Everything Typepad

Introducing Metropolitan, a new theme from Typepad

Today we introduce Metropolitan, the latest theme built by Typepad. 

Why we think you'll like Metropolitan

• Comes with all 5 classic layouts;
• Has custom fonts via Google Webfonts for headers and body;
• It's clean, fresh, and has a great professional look.
• Comes with 2 great color options;
• Optimized for 300px wide ads;
• Looks great on mobile devices;
• Has default social icons for the Other Accounts (grid format only) module; and
• Allows you to upload your own custom banner image (1000x330px).

Available Colors

Metropolitan - Dark

  

Metropolitan - Light

Are you an Unlimited plan blogger? If so, you can easily customize the background of the blog, replacing its native pinstripe background, with your own. Learn more!

Ready for a design change? If so, then head over to Design > Choose A Theme and apply Metropolitan today!

Featured Blog: Aesthetics & Gastronomy

NAME: Suzie Banks
BLOG: Aesthetics & Gastronomy
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2008
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: From Nottinghamshire, UK, comes the most gorgeous food blog you've ever seen. Cookery writer and food photographer Suzie Banks showcases food from her kitchen garden on her blog daily, featuring many recipes free of gluten and dairy alongside the stunning photos that have become central to her work. Aesthetics & Gastronomy is proof that allergy-friendly can indeed be gorgeous and tasty.

FOLLOW: Typepad | Twitter

Did You Know?: Threaded Comments

Last time, we taught you how to display userpics next to your comments.  Another way to add some pizzaz is to enable Typepad Connect to display threaded comments.

Threaded comments allow you to reply to other comments within your comment section.  This allows for more interaction between you and your commenters and even between one commenter and the next.

To use threaded comments, you must first enable Typepad  Connect. If you haven't done this yet, go to Settings > Comments and click the "Yes, enable Typepad Connect comments" link.

If you already have Typepad Comments enabled, or have just completed this first step, look for the Display section and select the "Threaded" option.  We recommend that you set your comment level to three, but you'll need to choose two to see indented replies. Save your changes.  Your comments will now look like this, with replies underneath each other:

You can read more about Settings > Comments in the Knowledge Base.  We also have a section on Typepad Connect.

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

Blogging Best Practices: Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines

Welcome to our series of posts on Blogging Best Practices! Each Thursday for the next 10 weeks, we'll debut a new post designed to help you create great content, share it with the world, and become a better blogger. Let's get started!

One of the most important things you can do to increase traffic to your blog is search engine optimization (SEO). Today we are going to look at best SEO practices when composing a post for your blog.

There are four parts of the post you should focus on for SEO. These are the title, the permalink URL, the keywords, and the excerpt or description.

The post title should describe the contents of the post so that people who find the post via a search engine can tell if it contains the information they are looking for. The title should include one or more likely search keywords. It should not be overly long.

The permalink URL for each post should be short and contain one or more search keywords. The permalink is automatically created from the post title, so effective post titles will automatically create effective permalink URLs. However, you may wish to consider editing the permalink URL to remove extraneous words. For example, the automatically-generated URL for this post was everything.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/optimize-your-posts-for-search-engines.html but I modified it to everything.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/optimize-posts-search-engines.html

Note: We do not recommend changing the permalink URL of an existing post, as this may break links to the post. However, you should keep this in mind when creating new posts on your blog.

Using the Keywords and Excerpt fields of the Compose editor, you can add keywords and a description for each post. This helps improve the search ranking of your posts by telling search engines what is most important about each post.

Want to learn more about SEO or need help figuring out how to optimize your posts? We offer an SEO Service that covers the areas discussed here and many others.

Add Images To Sidebar That Change On Mouseover

You can add a simple dynamic element to your blog's sidebar by adding an image which changes when you hover your mouse over it. The mouseover image is easy to do and can make a module in your sidebar standout.

First, you'll need to upload two separate images to your Typepad account. The images should be the same size. If you have a 200px wide sidebar, the maximum width of your images should be 170px to accommodate for the padding of the sidebar.

To upload the images, go to Library > File Manager, click Browse or Choose File, select the file from your computer, and click Upload. After uploading the images, copy the image URLs.

http://example.typepad.com/first-image.jpg

http://example.typepad.com/second-image.jpg

Now, you can add some HTML to make the image change when you hover your mouse over the image. Start with the below code and place URLs for the images in the appropriate places.

<img src="FIRST-IMAGE-URL" onmouseover="this.src='SECOND-IMAGE-URL'" onmouseout="this.src='FIRST-IMAGE-URL'" />

The updated code with image URLs is:

<img src="https://example.typepad.com/first-image.jpg" onmouseover="this.src='http://example.typepad.com/second-image.jpg'" onmouseout="this.src='http://example.typepad.com/first-image.jpg'" />

To add the images to the sidebar, you can use the Embed Your Own HTML module. Go to Design > Content, select the Embed Your Own HTML, click Add This Module. In the pop-box, paste in the image code and click OK. After rearranging the sidebar modules, click Save Changes to update your blog.

Hover your mouse over the Typepad logo below to see how it works!

Let us know in the comments or forum how you are using this tip!

Featured Blog: Sara Bozich

NAME: Sara Bozich
BLOG: Sara Bozich
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2004
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Harrisburg based blogger Sara Bozich is on a mission to prove there's plenty to do in Pennsylvania. Also dedicated to living an active lifestyle, you'll find posts on everything from craft beer to running and lots in between. From locals to tourists to travel enthusiasts, there's something for everyone!

FOLLOW: Typepad | Twitter

Introducing The Knowledge Base Index

Have you ever found yourself searching our Knowledge Base, overwhelmed by all the information available, or simply unsure what you're looking for? You may not even be aware of all of Typepad's great features (like displaying your recent blog posts on your website) if you don't use the Knowldge Base very often.

Well, we have released an updated index for the Typepad Knowledge Base which includes links to every tip and how-to article organized by category.

Browse through the articles on troubleshooting to figure out why your blog is loading slowly. Check out the articles on Custom CSS and create a test blog to try out some tricks.

Get started by visiting the the Typepad Knowledge Base index and let us know what other articles you would like to see added in the comments or forum.

Customizing the Other Accounts module with your own social icons

In our last theme release we unveiled a customized Other Accounts module, which makes use of the default icon and overrides it with a custom social icon of our choosing.

We created 7 custom social icons for various services, then used CSS to override the Other Accounts module when it is in Grid format. (To add the Grid format, go to Design > Content, then add the Other Accounts module and check the Grid option. Save your changes.)

Here are the icons we created and used:

Want to know more? Then...

Tuning Up Dan's Blog

Dan is a long-time Typepad blogger and also an author. He was looking to consolidate his web presence around his Typepad blog, Dan J. Brennan, and to improve the appearance and functionality of the blog. He contacted Typepad blog services. After discussing his needs with him, we recommended a Tune-Up Service.

As part of the Tune-Up Service, we set up social media sharing tools on his blog, optimized his feed with FeedBurner, set up an easy email subscription option for his readers, and created a navigation bar with links to his book website and book blog so that people can easily visit them from the main blog. We also created a new banner image, set up the Clean theme, and used some tweaks from the CSS Cookbook to pull it all together. Dan was very pleased with the results.

Looking for some help but not sure where to start? Our Tune-Up Service covers a wide range of items and may be just what you need. Sign up today! And be sure to check out Dan J. Brennan.

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

Did You Know?: Displaying Comment Avatars

Commenting is one of the most important ways to connect with your audience.  A great way to really personalize this connection is by enabling commenting avatars for your blog.  We even do this here on this blog!

If you have enabled Typepad Connect, you simply go to Settings > Comments and look for the Display section.  Check the "Show userpics next to each comment" option and save your changes.

If you have not enabled Typepad Connect, under Settings > Commnets, look for the "Comment Userpics" section, check the "Show userpics next to each comment" option and save your changes.

Now, whenever someone comments on your blog after signing in, you'll see their very own picture!

You can read more about changing your comment sections in our Knowledge Base. We've got more on Typepad Connect settings too here.

If you want to change your own userpic, that's easy too.  Simply edit your profile and upload the image you'd prefer to use.

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