Everything Typepad

Support staffing during the holidays

The holidays are here! While the Support team will still be responding to help tickets, we will be staffed a little lighter than normal. If you have any questions or need assistance, please let us know by opening a ticket. We will respond as soon as possible but please be aware that turnaround time for non-urgent issues may be a bit delayed.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank our subscribers (that’s you!) for making 2008 an exciting and fulfilling year and to wish you a very happy and healthy holiday season.

TypePad Connect: The First Month's Roundup

Can you believe it's only been a month since we started the beta for TypePad Connect? Neither can we! We're so glad that thousands of you have been trying out the beta, and giving us your feedback.  We've also gotten some great reviews from people we really respect like the CMS Wire, Business Blogging Pros, and DaniWeb.

Of course, the best compliment we get is from our favorite bloggers using TypePad Connect, like Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion and Matt from Matt Bites.

A few things to bear in mind: when you're signed into your TypePad profile, even if you don't have TypePad Connect installed, you're signed in. That means if you want to comment anonymously on any TypePad blog, you'll need to make sure to sign out first! If you're like me and have a bunch of profiles, just make sure you're signed into the right profile by looking at the "signed in as..." information when you're going to post a comment.

You've let us know loud and clear what you love and what you don't like quite so much. Everyone seems to like being able to thread comments and continue discussions via email. We're going to keep improving this based on your feedback, so that you can answer your comments via email AND email your commenters individually. We're working on more profile enhancements for privacy options, too.

Don't forget, you can also file a ticket with our amazing support team if you need help.

Want to know more? Check out the beta blog post for the latest on bug fixes and our top requested features.

Favorite Blogs: Hey, There's a Dead Guy in the Living Room

Hey, There's a Dead Guy In The Living Room is a title that caught my eye immediately. This droll and insightful blog is devoted to the world of crime fiction, covering that world of intrigue from one end of the globe to another, with consummate professionals as your guides.

HTADGITLR has fresh content daily, with a schedule of rotating bloggers. Here's some of them, with links to some of what they told me were their favorite posts:

• literary agent Janet Reid on not being able to consider a book a sacred object.
• bookseller Robin Agnew on book-selling myths.
• acquiring editor Abby Zidle on when to let a sleeping editor lie.
• publisher Lynne Patrick about the heartbreak of pulping cherished titles.
• publicist PJ Nunn on speaking engagements.
• book reviewer Sharon Wheeler on txts and speling mistaeks.
• mystery author Jeffrey Cohen on Phlli-osophy.

Visit Hey, There's a Dead Guy In The Living Room.

The New Login Screen for TypePad

We've made some functionality changes to the login screen for TypePad, and want you to know a few things about it. First things first, we've heard from some of our users that you might be having difficulty logging in. Here's some steps you can take if you're having trouble logging in:

• Your member name is now Case Sensitive, so your capitalization when you're logging is important. If you're having a hard time logging in, make sure you're using the capital or lowercase letters you use in your member name and passwords.

• Did you know you can use your email address to log in now, too? We've had this in place for a while, and our newer users always use their email address to log in. If you've been with us a while, give it a try.

• Still having trouble? Just get in touch with us and our awesome technical support staff will help you get sorted out.

On the login page, you'll now see a messaging space on the left hand side to notify TypePad bloggers about interesting new features you can take advantage of to make your blog even better. It's also built to create visual consistency between TypePad and what will eventually be part of the TypePad App, TypePad Connect.

Have more questions? Please leave them in the comments. We love hearing from you!

Favorite Blogs: all things girls can tell

all things girls can tell is part personal blog, part craft blog, and wholly enjoyable. Inspired by her city (Philadelphia) and making cool things to sell on Etsy, there's a lot of advice like "5 mistakes I've made (that you can learn from)", and some really great picks from the Etsy vaults, as well as some of her own work.

The balance is what keeps this blog interesting and fresh, and the keen perspective makes it unique.

Visit all things girls can tell.

TypePad Tips

I don’t know who in our community likes hearing new tips for TypePad more — bloggers who’ve been using TypePad since the beginning, or our newest bloggers. Well, since all of us love to make our blogs better, we’ve brought you some new ones! We’ll be adding more tips all the time, but here’s a few great ones to get you started:

• Raise your search engine ranking
• Learn the secrets of writing good blog posts
• Find new ways to grow your readership
• Make your blog look fabulous with great design

’Tis the season to share — feel free to forward these tips or link to them on your own blog. Do you have some tips of your own to share with the rest of the TypePad community? Leave them for us in the comments!

A quick update on migration

We’ve had great feedback from the community about enhancements we’ve made to TypePad. We also know some of you are still patiently waiting to see the new features.

The TypePad migration is kind of like moving out of a house and into a new one. If you've been in a house for a long time, it's going to take you longer to pack everything up and move it. Much the same with some of our favorite, longer-term bloggers. We're being really careful with "packing up" your data and metadata - posts and photos, links, comments, trackbacks and all the other elements that make your blog great. We know how important your blog is to you, so we want to be certain we're moving everyone quickly and carefully.

One of the best benefits of TypePad is that we handle all the moving and upgrades for you. We're so happy you've chosen to blog with us. If there's a way we can show our appreciation to you, please let us know in the comments.

Favorite Blogs: Uterine Wars

If one of the Sedaris kids wrote a blog about families and adoption, it'd read a lot like Uterine Wars. Sometimes, family is what we make of it - there's funny, and there's dark, and then there's trying to be funny whilst whistling in the dark. Often, though, humor is the only thing that gets us through, like talking about your feet/HMO woes. And really, what's this babydust fairy-term all about? (Translation: that fairy is kind of a bitch.) Even in the midst of an unsuccessful adoption, Uterine Wars finds room to write clearly, poignantly, and moves over to make room to share with all of us the ups and downs. This is what blogging about life is really all about.

Visit Uterine Wars.

Faster, Easier Commenting

You commented, and we listened: one of the things you like best about your blog is hearing what readers have to say via comments they leave on your posts. So, we're continuing to work on features to help make the commenting experience faster, easier and more engaging. So today we’re beginning the process of rolling out Ajax commenting natively in the TypePad application. 

To be clear -  this isn't the same as TypePad Connect, which is an optional beta commenting system you can try. We've been reading and thinking about your comments, and we want to make sure that while Connect is in beta, everyone's got the best, easiest, fastest commenting on TypePad, hands down!

You don’t need to do anything to get the new TypePad commenting experience. It's a natural improvement to the current comments, and we'll be rolling it out to everyone over the next two weeks.

Here's tour of the new features...

A new look for the commenting form

We've updated the commenting form to move the most important part -- the comment field -- to the top so commenters aren't distracted by having to enter their contact info first. We've also added intelligence so it doesn't let commenters post until they've entered a comment (and name and email if you require that too).

On-page CAPTCHA and preview

One of your most common requests has been that we host the entire commenting process directly on the post page, rather than take your commenters through multiple interstitial pages. We heard you, and we've changed the commenting flow so that everything from the comment preview to the CAPTCHA is hosted directly on your post page. This is especially helpful for those of you using Advanced Templates, as it means your commenters will no longer see the preview and CAPTCHA on a page that doesn't match your blog's design

Preview for moderated comments

We've heard from some of you that you often receive the same comment multiple times when comment moderation is turned on, because the commenter is unsure of whether it's been received. To help assure commenters that their comment has been saved and is awaiting approval, we now show them a preview of their comment on the blog, and have restyled the comment moderation message to make it more likely to be seen.

Tell us what you think

As always, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment to this post telling us what you like, what you don't like or if you found anything confusing or hard to use. Think you see a bug? Let us know in the comments, or by opening a help ticket.

Favorite Blogs: Zooborns

Case of the Mondays? Zooborns is the perfect antidote: get all the latest photos and news about baby animal births from zoos around the world. There's the snow leopard kitten, a baby pygmy hippo, and a polar bear cub. (Take that, Mondays!)

ZooBorns is the combined effort between zoology nut Andrew Bleiman and artist Chris Eastland that naturally combines both of their interests: educating readers about conservation and zoology, and piles of great photos. Click through for more!

Visit Zooborns.