Everything Typepad

You Look Fabulous!

When you create a weblog with TypePad, you are given access to to a variety of designs. You can choose from our professionally designed themes or use features that will allow you to design a theme of your very own.

All TypePad users - from Basic to Business Class - have access to our pre-defined themes. There are over seventy different looks that you can choose from. These range from minimalist themes to themes that are designed with a specific hobby or event in mind.

Let's say that you're getting married and you want to share all the details with your friends and family on your weblog. We have a design that is just right for you. Are you a knitter, planning a spectacular vacation, or expecting a baby? These are just three of the other specialty themes that you can apply to your weblog.

It may be that your weblog is more business oriented. If this is the case, then you may be interested in one of our more professional looking themes like Squares or Minimalist.

As a Plus, Pro, or Premium subscriber, you are able to create your own custom theme. This will allow you to create a design just for your weblog where you can choose your own colors and fonts, and even add a banner image to your weblog. We have information on how to create your own banner in our Knowledge Base, if you're unsure how to do this on your own.

Here are a few examples of Custom Themes from our Featured Blogs Weblog:

If you're one of our Pro or Premium subscribers, you have access to our Custom CSS feature. With this, you can make changes to a Basic design to come up with your own look, like the design seen at Pretty Pear.

For example, with the Custom CSS feature you could center a banner in a fluid theme or even add a background image to your weblog.

Also, if you're a Pro or Premium subscriber, you are able to convert to an Advanced Template Set, which allows you to completely edit your weblog's HTML. This comes in handy if you have an existing website that you would like your weblog's design to mimic.

These examples are just a few from our Featured Blogs Weblog that make use on an Advanced Template Set:

We have more design tips and tricks for our Pro and Premium subscribers in our Knowledge Base.

As you can see, the possibilities of your weblog's design are limitless when using TypePad!

-- Kymberlie and the TypePad Support Team

Maintenance Friday, September 7th @ 10pm PDT

Next Friday evening, September 7^th, starting at 10pm PST (that's 05:00 am UTC on September 8^th), we'll be taking TypePad offline for approximately two hours to perform routine maintenance.

During this time blogs will be available for reading, but you won't be able to log in to TypePad to manage or post to your blog, and readers won't be able to leave comments or send TrackBacks.

As always, we'll be keeping status.sixapart.com up to date with the latest information, so bookmark that site if you're interested in following along.  Thanks for your patience as we continue to invest in making TypePad bigger, faster and stronger!

Give your blog a makeover with a new theme!

Is your blog stuck in a fashion rut? Give it a makeover with one of these two new themes! Both themes feature a simple design and colour palate. The Kinetic theme comes in four colour schemes while the Squares theme gives you five colourways to choose from.

You can choose a theme by selecting the "Change Theme" option on the Design tab.

See Freddy&Ma on E!

We are thrilled to announce that our very own Freddy&Ma will be featured on E! news tonight, August 23rd at 11pm EST/PST .  Please tune in for a 3-4 minute segment that includes a tour of the Freddy&Ma studio in NYC with sibling co-founders, Amy and Anthony Pigliacampo.  This is a well deserved honor.  Congratulations Freddy&Ma! 

A visit from Craig Newmark

Craig Newmark, TypePad blogger and founder of the eponymous Craigslist, stopped by our San Francisco office yesterday. He spent an hour with us talking about a wide range of topics currently on his mind – from what he learned about growing an online community in developing Craigslist, to how blogging changes culture by giving a voice to citizen journalists, to a bear spotted outside his bedroom window on a recent trip to Colorado.

Lots of thanks to Craig for coming by!

Maintenance this Friday Night / Saturday Morning

Update: The maintenance is completed and TypePad is back up. Thanks for your patience!

This Friday evening, August 17th, starting at 11 pm PST (that's 06:00 am UTC on August 18th), we'll be taking TypePad offline for approximately three hours to perform routine maintenance.

During this time blogs will be available for reading, but you won't be able to log in to TypePad to manage or post to your blog, and readers won't be able to leave comments or send TrackBacks.

As always, we'll be keeping status.sixapart.com up to date with the latest information, so bookmark that site if you're interested in following along.  Thanks for your patience as we continue to invest in making TypePad bigger, faster and stronger!

Upgrading to TypePad just got easier

One of more popular feature requests lately has been a way to make it easy to upgrade from a Wordpress blog to TypePad. So yesterday afternoon we enhanced the Import / Export functionality to support importing your WordPress blog to TypePad via the WordPress eXtended RSS export format. There's more information about the new feature in our knowledge base, but the import process is simple and easy:

1. Export your blog from Wordpress by navigating to the Manage > Export tab in your Wordpress dashboard and clicking the "Download Export File" button.
2. Import your blog into TypePad by navigating to the Manage > Import/Export tab in the TypePad control, selecting the file you just downloaded and clicking the "Import" button.

That's it! You're done!

The importer will move your posts, comments, pings and even pages from your Wordpress blog into TypePad, so if you've been looking to upgrade, now's the time.

TypePad Tour: Toronto

Join us in a tour of five TypePad blogs that capture the energy, creativity, and humor of TypePad customers in Toronto.

Let's start this tour with a great meal. The Cheap Eats Toronto blog offers a veritable treasure trove of reasonably priced restaurants, extending the reach of the book by the same name (published by Plethora Press). The restaurant gossip section keeps us up on who's just opened, who's closed, and who's moved locations. The blog contains a poll called "Toronto Says", offers updates on food festivals, and carries beautiful photos of food.

Now that we're fortified, let's visit a high-energy blog that will keep us up on all tech matters Canadian and beyond. Amber MacArthur is the well-known host of several tech-related podcast and videocast programs, including one for Citytv in Toronto. Amber's eponymous TypePad blog, Amber Mac, contagiously conveys her excitement about technology and includes many of her own and other videos and podcasts that capture the pulse of the Canadian and greater online world.

Now for some humor. Toronto is home to talented illustrator and cartoonist Patricia Storms, who uses her TypePad blog, Booklust, to share her engaging illustrations, muse about books she's read, and comment on the state of Canadian and other literature, among other things. Her writing and cartoons are intelligent, often irreverent, sometimes racy, and always engaging, as the many comments to her posts demonstrate. Check out the children's books she recently illustrated for Scholastic Canada and Chronicle books in her right side bar.

Speaking of children, a group of parents in Toronto have them covered in the TypePad blog, Mommy Blogs Toronto. Don't let the name of this blog fool you: a dad contributes to this blog, too, offering his take on parenting in Toronto. Mommy Blogs Toronto is a collective of blogs from very talented bloggers in the southern Ontario region, and does not limit itself to children by any means. Topics include sex, gossip, food, politics, and technology.

After taking this Toronto tour, are you ready to look into real estate in the area? You can learn all about Toronto's tony neighborhoods, among other things, in the Toronto Real Estate Blog a collection of articles about the state of Toronto's real estate market. This comprehensive blog, written by 30 year real estate veteran Fraser Beach, also has information about the residential markets around Canada and the US, as well as advice on buying a home in Toronto.