Everything Typepad

Follow Up to "A Bright New TypePad"

Hello everyone,

It's been fantastic hearing from you in the comments to my last post and in the emails directly to me — I've heard from hundreds of you in the past 24 hours. I'm thrilled at the level of passion and engagement from those of you who have written in so far.  Your thoughts and concerns are already galvanizing the TypePad team and inspiring our next steps.

As we read through and process all the feedback, I wanted to touch upon some of my thoughts so far:

• The TypePad community is impassioned.  You're letting us know clearly and specifically what you love about TypePad and what you need from us.   
• We're on the same page. The good news is that majority of your requests are already scheduled in our roadmap, and the ones that weren't we'll be reviewing and evaluating.  We'll update you over the coming weeks to let you know when you'll see the improvements you're asking for — especially around themes, mobile capabilities and our post editor — as well as let you know why some changes will come sooner than others. 
• This is just the first step.  Thanks to all of you who responded to our short survey.  We’re going to take you up on your offer to help and will follow up with more information soon.
• TypePad Support is here to help.  Our Support team has reached out to let a few of you know there's already a solution to your needs.  Don't hesitate to reach out to the Support team.
• Results are around the corner.  In February we're focusing on releasing new themes and highlighting some of the design options you may not yet be utilizing.  Stay tuned to Everything TypePad for more news and updates. 

I spent much of my day today reading your emails and comments and working with the TypePad team to respond to your ideas and concerns.  We're reading every single suggestion and adjusting our roadmap as much as we can to address your biggest concerns as soon as possible.  We will keep you posted here on what's next.

Thanks again for your commitment to TypePad.  It's going to be a great year.

Chris

Christopher J. Alden
Chairman & CEO
Six Apart, Ltd.

A Bright New TypePad in 2008

Dear TypePad members,

Since I became CEO of Six Apart back in September, we’ve been working aggressively on our strategy for the New Year and I wanted to share with you some of our plans for TypePad in 2008.

First, I wanted to take a moment to tell you that we’re grateful for the opportunity to work with you.  We are continually awed by the passion and talent of our members who change the world every day. We know you use TypePad because you deserve, and expect, the best — and we take that responsibility seriously. 

TypePad is the only blogging service that gives you complete ownership of your blog, from design to multimedia content to advertising, with world class support. Our community continues to grow by leaps and bounds with the most inspiring writers, authors, parents, award winners and small business owners around — last year, we welcomed everyone from the Malawi Windmill blog to Martha Stewart to the fold.  We’re also able to connect you with the best partners on the web – from Apple’s iPhone to Facebook to PayPal and hundreds more – to continue to upgrade your service. Last year we also made a huge investment in our underlying platform, and though most of you probably didn’t notice this work as it happened, we were setting the stage for tremendous innovations to come this year.

Huge Strides in 2008
Looking ahead, you’ll see more improvements this year than in any other year of TypePad’s history, reflecting our commitment to keep TypePad as the world’s most powerful hosted blogging service.  Six Apart has been the pioneer in blogging for more than six years, and this year we’re focusing that expertise into TypePad, where the community will benefit from the innovations in Movable Type 4 and Vox and new resources from the sale of LiveJournal. We’ll deliver the most professional and extensive theme gallery available anywhere, as well as better stats and an improved dashboard, community features to engage your readers, and premium services and support to help you build, design, grow, and profit from your site. We won’t spoil all of the surprises here, but you will hear from us regularly about what to expect throughout the year.

Tell Us What You Need
We’d love to hear what you think is most important for TypePad’s future, which features and functionality you’ve been wishing for, and what you need to be successful as your audience grows. Here are a few ways to give us your feedback and get involved:

• Share your thoughts in the comments.
• Email me personally at chris [dot] alden [at] sixapart [dot] com.
• Interested in spending some time helping us with more in–depth feedback? We’re looking for people like you! Get started by answering a short survey.

Keep an eye on the TypePad team’s efforts this year — we’ll have a lot of big news to share with you!

Best regards,

Chris

Christopher J. Alden
Chairman & CEO
Six Apart, Ltd.

Who's in the News?

Creative dynamo, company founder and TypePad blogger Desiree Colonna Scales of Bella Web Design was featured on Radio Sandy Springs this week during the show "Business Hour with Brian Blomgren."

In the interview, Desiree talks about starting her business and provides tips on web design to small businesses.

She says that the value she brings to clients is not just beautiful web design, but the ability to explain and implement new technology and marketing tools for customers who don’t have technical backgrounds.  In addition to web design, her firm provides blog, logo, brand and print design, podcasts, Web hosting, search engine optimization, and email marketing.

Since starting Atlanta-based Bella Web Design, her firm now has over 200 clients, which include small to mid-sized businesses ranging from real estate agents to lawyers to entrepreneurs.

Maintenance Saturday, January 26 @ 10pm PST

On Saturday, January 26, 2008, the TypePad application and TypePad blogs will be taken offline for scheduled maintenance from 10 pm PST to 11 pm PST (0600 to 0700 UTC on January 27).

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!

TechCrunch "Crunchies" Nominees

Several TypePad customers, including 37signals and LinkedIn, are nominated for Crunchie awards, TechCrunch’s first annual competition and award ceremony recognizing and celebrating the most compelling startups and internet and technology innovations of the year. The Crunchies is a collaboration project between GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, VentureBeat and TechCrunch. 

Although voting has ended, you can still view the nominees here.

Good luck to our customers and to the other nominees!

Shiny new icon for the iPhone and iPod Touch

Have an iPhone or iPod Touch?  If you add the TypePad for iPhone web app as a webclip to your iPhone's home screen, you'll now get a bright icon that will look great alongside your other favorite iPhone apps and websites.

Adding it is easy.  After you've updated your iPhone to version 1.1.3, visit i.typepad.com in Safari and click on the "+" button in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen.  Now you'll have a quick and easy way to sign in to TypePad from your iPhone, and a great-looking TypePad icon on your home screen!

Update:  And here's a tip on how you can add your own custom icon for your blog, in case any of your readers add your blog to their iPhone's home screen as a webclip.

1. Create your own custom 57x57 icon, and save it in PNG format.
2. Name that file "apple-touch-icon.png"
3. Upload it to the main folder of your account by signing into TypePad and visiting Control Panel > Files.

It's that easy! The next time someone saves your blog as a webclip on their iPhone, they'll get your pretty icon instead of an automatically generated screenshot.

Who's in the News?

An ongoing feud between two well-known philosophers that has spilled over into the TypePad blog of Brien Leiter, a professor of Law and Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin, go the attention of the New York Times over the weekend. The article describes Colin McGinn's sharp criticism of Ted Honderich's book, "On Consciousness" in the July 2007 issue of The Philosophical Review, and discuss the lively debate in the philosophy community as a result of the criticism.

The two have continued their debate about the nature of consciousness by posting essays and rebuttals on Leiter's blog, Leiter Reports.

Guest Post: Why Did I Write the ABCs for Expectant Dads?

The following guest post is from author and longtime TypePad blogger, Todd Lieman, who wrote the reference book, ABCs for Expectant Dads.

“What the heck have I done?”

That’s one of the first reactions I had after sharing the “line on the stick moment” with my wife. (Which is shortly followed by, “I really hope it’s mine.”) When you see that line and know your partner is pregnant, there is (usually) immediate joy. Then fear. Then insanity. Then the questions. What do I do next? Who do I turn to? Will I ever play golf again? What the hell is an episiotomy? (Don’t even get me started on the “mucous plug.”

Becoming a father for the first time is an exciting time for any man (provided, you know, it’s on purpose, and that you and the woman carrying your baby aren’t in high school…or cousins). As the time passed (and my wife grew), I quickly realized that I didn’t know the first thing about pregnancy or what to expect. My wife, on the other hand, started studying for the pregnancy with all the vim and vigor of a Harvard educated med student. She had magazines, books, Web sites and friends to turn to, all of which were loaded with what seemed like great information. She was going to be prepared.

As for me? I had no idea what to think or expect.

Six Apart Meetup in Austin, TX

We've scheduled an informal meetup in Austin, TX, and all local TypePad users are invited!

Austin Six Apart Meetup
Wednesday, January 16th
7pm
at Spiderhouse Cafe
2908 Fruth Street, Austin TX, 512.480.9562 (map)

All current and future users of Six Apart's blogging tools are welcome to join us.  As your representative from Six Apart, I will have some goodies to hand out.  Look for us outside, unless it's too rainy or cold (ha!) in which case we'll try to huddle together inside.

Please visit my blog to leave a comment and let me know if you're coming!

- Krissy

Faster loading and more intuitive Photo Albums

We made TypePad's photo albums a little bit better today, especially for your site's visitors. We've added pagination to photo index pages, and better navigation on your photo detail pages, which means your albums are now faster to load and easier to navigate.

Before today, Photo Album index pages would show thumbnails of all of the photos in your album. We've heard from many of you that have large photo albums that this meant long load times and lots of scrolling for your visitors. As of today, the Photo Album index page will show the first 50 photos in your album, and then automatically display a prominent link to move to the next page of photos in the album. Faster load times and much less scrolling!

If you've selected to show thumbnails on your photo detail pages, instead of showing every single thumbnail from the whole album (which again, meant long load times and lots of scrolling for your visitors), now the photo detail page will simply show thumbnails to help your visitors navigate to the previous or next photo in the album. (Check out the screenshot to see what we mean.) It's a more intuitive way for visitors to navigate through your album, and it means faster load times for them as well.

As always, you can learn more about TypePad's Photo Album feature in the the TypePad Knowledge Base.