providing this year, but this first batch of changes were a bit overdue.

First up, a brand new default style to build from or use as-is. With a light gray background, and uniform font and color selection, the Theme Builder is light years away from its original "earth" form.

Original Style

New Default Style

When comparing the two styles above, take note of how much wider the new default is now compared to the previous. It's the voodoo that we do to bring stuff to you, du--de (we admit that fell a little flat, but we're not Salt 'n' Pepa).

Okay, not really. It's not magic of any kind, but it's still our favorite of this release: new column widths (*arm pump*)! Before today's release, the Theme Builder had only a handful of widths to choose from for both the Main Content and Sidebar columns. After today's release, however, there are two whole handfuls--no, really! No longer are you forced to choose between narrow sizes or Fluid for the Main Content column; nor shall you be limited to small sidebars. 

Check out these screenshots of the new options:

Choose from 300-1000px or Fluid for the post column!

Choose between 150-400px for the sidebar!

These changes mean great things for all users, but here are some examples that we're stoked about:

• Plus subscribers have even more control over the look of their blog and aren't forced to upgrade just to change the column widths;
• A variety of widths means that the Theme Builder is a fantastic fit for all types of blogs, particularly now for the photographers, scrappers, crafters, and, well...everyone(!);
• The new sidebar widths mean there's room to allow for wider content and a better fit for advertising, images, videos, and other secondary content.

There are so many things to enjoy about these updates, and we hope that everyone is as excited about them as we are. It's definitely been a long time coming, but what's thrilling is that these are only one small chunk of all the updates and new features we've got in store for Typepad.

Want to stay in the loop for when those new features are released? You know what to do--keep checking back here for more news! You can also join the Beta team to help test new features (hint: we've got something ready for Beta testers soon, so sign up!). And, as always, we'd love to discuss everything having to do with Typepad with you and other bloggers, so hop into the community forums if you're not already an active participant.

Typepad Release Notes: Spring Fling and Typelist update

Spring Fling - a brand new theme

There's still some Spring left, and we want to celebrate it with the release of a new theme, Spring Fling. 

With four color variations, Spring Fling is a fun and light design that can beautifully showcase photographs and videos, as well as allow for wide sidebar content. Setup a test blog and try it out today!

Typelist update

To add to the customizations that you can make to your blog via CSS, we've incorporated something that will let you modify individual Typelists. Now with custom IDs, you can style each Typelist added to your blog as separate entities rather than settling for the same style across them all.

But how do you take advantage of that? Easy! After adding a Typelist to  your blog, use your browser to view the source of the blog so that you're looking at its code. Look for your sidebar content where the Typelists exist. In the first DIV wrapper, you'll see an ID. That ID will be a lowercase version of your Typelist title, with multiple words separated by an underscore instead of a space.

For example, if you added a Notes Typelist with the title "Welcome", you'd see the following in your blog's source code:

To style this module, and only this module, you would use the ID "welcome" in your CSS, indicating that it's an ID and not a Class. That would look like #welcome.

#welcome { background-color: #cccccc; }
   #welcome .module-header { border-top: 5px solid #333333; }

The above CSS would set a gray background color to the entire Welcome Typelist, and add a dark gray border to the top of the header. No other Typelists would be affected by the CSS.

If the title of the Typelist was "Welcome to my blog", then your ID would end up as "welcome_to_my_blog" and the CSS indicator would be #welcome_to_my_blog.

This addition means Big and Totally Awesome changes can be made to your blog's design. We'd love to see how you use this new ID option, so make sure you share your changes with the rest of the community in the community forum!

Introducing: A shiny new newsletter design!

If you subscribe to our monthly newsletter (and lots of you do), you already know it's full of great blogging tips, tricks, and inspiration. For a while though, things have seemed a little, well, stale in the design department, so we decided it was time to freshen things up, and we gave it a completely new look!

Now, the newsletter you know and love sports a clean, bright design that puts interesting content right at your fingertips. Check it out!

Are you excited? We're excited! Want to get in on the action? Just drop your email address here and click Subscribe! We promise to bring you interesting content every month, and never to spam you.

We hope you like it as much as we do! Let us know what you think (and what you'd like to see in the Newsletter) in the comments.

Five Great Alternatives to Google Reader

By now, you'll all have heard the rather sad news that effective July 1, 2013, Google Reader will be shutting down. If you like to read blogs in an organized, easily digestible way (like we do), chances are you're a big fan of Google Reader (like we are). We're also willing to bet that you aren't looking forward to the legwork needed to find a solid replacement  - one that will allow you to keep up with your favorites in a way that doesn't resemble the old school method of bookmarking and checkingdaily for a new post. Luckily, we're here to help with that.

Even though Google Reader is going away, they've provided ample time for you to move your data (and a handy way to pack it up). And since Google Reader isn't the only RSS game in town, you have lots of options in your search for a replacement. In fact, some great alternatives have already been discussed around the web today (check out The FJP, Lifehacker, and CNET).

We'd like to share our favorites with you too, so here are our picks:

Your Typepad Dashboard. Sure, it's exclusively for reading Typepad blogs, but your Dashboard is the best place to see all your favorites in one place, along with other handy items, like comments that other people have left on your own blogs. Not following many Typepad blogs? Head on over to the Showcase to find a few new favorites and really get that Dashboard hopping.

Bloglovin'. Available on the web and your iPhone and Android phones, Bloglovin' is the fashionable darling of the RSS reader set. New posts are displayed in a clean, visually pleasing way, and they offer a super easy import option to make your move painless. The downside? They don't offer an option to move feeds into folders, which may be a deal breaker for super organized types.

The Old Reader. It's just like Google Reader used to be before a few beloved features were removed, so come get your warm fuzzies here if you're feeling nostalgic. They offer browser extensions for Chrome and Safari, and easy, drag and drop folder organization is a big bonus (a quick note: due to the number of folks moving over from Google Reader, they've throttled their import process, so some patience - or the will to add feeds manually - will come in handy).

Feedly. Currently syncing with Google Reader (and therefore using its API), Feedly are currently cloning the Google API, so your feeds will be transferred seamlessly and will continue to work as Google shuts down. Slick, easy to organize, and user-friendly, Feedly lets you choose different layouts, and organizes content by relevance. One tiny caveat - you'll need to download an extension for Firefox or Chrome to use it on the web.

Netvibes. Netvibes is a bit of a giant, allowing you to monitor all your apps, feeds, sentiments, Tweets and even enterprise systems — all in real-time. If you're into having everything in one place, then Netvibes' Dashboard might be perfect for you. Just make sure to select the Basic/Free level, or end up paying $499 per month for the privilege.

And there you have it - our top five! We hope our picks help make your transition away from Google Reader a smooth and easy one! Got questions? We might just have answers, so be sure to leave them in the comments! Your Typepad Team is always here to help.

Typepad Release Notes

Fixes & Improvements

For those of you who use the mobile /.m/ directory, you may have noticed that there was something wonky happening where the mobile view was broken when a Featured post was turned on. That bit of code has been corrected, so everything will now appear as it should.

Some additional things we've added to the mobile /.m/ experience are:

• link around the banner section so that mobile viewers can quickly return to the front of the (mobile version) blog.
• CSS class to the mobile footer links so that the links can be styled:
  • Categories - .footer-archives
  • Recent Comments - .footer-comments
  • About - .footer-about
  • Main - .footer-main

New CSS Options for the 5 Classic Layouts

With today's release also comes a set of new CSS classes for the <body> tag of each of the 5 classic layouts. If you have an Unlimited account or above, you will now be able to make customizations with CSS for the different templates of your blog:

• Front index of your blog -- index
• Individual post -- post
• Individual page -- page
• Category archive - category
• Date-based archive - date
• Archives list - archives
• Search Results - search

Need a bit of code as an example of how to use it? Let's use the new class for each of these pages and set a different background color them:

/* Background for Index */
body.index { background-color: #9C8978; } 

/* Background for Posts */
body.post { background-color: #263842; }

/* Background for Pages */
body.page { background-color: #55758A; } 

/* Background for Categories */
body.category { background-color: #91BFCC; } 

/* Background for Monthly Archives */
body.date { background-color: #B6D4D4; } 

/* Background for Archives List */
body.archives { background-color: #D0D6D6; } 

/* Background for Search Results */
body.search { background-color: #D3B6B6; } 

Some examples of what you can do with each template type are: set custom backgrounds and colors; use different fonts; remove a column (e.g. from Pages or similar); hide post content so only titles display on date/category archives; and more!

The inclusion of custom classes really expands what you, and theme designers, can do with your Typepad blog. We encourage you to setup a test blog and try these out!

Today's Downtime

Around 5:30am PST on February 19th, the Typepad application and Typepad blogs went offline. The initial downtime lasted approximately an hour and 15 minutes. Following that, blogs went offline again at 8:42am PST, with the Typepad application operating slowly. The second downtime lasted approximately an hour.

We apologize for the downtime

As bloggers ourselves, we understand how important it is to have your blogs available to your readers, your ad networks, and to you personally. We also understand how important it is for you to work with a reliable blogging platform. We let you down, and for that, we are deeply sorry.

Here’s what happened

Unusually high traffic caused issues with the server load balancer, causing the initial downtime. Unfortunately, the initial server reboot failed, causing the second extended downtime. By 9:40am PST, the source of the traffic disrupting the load balance was resolved, and we are continuing to monitor the situation.

Thanks for hanging in there

We pride ourselves on our reliability (if you're a numbers type, that's 99.77% uptime - in fact, for the last 365 days we've had 99.94% uptime, including today), and will be working hard to make any future downtime events like this even more rare.

We regret any inconvenience that this may have caused you. We know you have many publishing options, so thanks again for blogging with Typepad.

Typepad Release Notes

Heartbeats

Just in time for Valentine's Day, we have a sweet little treat for you by way of a new theme. Let's welcome Heartbeats to the theme family!

Convenience

To help quickly navigate to the list of posts and pages, we've returned the List Posts and List Pages links. This will help you to access the posts and pages in your blog without having to click a tab--just publish or edit a post, then click the "List..." link at the top right to be taken to the correct location.

Trackbacks

As previously discussed, the ability to send or receive Trackbacks has been completely removed. This will improve the recent Trackback spam that some of you were experiencing. With this change, you will be able to display and hide existing trackbacks on posts via the Compose screen, as well as delete them at Comments > Trackbacks.

We'll be releasing more great features, themes and improvements in the future, so please check back often!

Retiring Typepad Anti-Spam and Switching to Impermium

As you might have read, we're disabling TrackBacks system-wide as part of our battle against spammers. Another huge step in this direction is by partnering with Impermium, a premier provider of social spam protection services, and retiring our own Typepad Anti-Spam service.

Spam is a very serious problem for each and every person on the Internet and using an industry leader like Impermium is one of the best ways for us to face it. We know spam has been making the Typepad experience less than ideal, so by using Impermium and their spam fighting techniques, we're tackling the spammers head on.

This switch-over will be invisible to you, though you may see a slight uptick in spam while the system becomes better at recognizing it. Rest assured - this will only be temporary and soon you should have a much better comment experience.

We've sent out an email to all people that have implemented Typepad Anti-Spam on non-Typepad blogs, so if that includes you, please be sure to check your inbox. If you have any questions, we're always here to help.

Simply leave us a comment or open a Help ticket and one of our support team members will be happy to assist you.

Typepad Release Notes: Aviary update and new themes!

It's the first release of 2013 and we're excited to start the year off on some pretty fabulous footing. We have released three updates: one improvement; and two new themes.

First, the Aviary image editor has received a facelift! It's fancier and more user-friendly than ever. Here's a sneak peek:

Want to take a closer look? Compose a new post with an image, then double-click it to launch the image editor. All the great tools will be at your disposal, now with a fancy new face.

The second part of our release today is all about themes--two dashing ones, to be precise.

The first of the two themes is Polished, which comes in 8 fabulous colors, with columns wide enough to show off images and display advertisements at a full 300px. Our sneak peek is below, but make sure to check it out at Design > Choose a Theme.

The second theme we have to offer is Dapper. This comes in one color scheme, but is pretty swank all on its own. It's like a Black Tie affair where you can rub your class in everyone else's face. Check it out at Design > Choose a Theme.

Diggin' the new styles but still want something more custom? Create your own theme! You can even submit it to Typepad for possible inclusion in the list of themes, full credit given to you. (How boss would it be to see your name and design visible to all Typepad users, new and old? Pretty boss, man.)

Share your thoughts about today's release with your fellow bloggers over in the Typepad community forum. We look forward to your feedback!