More from the Most Wanted list

The most trafficked page on the TypePad team's internal wiki (yes, we use wikis as well as blogs) is titled "Most Wanted."  It's the list of frequenty requested features, fixes and enhancements we keep (and constantly review) based on the support tickets we answer, the blog posts we read, and the customers we talk to.  Many of the recent enhancements we've made to TypePad -- keyword banning, separate comment and TrackBack moderation, even warning you before you navigate away from an unsaved post -- have come straight off that list. 

Yesterday we added a few new features to TypePad that also came straight off the Most Wanted list.  Even if these new features weren't on your personal list, we think you'll find them useful...

• Bulk actions on posts. We've updated the List Posts screen to now support bulk actions on posts. You can set comment status (open or closed), TrackBack status (accept or don't accept) or assign categories on multiple posts at once. Look for the "More actions..." drop down at the bottom of listing screen.
• Feature a post. Have an important announcement for your community? Starting a new blog and want to introduce first time readers to your topic? Just want to put a permanent shout out on the front page? You can now pin a post to the top of your blog's home page by marking it as "featured." It's easy to do -- read how in the Knowledge Base article. (And for those of you taking advantage of Custom CSS, we assign a special classname to that post, so that you can style it differently from the rest of your posts...)
• Limit your blog's home page to a set of categories. Want to reserve your blog's precious home-page real estate for posts about a particular topic? You can now limit the posts that appear on your blog's main page to a single category or a set of categories. By default, of course, all posts will display there, but if you're the filtering type, learn how in our updated Knowledge Base article Using Categories with your Weblog.



• Cloud your categories. Speaking of categories, everyone seems to be hot on the "cloud" layout for tags, categories, labels, etc. (you say tomato, I say to-mah-to), popularized by sites like Flickr, Delicious and others. We haven't abandoned the classic bulleted list, but if you're using our standard templates you'll find "Category Cloud" as a new option in the Weblog Design tab's Choose Content Selections page. If you're using Advanced templates, we have a new template tag available for you -- instructions are in (you guessed it) a new Knowledge Base article.

With every release of TypePad we try to knock a few more things off the Most Wanted list...and continue to bring great new features to the product. As always, stay tuned...