Next Generation Comments and Profiles on TypePad

As we complete the migration to the next generation platform for TypePad that Ben talked about earlier this year we've released many new features for you, our TypePad bloggers: improved design screens, AutoSave, and custom URLs to mention a few) that extend the TypePad service to any blogger across the web. Our vision is that the best way to help TypePad bloggers is to connect them with a wider community of readers, other bloggers and conversations.

Today we are launching three big things for TypePad bloggers and readers alike: profiles (a reinvention of TypeKey), new commenting capabilities in a beta service we call TypePad Connect that is free for all bloggers and extends these features to any site.  This isn’t just about providing comments and profiles for your site, but also connecting your community with the rest of the social web.

New: TypePad Profiles
The first thing you’ll want to do is signup for a swanky new TypePad Profile. TypePad profiles take advantage of things you're already doing, to keep your profile up to date and interesting. If you connect with your Twitter account we'll automatically fill in your status. Leave a comment on a TypePad Connect enabled site and we'll pull that in too.

We’ve also worked hard to make it easy for you to take advantage of our new beta commenting service on your TypePad blog currently via TypePad Connect.  TypePad Connect starts to show how we envision TypePad evolving from a design perspective to make it easier for you to communicate with your community and create great content.  These new comment capabilities integrate seamlessly with the new profiles and have great new features you’ve been requesting like threading, easy pagination, OpenID sign in, email notifications of replies and the ability to reply via email.

Today, TypePad Connect beta is available for almost all of TypePad blogs; we’re working to incorporate these commenting capabilities to every TypePad blog next year.

In the spirit of community, we talk more about how we're making TypePad Connect available to not just TypePad bloggers, but all bloggers, over at our Six Apart News post. We know not everyone in your community is on TypePad (although we're counting on you to help us win them over!) and we want you to be able to manage your own comments across a lot of services.

We're also committing to you as a community that we're here to help you. Our customer care experts are available to help you with any questions or concerns you might have with our support team.

There's plenty more coming, but we’re sure you want to try the beta of comments, profiles and TypePad Connect on your blog right now! We'll graduate comments to a full-fledged feature soon, but we'll keep it in beta until we're ready to release it to the world.

This is just the beginning. Let us know what you think and what else TypePad can do to make your blog even more successful.

Learn more and see the video demo at typepad.com/connect.

Comments

[Veron]

It would be great if comments can be numbered. That way , in case I have giveaways, it'll be easier to use the random number generator to pick the winner without having to count which comment it was.

[Craig McGinty]

As this is a Javascript tool does that mean the comments are not search engine friendly?

[The Typepad Team]

hi Veron! Numbered comments are indeed a part of TypePad Connect.

The only restriction is that this option is only available if users chose the “flat” commenting layout, rather than the “threaded” one. The reason for this is that numbering comments in a threaded format would look odd, since a reply which could be #20 could appear right after the first comment #1. (and now I've made myself dizzy.)

But we’re eager to hear feedback from users on this choice.

[Craig McGinty]

Another thought...

Wondering if there should be a clear link back to my TypePad account, for example so I can post a new story or edit the design, from the comment dashboard.

Maybe there is but struggling to see how you go about it.

[David Recordon]

Hey Craig, this is true right now that because the comments are rendered via JavaScript they will not be indexed by the majority of search engines. We're working on some creative ways to solve this in a future release.

[Account Deleted]

I am not fond of the scroll bars on the comments. I've left more detailed feedback via the form in TypePad Connect.

[Ginevra]

this is a known issue, and we're going to be fixing it with the next patch! :)

[Brian Hines]

Hope you find a way to do this. I've found that Google frequently picks up comments to a post in high-ranking search results. It also seems that Google "rewards" posts with many comments, so the lack of indexability is a significant problem.

[Account Deleted]

Awesome! Thanks very much!

[moni]

These comments are fresh.

[Account Deleted]

I tried with my Tumblr blog but I failed :-( Where could I find any specific help? Thanks

[Emma]

Thanks guys, for your continual efforts in making Typepad bigger and better - so far I've been loving TypePad Connect.

Quick question, though - do comentators have the possibilty of being notified (via e-mail?) if someone replies to their comment? I ask this because I, for one, comment on a lot of blogs and usually forget to check back and see if someone's replied to any comment I've made. Silly, I know.

I do apologize if there is an obvious answer to this question or if it's impossible for evident reasons - I've never been tech-savvy.

Also, I'm with Brian on the Javascript problem, but I trust you guys will be able to find a way out of that.

Thanks again.

[Brian Hines]

Ginerva and rest of TypePad team, I've been a bit peeved that I'm not yet on the new platform, nor able to use the new comment features. Wanted to balance those comments with some praise:

You guys are going a great job. Improvements keep coming to TypePad. Your service is reliable and you respond to complaints and questions quickly.

Today it dawned on me that the people you have to deal with, bloggers like me, are some of the most opinionated and outspoken people on earth. So I give you lots of credit for putting up with us.

(Some days I find it difficult to put up with me, and I'm myself, with whom I've got a pretty close relationship.)

[Caro]

I've installed this on a Movable Type blog and it works nicely except... there appears to no option to import previous comments, which means they've all disappeared. Is there a fix for this? If not, it would be helpful to warn non-Typepad users that their comment archive will be unpublished!

I can't comment on how well this works with Typepad blogs, since I'm *still* left out of all the new features.

[Bob Gourley]

Great job! Thanks, I really appreciate this. I look forward to being able to let all commenters send automated announcements to twitter as they comment.

Keep up the good work.

Bob

[Craig McGinty]

Not sure if I was meant to, but I have not received any notification to the additional comments on this post, including the reply to a comment I originally left.

Would be great if this was an option.

[Ginevra]

thanks for the encouragement, Brian. This comment made all of our weekends. :)

[Ginevra]

Hi Caro: I've sent your comment on to the TypePad Connect Beta team to see if there's something we can do to help. Can you send me an email to [email protected] so that we can help troubleshoot?

[Ginevra]

hooray! thanks, Bob.

[Ginevra]

Hi Craig - you're not getting the replies to your original comment? Or to this one? We should check your settings to be sure. Would you email me directly so we can try to figure this out at [email protected]?

[Myrtus]

Awesome job, great changes! :D

Would be great if there was a "top 10 commenter" feature as well.

[Brian Hines]

I'm always pleased to dole out praise when it's deserved -- like it is with TypePad staff. Particularly tech support. Like I said, given the nature of your clientele the "herding cats" analogy has to be broadened. If the cats were super-expressive, and had megaphones to express their views ("Hey! Where's my salmon-flavored kibble!!) that'd be akin to keeping in line the big bunch of bloggers that TypePad has to deal with.

Note: this time I got three identical emails notifying me of your reply. That's down from eight a time before. But there's still work to be done on that aspect of the new commenting software.

[Ginevra]

Hey Luca: the best place to be to leave beta feedback is on the beta blog at http://www.typepad.com/connect/blog/.

[Ginevra]

Hi Myrtus - that's great feedback. You can also always check the blog: http://www.typepad.com/connect/blog/ to leave feature requests, et cetera!

[Robert Gibbs]

Hey...
I've noticed that in the next generation platform, there is no way to change a simple template to an advanced template. Is this just an intermediate problem or is this a final change.

That is a powerful feature that should not be removed. Without it, it makes the system much less powerful.

Rob

[Ginevra]

hey emma: yes, commenters who sign in with their TP profile to comment can request to be notified by email when someone replies to their comments. The preference is in the Account/Notification section of your (or your readers'!) profile.

[Ginevra]

I'm pretty sure I've boiled it down to user errors by your earnest-yet-layperson-community-manage. I'll try only pushing publish once and see if you only get one reply. ;)

[Ginevra]

hi Robert! we put together a whole post about this a while back:
http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/updating-your-b.html

but the meat of what you're after is at the bottom of that post, and in the template tags:
http://developer.typepad.com/tags/

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[Account Deleted]

Thank You Ginevra :-)

-

Dott. Luca Conti

Personale: www.lucaconti.it
Blog: www.pandemia.info
Eng: http://luca.wordpress.com

Identità: http://claimid.com/pandemia

email: [email protected]
Skype: Pandemia

[Cookie!]

Where is the opt out for this nonsense? I am unable to reply to my commenters now. This is unacceptable.

[The Typepad Team]

hey Knitgirl - can you email us with some more information about what the problem you're experiencing? then we can help you fix it. You can email me at [email protected].

[The Typepad Team]

Hi Rob: I'm going to find out some more information for you about this. Hang in there!

[Marcos Salazar]

Well, I think the numbered comments can still fit with the threaded comments. The replies don't have to be be numbered but it would be great to have the main comments (the original one to the far left) be numbered. What do you all think?

[hewn & hammered]

This is awesome, but I hope it's going to be integrated into the Typepad app and not a standalone forever. It kind of sucks going to two different places to manage my blog, and is definitely a step backwards as far as ease goes, even though it's a great idea and implementation by itself.

[Laura Fredrickson]

I just installed this on my blog and here is some feedback. I like the look, but miss the email and url information on the notifications. I am sure I'm not the only blogger who recognizes people by their url address or email. As well, I often like to reply to commenters by email. While the ability to reply to the post is "nice", I would rather have the option of having their email present to reply directly. In my case, I doubt commenters would return to see my "answer" in the comments section.

[Ricardo Bueno]

I have a lot of readers who are not on Typepad. When they leave a comment (with the new Typepad Connect Features installed) a generic photo is left rather than the one that they might otherwise have with their gravatar account. It's complicated to require them to register a Typepad Profile (even if it is free); their own personal feedback not mine. In fact, one person said: "I sign up for a lot of things. But I wouldn't sign up for a profile there just get my mug on it. It would be great if it just worked and wasn't complicated."

Thoughts?

I like Typepad. I really do! But I'm not going to require a passport just to leave your profile shot on there. I'd rather delete that feature all together (it's less complicated that way) as much as I like it. My wordpress readers should be able to just comment and have their personal gravatar photo show up.

Please?! Pretty please!

[Ginevra]

hey there - we're integrating a lot of TPC into the regular TypePad features once we're out of Beta. For now, we're rolling out Ajax commenting for the rest of users who don't want TPC yet.

Let me know if you have more questions!

[Ginevra]

Hi Laura - thanks for this feedback. I've sent it along to the team - I think that we want to find a better way to address the question of emailing your commenters -without- replying on your blog, so I hope we come up with a solution that makes everyone happy. :)

[Ginevra]

hi Ricardo - I left a comment on your blog as well. I'm really interested in your thoughts - if you have time, can you email me at [email protected] and we can discuss this in more detail?

[Cat]

I must be the only one who finds all the changes horrid. Is there any way to shut off the changes to comments? I can't seem to. I liked them before the next generation mess up.

[Ginevra]

Hey Cat - you can uninstall it, if you don't like the new features. :) LEt me know if you have any other questions!

[Cat]

TypePadI haven't the slightest idea how to uninstall something I didn't install to begin with.

I also didn't recall asking for these replies to go into my inbox. :P Ah, more spam.

[Tim Nieuwenhuis]

Testing this out ... wondering why the profile has ads on it and if we can get those taken off, whether paid or otherwise.

[Ginevra]

Hey Cat - you can email me directly at [email protected], and I'll help you from there. Sorry for more email! :(

[Ricardo Bueno]

Hey Ginevra,

I appreciate you following up with me (both here and on my blog)! I didn't want you to think I forgot to follow up with you... Will have that email over midweek to discuss one of the things that was concerning me.

[Ginevra]

We don’t have Gravatar integration yet, but it’s on the roadmap. Thanks for this feedback! We'll keep this thread in mind as we’re prioritizing. :)

[Ricardo Bueno]

I love Typepad. Have been a user for ~ 2 years (own two blogs) and I plan on sticking with typepad for a long time. My readers however are wordpress users (most of them anyway). So requiring registration for a Typepad Profile (even if it is Free), just to get a personal gravatar is a barrier to conversation. Most of them won't get a Typepad Profile.

It's like blogs that require registration to comment. In most cases it's a barrier to conversation and I opt to not comment instead.

Then again, who cares about the personal photo right? Well, think of it like this. What if you and I were the only ones who had a Typepad Profile (and uploaded a personal photo) here on this thread. How silly would it look if only our photos registered and everyone else's was just a generic pic. That's just weird to me. Don't you think? Or am I being totally ridiculous? You can be honest. I can take it :-)

Thanks again Ginevra for caring!

[Dave Barnhart]

One of the things you are going to want to fix right way is that the new Typepad Conenct sign-in in screen's Member Name field is case-sensitive, while on the the old Typepad blog login screen that field is case-insensitive. I spent three days wondering why my Typepad login didn't seem to work for Typepad Connect.

[Gert]

I have converted to Connect and can no longer comment on my own blog except by replying via email. I decided to leave Connect but it said I would lose all comments that had been left since I joined Connect. I can be signed in to comment on other blogs or to create new posts but on my own blog I just get the 'Sign in or sign up' and when I click the link the page just refreshes. I use Firefox

[Ginevra]

Hi Gert - have you had any trouble logging in with TypePad in general? Have you tried using your email address to sign in? I'm asking around to see if there's something weird going on, but if you want to file a help ticket and send me an email with the ticket number, I can chase this a bit better. [email protected]

[Account Deleted]

I have the same thoughts as yours. I love Typepad features except the commenting system. It is just so complicated, and very mainstream. I tried that Typekey thingie, but it drove my commenters away. It intimidates them because it requires them to sign up. I just wanted some simplistic yet cool features like WP ---like having a gravatar and something that we, bloggers/authors can reply directly to the comment.
It is somehow frustrating . Typepad has a lot of cool features except for the commenting system. I hope they will improve this.