Everything Typepad

Why upgrade to the TypePad Pro Unlimited plan?

If you aren't using the features of TypePad's Pro Unlimited plan, you're missing out on the ability to completely customize your blog's design.

Our favorite feature of the Unlimited plan is Custom CSS. Even if you are not familiar with cascading style sheets (CSS), we provide you with the specific code you need in the Knowledge Base and weekend project posts.

With the new Clean Theme, we also released the style guide which includes dozens of design tips specifically for the new themes. The CSS code needed is provided for you and can be easily added to your blog at Design > Custom CSS.

We have tips on using Custom CSS to style the sidebar module headers, customize the default font in your posts, increase the column widths, center the banner image, and much more.

If you're looking to customize your design and can't find the CSS necessary in our documentation, post to the TypePad forum with your request and the TypePad community and support team will help you with the code.

Other features available with the Unlimited plan:

• Invite an unlimited number of authors to contribute to your blogs.
• Create an unlimited number of blogs, and with Domain Mapping, each blog in your account can have its own unique address.
• If you want to get down and dirty in the code for blog's design, you can create a design using Advanced Templates.

Ready to upgrade? Go to Account > Billing Info > Upgrade or Downgrade. For the first 50 people who upgrade, we're offering you a 20% discount. After upgrading to Unlimited, go to Account > Billing Info > Update Payment Method and enter the UNLIMITED2012 code to receive a 20% lifetime discount on the Unlimited plan.

How do you Get Satisfaction? By joining the TypePad forum!

You know all about TypePad's Help Ticket system and our fantastic Knowledge Base, but have you visited our Get Satisfaction forum lately? Those in the know use the forum on a regular basis to ask questions, give answers, and participate in great conversations with other TypePad bloggers and the TypePad team!

As a TypePad blogger, you have some unique skills, and the forum needs you! We welcome your opinions, tips, and recommendations for blogging with TypePad. Have you done something spectacular with your design or made just the right tweak to your sidebar? It might be just the thing that someone else is looking to do. Want to ask a question or start a discussion? The forum is a great place to do that, too.

If you're looking for active conversations to participate in, we've got a couple of great ones for you, like this discussion about how Android users blog on TypePad, and this one, about the new Pinterest button! We'd love to see you there - talking to your fellow bloggers about how they're using TypePad's awesome features can help you get creative with your own blog.

So come on, dig in! If the TypePad team spots you being particularly helpful in the forum, we’ll even make you an official TypePad Champ! We'll add a sweet badge to your avatar, but that's not all - you'll also receive some free service time and a Marc Johns t-shirt.

Being helpful could consist of answering someone’s question before the TypePad Team has a chance to, starting a topic to give people great ideas to use on their own blogs - or anything else that we consider spectacular, like Meighan's search bar suggestions and Simon's mobile auto-detection solution!

We really do think of TypePad as a community, and we strive every day to make this a great place for all of our bloggers. The Get Satisfaction forum is a big part of that, and we'd love to hang out there with you too!

Sunshine Girl

NAME: Ranu
BLOG: Sunshine Girl
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2010
WHY WE THINK SUNSHINE GIRL ROCKS: If you're looking for color, design, and style inspiration, look no further! Featuring everything from cheery brights to nubby texture to city style and beyond, this blog is bang on trend and has you covered.

FOLLOW: TypePad | Twitter

Y is for Yogini

NAME: Lo
BLOG: Y is for Yogini
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2009
WHY WE THINK Y IS FOR YOGINI ROCKS: This is not your mama's yoga magazine. Voted Shape Magazine's best yoga blog of 2011, Y is for Yogini is hilarious, smart, and snappily spiritual, managing to demystify yoga and turn it into a practice that is completely approachable for the new wave of current and potential yogis.

FOLLOW: Twitter | TypePad

Weekend Project: Display Your Photos from Instagram

If you're already using Instagram, you know how fun and addictive it is. If you're not, then all you need to know is that it's a bit like Twitter but for images. You snap a photo on your iPhone (Android users will get Instagram soon!), upload it to Instagram and the app shares the image across your social profiles like Twitter and Facebook.

But you don't just upload and share your images, you can also apply really awesome filters that make your pics look much more vibrant and interesting. A picture of your yummy dessert just looks better when you apply one of Instagram's moody filters.

So now you're hooked on Instagram and you're shooting and sharing with friends and family. What if you want to display those images somewhere on your blog?

That's what today's tutorial is all about. We're going to offer two ways for you to automatically post those images onto your blog's sidebar. Once you have it set up, the images will automatically update as you add more to Instagram. Presto!

The first option is super easy. Just go to SnapWidget and scroll down to enter your Instagram username. From there, you can enter in a specific hashtag to pull from, thumbnail sizes, and so on. There's a preview feature so you can see how your images will look before grabbing the code.

You can add the code to your sidebar via a Notes TypeList or the "Embed your own HTML" module in Blogs > Design > Content. We have more details in our Knowledge Base. Below is an example of how SnapWidget looks on a real blog.

The second method is a bit more complicated but allows for more control over the thumbnail size that shows in your sidebar. You'll use your Instagram RSS feed, a service that will convert that feed to JavaScript, and some Custom CSS to style the thumbnail.

Bloghungry

NAME: Adam Woods
BLOG: Bloghungry
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2006
WHY WE THINK BLOGHUNGRY ROCKS: Bloghungry is a fantastic food blog brought to you by Adam Woods, a west Hollywood dwelling food lover with a penchant for delicious top-ten lists, recipes both savory and sweet, and photos guaranteed to make you hungry, all delivered with sparkling wit. Bon Appétit!

FOLLOW: TypePad | Twitter

Clean, Simple, and Frugal

Ryan has a passion for frugal living and shares his ideas and tips at his blog, The Frugal Guru. He was looking for a clean, professional, new design to take his blog to the next level, so he contacted the TypePad Blog Services team and we did a Design Creation Service for him.

Ryan provided the photo for the banner and his requests regarding the colors, fonts, layout, and other design elements, then we got to work. The design we created is simple yet striking, well suited for a blog about living more simply. Sometimes less really is more.

Want a sharp-looking new design for your blog too? Check out our Design Creation Service. And check out The Frugal Guru for advice on saving money.

P.S. You can view this and many other great blogs in our portfolio.

Go Make Me

NAME: Cate
BLOG: Go Make Me
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2008
WHY WE THINK GO MAKE ME ROCKS: Go Make Me is DIY central, offering tutorials on original projects for any material you can imagine, from paper to food, fabric and beyond. Go beyond DIY with features on Cate's daily life as well, complete with captivating photography that is guaranteed to inspire!

FOLLOW: TypePad | Twitter

Did You Know?: Explaining the Full Editor

Last time, we helped you enable the Full Editor on the Compose page, so this time we want to explain some of the icons that you might not use as often.

The Split Extended Entry feature allows you to display an intro on your main page, with the remainder of the post on the post's Permalink page. Your reader would click a link at the end of your intro on the main page to continue reading the post. Information on setting up the Extended Post is available here.

When composing, it may be easier for you to write if you can use more space than what's available in the Body section of the Compose page. If so, you can use the Full Screen option to expand the Body section to use your entire screen.

When you have an unexpected computer crash or your browser closes, you can use the Restore Auto-Save Content button in the Rich Text editor to recover the content of the text fields from the last time you were on the Compose page. We have more information on this here.

Perhaps you applied some formatting options (like changing the font or color) to your text but you decide you don't like how it looks.  If so, you can highlight the text and click the Remove Formatting option. This will strip any of the previously selected text formatting.

We hope you found this useful! Check back every other week for more "Did You Know?" tips to help make your blog even better!

Featured Friday: Roundup!

We've got a great selection of Featured Blogs here from the past couple of weeks, with topics ranging from food to dieting to home and relationships - there's something for everyone. Just click on the images below to get started on the hunt for your next favorite blog!

And don't forget to suggest a TypePad blog (yours or a favorite) right here. It might just be featured material!