Everything Typepad

Beta: A New and Improved Compose Editor

UPDATE: We have acted upon your feedback by addressing some pressing issues with the new composer and have now released it to 5% of all TypePad users, continuing to rollout the composer over the course of the next 1-2 weeks.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone for the initial feedback. We rolled out fixes to several annoying bugs today around link URLs and special characters in other languages. Additionally we've made the 'full justify' option available again. We know you're missing the 'image edit' pop-up and will have that available in the next release.

Today we launched a new Compose Editor in Beta that is powered by a more reliable, open-sourced editor*, one that is widely used around the social web. When we launched the revised Compose Editor two years ago, we introduced many great features such as text and photo justification and font and paragraph break controls (exciting!). With today's release, those features you know and love will remain unchanged. Benefits of the new editor include improved reliability, more responsiveness, and in fact, just plain better formatting. Can we say no to more font discrepancies?

The new Compose Editor has gone through several rounds of internal testing and is now ready for our Beta members. We're looking to you to provide feedback on what works and doesn't work. Remember, you can switch in and out of Beta at any time by going to Account > Summary > Join the Beta Team (at the bottom of the page - don't forget to hit Save Changes). And when you switch to Beta, you'll likely see some other awesome changes.

There are some known issues with the Compose Editor that we'll be ironing out over the next few weeks. Anything you spot out of the ordinary, please let us know in the comments – we’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Best,

The TypePad Team

* For those of you that enjoy the geeky details, the editor of choice that we've swapped in is the tinyMCE editor

Friday Roundup: Summer Fun in the Sun

We're so grateful that the weather has been nice here in the Bay Area. Makes it that much easier to get outside and enjoy those long summer days. This week's Friday Roundup includes a selection of posts that made rounds at the office.

• Our very own, kimmi8, traveled to Playa del Carmen.  We're still wondering why she didn't take the rest of the team...
• Jena Coray, aka: Miss Modish makes growing summer vegetables a piece of cake.
• Make a refreshing meal with a summer green salad in avocado & cashew tarragon dressing. Follow We Like It Raw for more recipes every day.
• Looking for a summer project? Lily Bean makes paper-crafting lovely.
• Michael Booth travels to Brittany, France to blog about artichokes?
• And while we're on the topic of food, hot dog eating ex-champ Kobayashi was arrested in Coney Island! 
• We're not all about eating here. Really. Sometimes we like to sweat or at least read about it on EverymanTri.com.

Over to you, dear readers.  Share your favorite TypePad (or any blog!) post from the last couple weeks in the comments!.

The Half Yearly Mark

The TypePad team has been hard at work delivering great discovery, distribution and community tools to our bloggers. If you haven't had a chance to keep up with all the changes, here's a recap of features you should be checking out.

• Want great search integrated into the look and feel of your blog? We now have a native, blogside search feature. Simply add search to your sidebar in one-click from Design > Content and your readers can search posts, pages and comments from your blog.
• A well-designed font can help give your blog personality, and help it stand out in the crowd. We've partnered with Typekit, a great new company that's bringing professional fonts to the web. 
• As bloggers ourselves, we like to build tools that help you get out there and be discovered. Which is why we’ve made social tools – like follow, favorite, re-blog and the reader toolbar – a big part of the TypePad platform.
• Social media outreach can help you gain new audiences for your blog. With Social Stats, bloggers can now see traffic from referrers plus social media sources like Facebook, Twitter and Bit.ly. And most recently TypePad released integration with Facebook's "Like" feature and Facebook Friend Finder, making it easier than ever to share your content with networks on Facebook.
• Last but not least, are you a developer? We have a whole slew of APIs available such as Twitter and Twitpic and Blog and Search APIs where developers can build new social and publishing applications leveraging TypePad's infrastructure. 

It's been a great first half of the year and we're looking to deliver even better features in the latter half. Stay tuned!

The Friday Roundup: 4th of July Edition

It's 4th of July weekend and Summer is finally here! This week's Friday Roundup includes a selection of 4th of July treats and some interesting reads for your extended weekends.

• Look no further than Design Editor's easy to make Corona-based margarita recipe for your party on the 4th. Yum. (Follow Design Editor)
• The Crafty Crow has a colorful line-up of patriotic treat recipes for everyone to enjoy. (Follow The Crafty Crow)
• Lowering the Bar, a legal humor blog, covers these Divorce Ceremonies that are apparently gaining popularity in Japan. (Follow Lowering the Bar)
• Popular film critic Roger Ebert recommends reading Kim Morgan's post about Jacques Tourneur's Nightfall.
• Baseball fans, don't miss out on some of our favorite baseball blogs, including Beerleaguer, MLB Rumors,  and the Los Angeles Times' Dodgers Blog.

Over to you, fair readers.  Share your favorite TypePad (or any blog!) post from the last couple weeks in the comments, and tell us what you have planned for this holiday weekend.

Introducing the Facebook Friend Finder and Facebook Fan Comment Syncing

Social media sites like Facebook can be successful tools for distributing content to new audiences and building additional traffic for your blog. In fact, we've seen a favorable increase to incoming traffic for TypePad bloggers who've added the Facebook Like button to their blogs and post footers. With today's release, we have two more Facebook features that will help enhance these traffic tools.

Facebook Friend Finder

The Facebook Friend Finder locates and suggests people on TypePad to follow who are also in your Facebook network, making it even easier to find interesting TypePad blogs to follow. To try it out, go to your dashboard and click on the link "Find people to follow" at the top of your Recent Activity feed. You'll need to connect to Facebook if you haven't already to see which Facebook friends are also on TypePad.

Facebook Fan Comment Syncing

TypePad bloggers can boost comment counts and bridge the conversation that's happening between Facebook and TypePad. All it takes is one Facebook Like button. By adding the Facebook Like button to your blog's sidebar, you'll enable Facebook readers to "become a fan" of your blog. These Facebook fans will receive your blog updates directly in their news streams and after you enable Facebook Fan Comment Syncing, any comments left by them will be sync'ed between Facebook and your TypePad blog. This means the conversation remains with your content wherever it's happening!

To try this feature you must first have the Facebook Like button set up on your blog's sidebar. Once you have that up and running, follow these steps:

1. Go to Blog > Settings > Sharing. Under the first section, ensure that you have "Connected Facebook Like to Your Blog".
2. Then go to Blog > Settings > Comments and turn on the "Facebook Comment Syncing" setting.
3. Select "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page.

Note, Facebook Fan Comment Syncing will only sync comments left by Facebook readers who have "liked" your blog and will not sync comments to post you've shared to your Facebook profile via compose. Learn more.

Have fun testing out these new features and let us know what you think!