New features and new themes

As we talked about last month, we're improving the comments service on TypePad, and rolling new features out to users in phases. In September we introduced comment pagination, one of our most highly requested features, and over the past several weeks we've been rolling that feature to more and more TypePad users.

Automatically closing comments

Yesterday we introduced another highly-requested feature to the comment service on TypePad, the ability to automatically close comments on older posts. Many authors find that closing comments on older posts helps keep readers focused on the current conversation on their blogs, and makes it easier for them to manage and moderate the conversation happening on their blogs more effectively. You can turn on this feature on a blog by blog basis; to do this go to the configure tab and click on "Feedback," where you can set your preferences for how your readers can engage with your blog. This Knowledge Base article has all the details.

Paginating more than just comments

Yesterday we also introduced another highly requested feature: paginating your entry archives. If you're a frequent or long-time blogger on TypePad, you know that your monthly or category archives will just grow and grow and grow as you continue to post on your favorite topics. This can create challenges for your readers, who have to load a very large page in order to read your great posts on Cooking or Software or Television.

TypePad will now automatically "paginate" your date archives and your category archives, and give your readers the familiar "previous" "next" links to navigate through your archives. This feature will make your archives easier to read and faster to download. And like we did with comment pagination, we're introducing a new set of preferences for your blog where you can define how many entries 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 "Keep going" and "Go back." Or "Mooooore" and "Lesssss." Or anything you like. Learn more about configuring your blog publishing preferences in this Knowledge Base article.

When will I see these changes?

Over the past several weeks we've been rolling these new features to more and more customers, making sure that before we add a new group of users that we've tested and validated the system. We expect to be able to offer these features to all of our customers in the next 4-6 weeks. It's taken a bit longer than we originally anticipated, but we want to make sure we get this right.

And, as we talked about last month, if you're interested in beta testing new functionality, you can let us know by filing a support ticket and asking to be placed on the list of potential beta testers.

Oh, and more themes!

And because we love giving everyone more design options, we've added some new great looking themes to TypePad. Look for the "Camo," "Ragged," "Stripes" and "Sorbet" themes, each of which come in several color combinations, for a total of 17 new designs to pick from.