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.

Comments

[Werner Patels @ The Right Comment]

How does this "email-only conversation" work? When I had Connect installed to try it out, there was no link for "email" or anything similar. The only command I saw underneath a comment was "reply".

[44john]

I really like TypePad Connect -- it makes for a much more engaged community of users. Sure, we've got used to the Making Light Method: "Bob @93: blah blah blah", but threading makes me a very happy blogger. Sure, there's the occasional bug with comments not showing at a #comments post, but that's only to be expected with a beta service.

Thanks for all your efforts, guys -- they're very much appreciated.

--John at http://voyagers.typepad.com

[kapgar]

While I'm liking Typepad Connect, I'm noticing an issue in Firefox 3.0 both Mac and Windows. Anytime I click the "reply" link to reply directly to a comment, I get a pop-up that says "Unrecognized Action." When I click it away, I can comment fine, but it's still annoying to have to make that extra step. Any ideas why?

[Ginevra]

hey there - which specific blog were you replying on when this happened? Your own? Or is it happening across every blog, including this one?

[Ginevra]

hooray, thanks, John! We like the community aspect of using the reply to's as well - on some of our older Everything TypePad posts, there's a lot of @'ing going on....it's hard to keep a thread organized and lively that way.

[Ginevra]

Hi Werner! For users that have TypePad Connect installed, you can just hit ‘reply’ in your email client (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook) and craft a response in that that posts straightaway to the blog. Kind of cool, eh?

[kapgar]

Not happening here right now nor on the one other I've played with that has Typepad Connect enabled. Now that I think about it, it's only on mine (www.kapgar.com or kapgar.typepad.com) when I'm replying to comments left for me.

[Werner Patels @ The Right Comment]

Oh, so that how it works. All right. Thank you. See, I didn't know that ;-)

[Cookie!]

I miss being able to email people a reply who are kind enough to comment on my blog. If they are logged into your TypePad Key Connect Thingy (TM), whether they know they are or not, I do not get an email address for them and end up emailing the No Reply address for TypePad. Not fun. If it is a friend, I can email them at their email addy. However, if it's a new person for whom I do not have an email address, there is no way I can contact them.

It's also a shame that blogs cannot tell me if they think I'm logged in or not before I comment. I find it very annoying to see that I have commented, knowing I am not logged in, only to see that your system thinks I am somehow logged in and now there is a link to my profile thingy rather than a link to my actual blog. This is made even more annoying when it is a blog that does not offer a sign out option for the TypePad Key Connect Thingy(TM).

And, yes, I really can believe this nightmare of an "upgrade" has been going on for a month now.

[Ginevra]

glad we could use the comments here to answer your questions! Let me know if there's anything else you're curious about, or something I should be posting about in the New Year. :)

[Ginevra]

Hi Cookie:

I'm so sorry you've been having trouble with the login and logout screens. We're working to improve the ease of this for everyone.

Emailing to commenters will be available -really- soon, and it's already available for TypePad users who have their email addresses in their profile.

I'm curious as to why you consider this an upgrade instead of a beta. Do you feel like there was some communication around the beta we could've been more successful at communicating? Would you like to share your feedback about how we could do it better next time we roll out a beta?

[Account Deleted]

Hi,
While I love the new comments page/ Typepad Connect
I agree with Cookie about not getting the email addresses to reply personally to people ( especially friends and valued readers) who have been kind enough to comment.

One question is- what do we do about banning comments from spammers.

It wasnt made completely clear that one can reply directly to comments from ones own email client. Now that I know...well wow.!

[Dave Barnhart]

I want to reiterate the desire to have the commenter's email address available to me. Many times, I really want to reply with a personal email. Unless the commenter includes it in her profile, I can't do that. I want my readers to feel very connected to me and receive my personal attention. I really need their email addresses to accomplish that.

[PROLIX from la Normandie]

bonjour,

each time I want to enter into my typepad blog for a week or so,
it makes me that :
https://www.typepad.com/t/app/register?session_id=17acdc17f377c17bc5a6d78c40d548fa

and I can't enter anymore.

I'm french, live in France,
asked to the french typepad assistance,
and they said they ignored why it did that, that they never saw that before and so let me like that.

They said too that maybe it was due to cookies or because of my navigator and I had to repair it myself when I ignore how to do, no how-to has been given me, when I told them computer wasn't my job at all.

I just have to say that before, it always worked to sign in, and the interface changed last week to sign in when my problems appeared.

Merci to do the necessary as soon as possible,

With regards.

Mllle Leprêtre
http://prolix.typepad.fr

[Fashion-Overload]

I'm enjoying having the opportunity to learn more about my commenters and my overall traffic. I've also been having difficulty logging in at times and I have to admit that I have avoided sending messages and leaving feedback in publications or on sites because i didn't necessarily want all of my profiles or reading habits linked. I write for a myriad of publications and it could be a touch awkward for me professionally.

[Ginevra]

I understand the need to have different profiles - I've got a few running around myself. I'll ask the TypePad connect team for some more information about how best to manage this, but I typically try to get myself set up on blogs with each profile, then sign back out to comment.

Difficulty logging in - was this related to the case sensitive change mentioned above, or is there something else happening?

[RobiNZ]

Agree with you Dave. It would be nice to be able to "Reply and email to..." comments from the comment management page?

[Ginevra]

we'll have the reply to: via email for all email addresses coming later this month! :) rightnow, it's enabled only for those who have TypePad or TypePad Connect profiles.

[Ginevra]

I've said this in a couple other threads, but just to reiterate: we know this one is a big one. We'll have the reply to: via email for anyone who leaves a comment coming later this month! :) right now, it's enabled only for those who have TypePad or TypePad Connect profiles.

[Dave Barnhart]

Thanks, Ginevra. It's great to know that Typepad listens!

[Ginevra]

Hi Declan - (updating this comment to add...) the reply-to via email is coming soon, but here's some more on how to manage comments:

* TypePad Anti-spam is built-in automatically, which prevents a ton of spam.

* Logged-in users can be blocked via the user profile context menu associated with their comment on the management screen.

* For anonymous comments, specific words and IP addresses can be blocked via the "Block List" tab accessible from the comment management screen.

[RobiNZ]

Great, thanks!

[Account Deleted]

Thanks very much for your response Ginevra. You've directed me to the right places on the new comments page.

[Tom Collins]

Any progress on making TypePad Connect comment streams searchable by Google et al? or on making submitted comments editable by the blog owner?

Those two remain huge barriers (to me anyway) against adopting this generally wonderful tool. A major benefit of blogging is getting found and great comment streams help. Also, being able to add editorial remarks, or deleting non-publishable pieces of otherwise valuable comments has always been part of the value of having "a blog of your own."

[Dan]

Hi

In the old system several of my comments were mislabelled as 'posted anonymously' (even though I used the same e-mail address and URL as my TypePad profile). Is there a way for me to 'claim' these old comments?

The ones I posted to my own blog would be really nice to get onto my new nifty TypePad profile page.

Connect is a great idea and makes all the TypePad blogs I've visited with it more useful and better layed-out, so a big thanks!

[Ginevra]

hi there - have you already tried the new login with your email address? that might help. or you can follow the login trouble link that's in the post here:
http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2008/12/the-new-login-screen.html

[Ginevra]

this should be coming along soon - I'll check in on the status for you!

[Ginevra]

hi - that's an interesting one! if you've already got a help ticket open on this, that's the right place to keep track of this. I sent this along to our engineers for review too.

[Sheldon Johnston and Sara MacLennan]

I am really disappointed that we can't edit comments... We have established a code of conduct on our blog (http://www.edmontonrealestateblog.com/my_weblog/code-of-conduct.html), and a lot of times people make a great point, but then use a curse word, make a personal attack or otherwise break the code of conduct. We used to just put a note that we'd removed part of the comment, and indicate why we had done so and direct people to the code of conduct. Some of our articles get over a hundred comments and now all we can do is cut off the dicussion completely by unpublishing what would be a very good comment were it not for a sentence or two. Plus, we are still having issues with people not able to view the comments at all. At this point I want to switch back to the old commenting format, but am worried we are going to loose the comments we do have on the blog now... I love the idea of Typepad Connect but the execution is very frustrating.

[Ginevra]

Hi Sara: we're definitely working on that! You can also leave comments on the Beta blog, where that team monitors comments and knows more about the overall planning than I do, but I know that editing comments is a huge one.

[Theresa Loe/LivingHomegrown]

Sorry guys. I am HATING the whole "profile" thing when I leave comments. It is a pain to have to check to see if I am "logged out" so that I can direct people my blog in a comment instead of my profile page. I have no interest in the profile page. I want people to go to my blog (my profile is there).

I know I am not the only blogger who hates that feature. This is the one feature I hear complaints about.

Can't we just have the option to disable it? Then people can use it if they wish OR they can click a box that disables the whole feature. PLEASE!!! This feature is annoying.

[Ginevra]

Hi Theresa: When I click on your profile link, it's going straight to your blog for me. Would you email me and send me some examples of where this isn't happening for you?

If you've entered your homepage URL on the edit profile page...that should make it so that your name links back to your blog, instead of to your profile.

My email is ginevra@sixapart.com.

[Neil Perryman]

I can't seem to get the URLs automatically linked function to work. URLs just come out in plain text. Any ideas where I should be looking to fix this?

[Ginevra]

hi Neil - it's probably best to file a help ticket in this case. Let me know if there's any help I can be with that...

[David Hooper]

Any updates as to when TypePad Connect will be up and working for everybody? Have a couple of blogs that can receive comments, but I get the "Oops!" page every time I try to log in and approve them.

For the last month, I've been collecting comments I can't approve and my blog looks dead.

When will this be fixed? Filed a help ticked and they just say, "We're working on it."

Am I the only one with this problem?

Thanks!

[Ginevra]

hey david! this one's due to be fixed next week. Let me know if you've got any other questions or concerns. :)

[kimmi8]

To Ginevra's recommendation, that's probably the best thing that you could do though we realize it's not the most efficient. You can also turn off the 'recent activity' stream on your profile, so that your reading/commenting habits are not visible to the public. You can do this from the Edit Profile page after logging into TypePad Connect.

As for logging in issues, can you provide more context? The sign-in form on blogside doesn't always recognize that you are signed in. You have to click it and it'll refresh to show that you're signed in.

Hope that helps!

[Neil Perryman]

Is it possible to have the comment input box at the top of the comments when using new to old flat listing? If you have a lot of comments you have to scroll a long way down to get to it? Or maybe it is possible to have a link at the top that says "jump to comment box"?

Also, when using new to old if I click on Reply in the top comment I am taken to the bottom of the page. I then have to scroll back up to get back to the box? Can any of these things be changed? Thanks.

[Take Root Publishing]

Hey, I LOVE the new comment threads. But I have over 40 writers on my site. We have not been able to use the threads due to the fact when someone comments ALL comments come to ME only as owner of the blog. Any time frame on when this will work w/guest blogger sites? I really want to start using it so bad! http://www.takerootandwrite.com/
Thanks, Noelle