Everything Typepad

A Challenge for TypePad Members!

This Monday, October 1, TypePad members will have the opportunity to make a big difference in the lives of public school kids by participating in a Blogger Challenge through DonorsChoose.org. Donors Choose is a non-profit organization with a great platform that lets you “shop” for the classroom projects that excite you, then easily donate to them. All of the projects are submitted by public school teachers and are designed to fulfill student needs and bring learning to life, like improving vocabulary with a class set of dictionaries ($150), discouraging teen pregnancy with ‘Baby-Think-It-Over’ dolls ($500), or taking students to Washington, D.C. to see the Supreme Court consider a case ($2,000). The Blogger Challenge is an opportunity for you to inspire the readers of your blog to donate, too.

We think the Blogger Challenge is a wonderful way for you to harness your power as a blogger, to reach people with similar interests, and to make a difference in the lives of students and teachers around the U.S. We’re so excited about this that we’re distributing philanthropic gift certificates you can use to help fund a classroom project of your choice. You can request a gift certificate worth $30 at [email protected]. Request your code now — they are available until noon on Monday. Allow a day or two to receive it.

Using the gift certificate will help you understand how the program works. We hope that your experience picking a classroom project will inspire you to participate in the DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge, which starts on October 1. You have a handy TypePad Donors Choose widget for this very purpose. Fire it up and put it to work for you by Monday.

Six Apart is sponsoring an award for the bloggers who help the greatest number of students during the Blogger Challenge. Keep your eye out — more details will follow on Monday…

Adding Advanced code to your weblog Posts or Pages

With all of the great embeddable content, such as videos, slideshows, and maps, that are available for adding to your weblog, you may want to create a post or page that uses some advanced coding.

While the Edit HTML tab via the Rich Text Editor can be used to add simple code or make minor changes to the style, displaying advanced code, such as Google maps, ads or embedded videos in a Post or Page is best added using the Plain Text Editor

Displaying code using the Rich Text editor can cause display issues or may prevent the embedded content from working as expected.

To add advanced code in a post or page, you would start by clicking to Compose > New Post or Compose > New Page under the Weblogs tab. At the bottom of the New Post or New Page screen, click on the "Customize the display of this page" link, and then switch to Plain Text in the new window and save your changes. Once the Compose screen reloads, you can then copy and paste the code provided, make any edits you would like, and then save the post or page.

Once you have published the post, you can click to the New Post or New Page link and then again click on the "Customize the display of this page" link to reset your preference to the the Rich Text editor.

-- Zalary and the TypePad Support Team

TypePad Books: My Start Up Life

Ben Casnocha, one of the brightest minds in the online world, brings us My Start-Up Life. This is an engaging entrepreneurial tale from a (very) young and energetic entrepreneur and an instructive how-to, with lessons learned from Ben and his "brain trust" of advisors who contribute guest essays on business. Current or aspiring start-up founders will find the story and insights valuable, as will anyone who wants to learn how to think like an entrepreneur.

Ready to get inspired? Buy the book or check out his TypePad blog.

Video: What is a blog?

As a follow up to previous posts this week on video blogging, we are thrilled to present this YouTube video, created by Brian Brown, author of the acclaimed TypePad blog, Pajama Market.
The video offers a very basic tutorial on the functionality of a blog, including a demo of the TypePad user interface, an overview of features, and the key components that differentiate a blog from a traditional website. 

TypePad Books: Journal Revolution

Journal Revolution: Rise Up and Create! is an artistic inspiration authored by sister duo, Linda and Karen, as they convey their take on communicating personal history through artistic journals. Visual Chronicles is all about YOU: your dreams, your memories, your daily routines, your greatest loves, and your secret pet peeves. Enjoy the fun of getting to know yourself better, savoring the wonderful ebb and flow of your everydays, and celebrating it all in vibrant, visual mementos of your life journey.

The View has called Visual Chronicles, “...the only book you’ll ever need to scrapbook in a way that is uniquiely yours.” Read more reviews, join the discussion group, or hear the latest from the best selling authors via their TypePad blog.

TypePad Tours London

London is one of the world’s most exciting cities, and in this tour, you’ll learn about it from TypePad bloggers who live, work, and play there. It’s such a cosmopolitan (and enormous) city, no single tour could do it justice, but these bloggers bring it to life in fresh new ways.

Does commuting through London on a bicycle sound like sheer lunacy? Kimbofo assures us in her London Cycling Diary that it can indeed be nuts out there. But don’t feel too badly for her: she gets to ride the length of Hyde Park and her posts regularly get numerous comments, attesting to her engaging writing. Check out her book blog, Reading Matters, too.

The Bookseller Crow has been called one of the best independent bookshops in London, and its blog, The Bedside Crow, demonstrates a passion for its customers, authors, and books. Shop owner Jonathan uses the blog to report on new arrivals, contemplate life in the neighborhood, and to invite customers in for author readings.  If you can't make it into the shop, you can help shoe the kids by buying books online from the shop. 

A love of books and the English language is clearly on display in the Penguin Blog. Run by the editors, copywriters and staff of Penguin Books, the first mainstream book publisher to start a blog, the posts follow a book through the publishing process, update us on industry gossip, and feature some of Penguin’s favorite authors. The post about the blog’s first birthday is an entertaining look back over the many comments, readers and controversy.

Susie Bubble has a passion for fashion, and she blogs about it in Style Bubble, a chronicle of her musings and opinions about fashion the world over. No wonder she was invited by Chanel Paris to learn about their global operations - her enthusiasm for style  is infectious, and her photos and commentary engaging. Her coverage of Paris and the Chanel empire includes her visit the perfumerie, the Ritz where Coco Chanel lived, and Chanel headquarters.

Speaking of fashion, Imran Amed’s blog, The Business of Fashion details the side of design and style many people don't see. Amed offers an in-depth perspective on the business goings-on in the fashion industry, such as during New York Fashion Week; his commentary details the business taking place behind the curtain and beyond the runway.

Finally, we can’t talk about London without mentioning Shiny Media. Shiny started its online publishing business in 2004 with a handful of blogs dedicated to games, music, mobile technology, and gadgets – including one specifically for women. The company now has 40 blogs that focus on anything from women’s shoes to the popular TV series Coronation Street to bridal fashion to books.  It's no wonder they're seeing steep growth rates in page views of their blogs.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this “blog’s eye view” of London – stay tuned for more exciting trips in the months ahead!

New! Video tutorials in the knowledge base

Did that last post leave you wishing there were more videos demonstrating TypePad features on the web? Good news! The fabulous TypePad Support Team has started adding step-by-step video tutorials to the Knowledge Base. Any time you see this graphic in a Knowledge Base article, you can click it to see a screencast of the article:

(Click this one to see a screencast about adding code to your blog's sidebar.)

You can see a full list of screencasts in the Knowledge Base here. We'll keep this up to date as we add more videos.

Have you created a video demo of a TypePad feature? Let us know! Leave a link to it in the comments and we may feature it in an upcoming Everything TypePad post.

Video Demo of TypePad for iPhone

Frank Gruber, the editor of Somewhat Frank, has created a beautiful video demo of the new iPhone-optimized TypePad interface.

It's excellent. :)

Introducing TypePad for iPhone and iPod touch

We've baked moblogging into TypePad from the very beginning. From integration with Nokia's LifeBlog to our free TypePad Mobile client for Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones, TypePad has been leading the field with excellent mobile blogging tools and services. So when we saw Apple's iPhone in January with its unique browser interface, we knew we'd have to do something special for TypePad.

Today, we're very excited to announce the availability of our new iPhone-optimized interface for TypePad. iPhone owners can try it out by visiting i.typepad.com. (If you have an iPhone but not a TypePad blog, you can sign up for a free 14-day trial.) You can create and edit posts, manage comments, configure mobile settings for posting photos directly from your iPhone, and view your published blog, all from the comfort of, well, wherever. :)

Using TypePad on the iPhone is the best blogging experience for mobile devices thanks to its tap-based interface and custom integration with built-in iPhone functionality. Blogs published through TypePad look great on the iPhone as well, thanks to our standards-based publishing engine and gorgeous designs.

Give it a try and we think you'll really enjoy blogging from your iPhone with TypePad.

Additional information and screenshots are available after the jump...

New comment features for TypePad

Beginning this week, we've introduced some exciting changes to the comment service on TypePad. The changes will be subtle at first, but over time will provide you with more control over your comments and a better experience for your readers. We'll be rolling these changes out to customers in waves over the next several weeks; look for new comment display options in the TypePad dashboard to know when they're available on your blog(s).

• Comment pagination. TypePad will now automatically "paginate" your comments into multiple sets, which will make your comment discussions easier to read and make them faster for your readers to download. By default, entries on your blog will show the first 25 comments left on a post, and then allow your readers to click to the "next page" of comments to read the next 25, and so on.
• Set your comment pagination preferences. We know that control over your blog's look and feel is one of the key reasons why you use TypePad. With comment pagination we're introducing a new set of preferences for your blog where you can define how many comments to show in a set (between 1 and 50), as well as the labels you want to use for the "next" and "previous" links. Don't like "next" and "previous"? Then change the labels to "Read more comments" and "Go back." Or "Mooooore" and "Lesssss." Or anything you like.
• Faster comment publishing. Behind the scenes we're making big changes to the comment service that will deliver faster publishing.

The improvements we're announcing today are just the beginning; look for more announcements in the coming weeks on Everything TypePad.

After the jump, learn more about why we're making this change, how you will know when it's been turned on for your blog, how you can make sure your archives get the changes, and where you can learn more about the new features. This Knowledge Base article has detailed information about the new comment pagination features.