Everything Typepad

Favorite Features: Custom CSS

Welcome to our special series on our favorite Typepad features! Every other week, we'll debut a new article full of valuable tips and tricks for the Typepad team's top feature picks. Each feature is already built-in and available right at your fingertips, ready to help you get the most out of your blogging experience. Miss anything? Check out the other posts in our series here. This week's favorite feature post is from Colleen, who has been part of the Typepad team for over 8 years.

You might notice that we talk about Custom CSS a lot around here. Why? Because it's an awesome feature that allows you to customize your blog's design, no matter what level of expertise you have with coding. Absolute beginners can just copy code, plop it into their design and go on with their day. Or if you're a CSS expert, you can build a whole theme from scratch. You might be surprised how fun it is to see how the code you use translates to the actual blog. It can be really gratifying!

I love Custom CSS because it allows me to change a blog's style without touching the HTML or template tags. I work with a lot of subscribers on creating custom designs for their blogs and I recommend using Custom CSS for most situations. It allows for a great deal of flexibility without losing access to the other design features, like the Content page. If you've been curious about Advanced Templates because you want more flexibility but you're a little intimidated by all the code, then Custom CSS might be the best solution for you.

Three Little Birdies uses the Clean theme and Custom CSS to create a totally unique design

Even if you don't want to make a ton of changes to your blog, you can still use Custom CSS to make little customizations to perk things up. Don't like the font your theme uses? Try out a new one. Want to add a snazzy background image to your blog? You can do that, too. You can tweak your banner, style the navigation bar, or even use custom widths for your blog's columns. 

Are you using Custom CSS on your blog? Tell us it about it in the comments for this post. We love to see our favorite features in action!

Featured Shop: Workshops with Elise Blaha Cripe

Elise Blaha Cripe's fantastic workshops are organized into daily lectures, many with helpful videos, that are insteresting and easy to understand. The classes are hosted on a private blog and are meant to be completed at your own pace. Throughout the workshops, she is available to answer any questions and provide clarification. At the end of each workshop, PDFs of class lectures are available for download.

Featured Blog: Tongue in Cheek

NAME: Corey Amaro
BLOG: Tongue in Cheek
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE:
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Corey Amaro is an American who has lived in France for twenty five years with her husband and two children. Her blog is full of tales woven from her experiences of living and loving France, stories collected at the marché aux puces (flea market) in the south of France; tales of linens, letters, vintage scraps, and moments of these worn true objects whispering in her ear.

FOLLOW: Typepad | Facebook

Featured Shop: Caryn Drexl Photography

Equal parts haunting and beautiful, Caryn Drexl's portraiture will delight the shutterbugs and art lovers on your list. Add an antique frame and you've got the perfect gift. Don't miss The Memory Collector - Walk Down Memory Lane!

Featured Shop: Wee Wonderfuls

Toy designer Hilary Lang and her shop, Wee Wonderfuls, are well known for offering colorful, sweet, sewing and cross-stitch patterns, embroidery stitchettes, and paper goods to delight kids and adults alike. Be sure to pick up a Big Footed Bunny or Kit, Chloe and Louise pattern for the clever crafter on your list!

Featured Shop: Katie Can Draw

Katie can draw: little kitties doing yoga, twists on Doctor Who, The Avengers, and My Little Ponies, or even a custom mini-painting of anything your heart desires. Don't miss Gronk; the star of her weekly webcomic even has his own books!

Featured Shop: The Blackbird Sings

Natasha Newton is the talented painter, designer and illustrator behind The Blackbird Sings, featuring original contemporary watercolor paintings, illustrations, prints and decorative homewares inspired by nature and mid-century design. For a gift out of the ordinary, don't miss her gorgeous astronomy art pieces.

Featured Blog: Rise Up Rooted

NAME: Katie and Jamie
BLOG: Rise Up Rooted
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2011
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Rise Up Rooted documents Katie and Jamie's pursuit to live the lives their idealistic, 15-year-old-selves imagined they would. Share in their adventures (and misadventures) in cultivating a world of big and small, joyful moments. Follow along as they tackle renovation projects, seek simplicity, and run head-on into the big unknowns of the universe.

FOLLOW: Typepad

Featured Shop: Mignon Kitchen Co.

Mignon Kitchen Co. is an online shop created by Rachel Ball out of her love for making and sharing food. The shop carries a selection of curated goods for prepping, baking, serving, and sharing food, perfect for the foodies on your list. Don't miss the Nutcracker Brittle!

Favorite Feature: Scheduled Blog Post

Welcome to our special series on our favorite Typepad features! Every other week, we'll debut a new article full of valuable tips and tricks for the Typepad team's top feature picks. Each feature is already built-in and available right at your fingertips, ready to help you get the most out of your blogging experience. Miss anything? Check out the other posts in our series here. This week's favorite feature post is from Marilyn who has blogged with Typepad at Pulp Sushi since 2006 and recently started working with the Typepad support team.

As bloggers with busy schedules, we don't want to let our time get away from us and forget to update our blog.  Typepad's schedule post feature has been a life saver and my favorite feature when working on my own blog. 

So if you're full of blog posts ideas but unsure of when you can write it all out, scheduling your posts is the way to go.  My schedule doesn't allow me to write a blog post every day but I still would like to have fresh content to be published daily. This is very easy to do from the Compose page under Status, select Publish On and choose your date and time for publishing.

If you have a regular feature on your blog that's published monthly or weekly like "Friday Pinterest Picks", why not schedule the entire month in advance?  I like to schedule my blog posts on the weekends for the week ahead.  I use my Google Calendar to map out the month.

Here's what my Blog Planner looks like

Having a Blog Planner (many you can find online to download for free) can help make your scheduling even easier.  Here's one you can download and print from Typepad blogger Vale Design.

This could be a helpful tool if you're new to blogging too!  Regularly scheduled blog posts brings structure to your planning, helps build readership, and encourages visitors to come back.