Everything TypePad Blog

These past few weeks, we've been doing things a little differently around here on the Everything TypePad blog. We had a lot of feedback about how we communicate here from you, our community, and we wanted to make this the best place to find out about, well, EVERYTHING TypePad. We're talking more about how we're doing releases to improve TypePad, updating you with tips and tricks, and talking about cool stuff going on in social media.

How are we doing so far? Got some feedback, a question, something you want to see us talk more about? Let us know in the comments.

Comments

[Nathan]

i speak to re

Opened a help ticket.Need communication re my account.

my account

[Sylvia]

Knowing the details of the releases is very encouraging. It's nice to know that something is actually being done, even if it's all "under the hood." The tips and tricks are good too, but really the knowledge base should be brought up to speed with the new platform and enhanced. Or you could start a real user forum like we've been asking for ages... ;)

[Ginevra]

Hi Sylvia - do you have some good ways that you think we can help build our user forum over at Get Satisfaction to have more of the interaction you're looking for?

[Ginevra]

Hi Nathan - would you be able to email me your last ticket response, with the number in it, and I'll sync up with our tech support team to see how we can better help you? my email is ginevra@sixapart.com

[Sylvia]

Unfortunately the Get Satisfaction format is just not conducive to the kind of searching, browsing, and interacting that goes on in user forums. All Six Apart topics are mushed together and they are so spaced out that you have to load several pages to go through a decent number of them. A real forum has sections and sub-forums so you can zero in on what you are interested in. Topics are listed in a compact way so you can scan through dozens of them on a single page. There's also messaging and friending and off-topic frivolities that are all part of building an online community. It's not just about two-way communication between company and customers.

[Lydia]

How about a weekly Q&A? I often have a very specific question (here's an example: how do I find out the total bandwidth I'm using every month?) and hate to open a help ticket for something like that when I can't find the answer in the Knowledge Desk.

[Sylvia]

(...which speaks to my point about improving the Knowledge Base...)

[soNOTcool :: Jodi Anderson]

I am digging your recent posts and have bookmarked quite a few of them to refer back to in the future.

Great job, Typepad!

[Ginevra]

yay, thanks Jodi!

[Ginevra]

that's a great idea, Lydia. Thanks - I'll put it in our calendar.

[Ginevra]

which we're also working on! :)

[Ginevra]

fair points, all. I would really love to work with Get Satisfaction (they're our neighbors sorta here in SF) to see what other sorts of tools they're going to be adding in.

If you want to just be in the TypePad section, this is the link:
http://getsatisfaction.com/sixapart/products/sixapart_typepad

But I agree, friending and following is HUGE when it comes to building community.

[Sylvia]

There's also Yuku over on Market... ;)

(Commenting here is quite a challenge—I never know quite where the comment box will show up. Usually takes a few tries and reloads before it shows up in the right place for replying.)

[Sylvia]

Glad to hear it. One problem with the migration was that the Knowledge Base was not updated to include help for the new platform as well as the old. I was one of the last to be switched and even then the KB was lacking info on the new options. Some help was available here but it should have gone into the KB first.

[Nathan]

TypePad46EAY3DM37RF

[Nathan]

TypePad46EAY3DM37RF
n Mar 12, 2009 5:29 PM, you (Nathan) said:
I';m billed and you are paid twice monthly. I need to cancel one.

[TAS mania]

Ginevra, I am so glad you asked! I've been a typepad blogger for just about 18 months and find: the advanced templates, favicons, css, typelist and note linking capabilities, widgets and custom widget html code features, tip jar, expanded comment section, image storage, saving my "unsaved" blog content, mapping, tagging, feedburning and file saving capabilities, to be stellar along with the help, I receive each time techy questions come up. The help section is a gold mine.

Bottomline, super duper, technically functional and allows me to dump my images and writing in a visually pleasing, cutting edge way.

And to keep my interest and help me grow to a typepad business client, I need some fans! some strokes! some standing ovations! or I will probably only use my blogs for work/client purposes vs. attempting to gain an unknown, fickle internet audience.

I need the most help .... marketing my content on the web. Most of what I found on the internet is "bait and switch" companies offering $49.99 stale "how to" info.

Sooo, since you are asking! I say, up to date, step by step useable, doable, practically proven ways to increase my traffic, exponentially. Like the Andy post...simple blog titles, then ADD some PROVEN TITLES FOR GETTING HITS on a post. I'm deviate -ly creative and I don't know a simple title, when I see one, so the more examples the better. Or, how about a spot on typepad, like the help section devoted to marketing how tos. - And a list of typepad bloggers that do more than skim the topic.

Beware.... I have spent most of my time building my site, so now I am at the "if you build it, they will come" doubt stage! I am looking for the team! ;)

[Brian Hines]

A user forum sounds like a great idea. Currently it's difficult (almost impossible) to learn how other TypePad users deal with various issues, and how they feel about new offerings such as TypePad Connect, Apture, and such.

As I've noted before to TP staff, it'd be nice to have a forum section on "Suggestions for Improvements" ("Gripes" sounds a bit negative). Within each topic, staff could respond with whether this issue is being worked on, and if so, when the problem is slated to be fixed or the new feature scheduled to appear.

A forum likely would cut down on work for the help ticket responders. Example: recently I wanted to shift from a two column left to a two column right format so Apture would work correctly. Clicking "preview" on the two column right option resulted in a one column blog, as did actually saving the change. I found, though, that choosing a three column format got a two column design to show up.

If others had experienced the same problem, it would have been helpful to know this. I opened a help ticket because I was worried that this glitch was a symptom of something more serious with my blog's design. If other users could tell me, "Chill, dude. Same thing happened to me but my two column blog kept on working fine," I probably wouldn't have bothered TypePad staff with a help ticket.

(Another example, after previewing this comment: I hate the tiny review box, with a scroll bar, that shows up with long comments. Preview should be a pre view! Of what the comment will look like when posted! It's hard to proof read in a tiny box. But, hey, maybe other users like scroll bars and I'm an outlier in this regard. With a forum, I could vent my frustration with TypePad Connect's comment preview approach and learn if others feel the same way.)

[Yvonne DiVita]

(This is Tom, btw - multiple blog/blogger account.) Any news on fixing the "searchability" and "editability" flaws in TypePad Connect?

You indicated a couple of months ago that they were being worked on and, as I understood you, the searchability one was a high priority and should be corrected "soon." We're not willing to adopt Connect if it relegates our comment conversations to being invisible to the search engines.

Any update?

[daniel]

New to Type Pad Pro today. The tabs are not showing up, everything is disapearing, can't get response from help tickets.
Here is my last ticket. 46EAYARQI7RF
Here is my email danielcurran59@yahoo.com

[Ginevra]

Hi Daniel: I'll go take a look and see what's going on, but the ticket system really is the best way to go - they should be in touch with you very soon.

[Ginevra]

thanks for this feedback! I sent this all around to everyone here. Great ideas - I can't wait for you to see everything we've got coming up this year.

[Ginevra]

Let me find out for you and I'll get back to you ASAP!

[efalkhuzar]

I would really like to see some scrapooking layouts! One of my blogs is papercrafting, but there is no theme for that. :-(