Connect to the Community with the TypePad Toolbar

For the past few weeks we've been testing a new, blogside toolbar with our [Beta] members. On Thursday we'll be releasing this great feature to all TypePad bloggers. The blogside toolbar is a great reader tool that will help readers engage with your blog by giving them easy access to [follow, favorite and reblog] content. Those actions will then be shared in a newsfeed to their followers. Entire networks will discover content they might not have found otherwise and that means more eyes on your content as a result. As a blog owner, you can also enable the toolbar for all readers, including those not in the TypePad network. This will allow you to convert new readers into active community members for your blog.

Besides the great community benefits, the blogside toolbar is a great tool for TypePad bloggers when surfing the network because you'll be able to find and follow new TypePad blogs immediately. And when viewing your own blog, the toolbar will provide important management links at the click of a button.

We hope you enjoy using the toolbar as much as we do. For further details on settings and functionality, check out the Beta blog.

Comments

[Lisa @ Boondock Ramblings]

I love this feature. Now, if we could work out some kind of better notification system for when I reply to comments...I mean for those who aren't on Typepad yet! :-)

[Agnes]

Great!

[kimmi8]

Thanks for the feedback. We'll add the notification request to our list!

[Kofla Olivieri]

Anything that helps engage new readers, I'm all for it!

[Account Deleted]

Thanks for giving people a heads-up!

[Christopher Sleight]

I find the toolbar is causing problems for me in IE7 - I've submitted the details in a help ticket.

[Mie]

Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts once the toolbar is officially released! Thanks all!

[Mie]

Christopher, thanks for opening a Support ticket for that, and providing details. That is the best way, and they should be able to troubleshoot.

[Account Deleted]

This toolbar is incredibly intrusive, and it doesn't appear to be optional for content creators. If you minimze it, it re-expands the next time you go to a page. Unacceptable.

We like Typepad, but this is a major, intrusive element that makes it more difficult to do our work. Please make it an option for the people PAYING for this service to shut it off.

Thank you.

[kimmi8]

For our Paid members, there is way to turn off the toolbar in your reading experience. You can read more about it in the Beta Blog or in our KB article: http://help.sixapart.com/tp/us/blogside_toolbar.html

[Account Deleted]

Kimme, this only applies to readers, not content-creators. For instance, I have the option *de-selected* for all of our blogs so that our readers don't have the bar. However, it still shows up for me whenever I visit any of my sites.

[Claire Alcock]

Let me open a support ticket for you. I will ask our support team to remove this for your readers as well if possible.
Thanks for the feedback.

[Alicia P.]

I, too, have deselected the "show Typepad Toolbar" box on my basics page, and it is still showing up on my blog. I would like it to be removed.

[Christopher Sleight]

I have the box deselected too - but it is still showing up on my sites. I could just about tolerate it when it stayed up after collapsing, but now it rolls down every time you load a page. This makes flicking through a photo gallery, or paging quickly though individual archives, an incredibly bad experience from a usability point of view.

The bar may be useful to some, but I hate having anything that I can't control affecting the design and layout of my pages. I'd like to switch it off for me and my readers. An option that I never see it when browsing other TypePad sites would be good too...

Chris.

[Account Deleted]

The only thing I don't like about this toolbar is that readers can see your stats....and if your stats are low , that is quite embarrassing and not a good thing to show off.

You should just take that stats off-----is that really important as part of the toolbar....it should only be exclusive in the dashboard of the blog owner unless he wants to show off.

That's why I opted out of it. Not a good feature. Not even essential or functional.

[Account Deleted]

I hate this thing! It makes previewing my posts an even more dreadful process. Please remove it from my account permanently. Thanks.

[John Harrigan]

I think Typepad are very wrong to use the toolbar to advertise on our blogs when we pay money for our accounts, as someone who has a typepad pro account It's completely unreasonable.

The fact they exist across everything including photo albums makes the situation even worse.

I really don't buy the fact that they're working on a fix to give us the option to remove the bar, how hard can it be?