Everything Typepad

Typepad On Pinterest: Inkredible Stamping

Did you know Typepad is on Pinterest? It's true! We love pinning and repinning great content from Typepad blogs in every genre, and we're always looking for great, inspirational content. Are you on Pinterest? Drop your link in the comments, and don't forget to follow Typepad right here! If you're not on Pinterest yet, check it out - it's a great way to promote your blog and connect with others!

Want some inspiration? Check out our featured pinner, Inkcredible Stamping!

Julie is a Papercrafter, Scrapbooker, and Teacher of all things Creative.  She teaches how craft activities like scrapbooking and rubber stamping can help relieve stress, enjoy personal time, and discover a new passion.

FOLLOW: Blog | Pinterest

Want to promote your pinterest account on your Typepad blog? Just go to Blogs > Content and add the Pinterest Widget to your Sidebar via the center menu. While you're there, make your blog posts "pinable" by adding the Pin It button to your post footers.

Want even more? Learn how to promote your blog on Pinterest and follow Typepad at www.pinterest.com/typepad.

Featured Blog: Everyday Sociology

NAME: Karen Sternheimer, Editor
BLOG: Everyday Sociology
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2007
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Written by professors who teach regularly (but run as more of a conversation than a class), the Everyday Sociology Blog features interesting, informative, and most of all entertaining commentary from sociologists around the United States. Come to this site regularly to get a sociological take on what is happening in the news (and on what should be in the news).

FOLLOW: Typepad | Twitter

Avoid Common Blogging Mistakes: Autoplaying Sound

Welcome to our series on common blogging mistakes, and how to avoid them. Every other week, we'll debut a new post designed to help you avoid mistakes that are common to both new and veteran bloggers, full of tips and tricks guaranteed to help you become an even more passionate, engaged blogger with a growing audience.

Let's imagine a scenario.

It's late in the evening, you've had a long day.  You're finally home, sitting on your computer.  You're relaxed and settling down, browsing some of your favorite sites.  Suddenly, out of no where, a loud song starts playing through your computer's speakers.  You're startled and immediately close the browser so as to not wake anyone else up.  "What in the world just happened?" you wonder.

What happened is that you came across a site that has music enabled to automatically begin playing when you visit.  This is usually - at best - an inconvenience or an embarrassment.  Maybe you're at home and the song wakes up your sleeping dog or family.  Maybe you're at work and now everyone knows you're visiting a site that probably isn't approved by your HR or IT team.

If you're a blog owner, it's possible that you just alienated the reader in the above scenario enough to get them to decide that visiting your site again isn't worth it.

While you might like having a song or greeting play for your readers, it's worth it to consider how it can impact how they view your site.  What can you do to make sure that this doesn't happen?

Disable Autostart on Videos

When you add a video to your blog from a site like YouTube, many times there will be an option to have the video start playing automatically.  We recommend that you do not choose this option and let the reader decide when to the play the video themselves.  This goes for any videos embedded in your posts or if you happen to have any in your sidebars.

You can read more about inserting videos in our Knowledge Base here and more about uploading your own videos here.

Consider Removing Background Music

While you may enjoy the music playing on your own site, visitors may prefer to listen to their own music while they are browsing the web or they might be in a situation like the one above.  We recommend that you do not have any background music on your blog, but if you do, make sure there's a way for a reader to quickly pause or stop it.

Keep an Eye on Third-Party Widgets

Some third-party widgets may unexpectedly play sound.  Make sure you know and agree to what you're putting on your blog before teaming with a third-party service.  Some may place advertisements as well, so it's always a good idea to double check exactly what it does and what you're agreeing to in its Terms of Service.

Allowing your readers control over music or video ensures that you never surprise them or get them in trouble for viewing your blog. A happy visitor is often a return visitor.

New Feature - The Signature Module

Today we've released a new content feature that we know a good few of you have been asking for--the signature module! This feature is available to all Pro plans, and is ideal for signature images, sign-offs, advertisements, or anything else you want to have automatically inserted into the bottom of each post.

example: inserting an image sign-off in the signature module

Available at Design > Content, all you need do is insert your code into the module, save your changes, and you're done! The module will automatically add itself into each post.

Note: Blogs with excerpts turned on will only see the module on the permalink page for the post.

Example
One example of how to use the module is seen above. We chose to create an image, using our preferred font, because this specific font isn't available on all computers and we wanted to make sure all readers would see it exactly the way we envisioned. Once the image was saved, it was uploaded to the File Manager, and we copied its URL.

Once the URL was in hand, we went to Design > Content, enabled the signature module, then clicked its pencil icon to configure it. Inside the field available, we added the following:

<img src="URL" title="until next time" />

After that, we clicked OK, previewed our changes, then saved them. Pretty simple! And much more efficient than manually adding it to each new post we create.

Things to take note about the module:

• it accepts HTML, scripts, and plain text
• it has a 1000 character limit (you will be alerted by a pop-up if it the limit is reached)
• there is no default styles set for the module, so it will fit with all themes
• images or embedded content will scale up/down in responsive themes only

In our Knowledge Base article for the signature module you'll find examples of how to style the content, as well as the type of content you can add. It's really almost limitless, so we hope you give it a try! If you have questions beyond what the Knowledge Base can provide, remember we're just a help ticket away at Help > New Ticket.

Typepad Master Class: Layering Header Text Over an Image

In this Master Class we're offering a tip for making a header and related image work together. This can be used across multiple types of blogs, and multiple types of content. Think giveaways, fashion, photography--you name it, we're sure this tip can be used in some way to grab a reader's attention.

Headers are used to do just that--grab attention. In blogging, images are often used to the same end (e.g. to break sections of text up with a relevant image, to showcase an item(s), to just look pretty--the list could go on). Our class today blends the two together, with the goal to keep it simple, keep it effective, and keep it attractive (SEA; look at us making up cool acronyms!).

Featured Blog: Callaloo Soup

NAME: Francine Clouden
BLOG: Callaloo Soup
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2006
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Callaloo Soup is a sparkling lifestyle blog designed to help its readers curate a delightful and creative life through simple crafts, photography, memory keeping, and style.

FOLLOW: Typepad | Twitter

Avoiding Common Blogging Mistakes: Subscription Options

Welcome to our series on common blogging mistakes, and how to avoid them. Every other week, we'll debut a new post designed to help you avoid mistakes that are common to both new and veteran bloggers, full of tips and tricks guaranteed to help you become an even more passionate, engaged blogger with a growing audience.

Today we begin a new series where we share common blogging mistakes to avoid.  We all make mistakes early on with our blogs but have learned from them. Now we would like to pass that knowledge on to you.  We will cover mistakes or oversights bloggers make and how to overcome them.  Today we start with offering different blog subscription options for your readers.

A mistake made often with blogging is not offering options to subscribe for blog updates.  You want visitors to know when you post an update right?  Don't just rely on the "Subscribe" link that appears in your Navigation Bar and call it a day.  Readers have different preferences when following their favorite blogs. Some people like to get blog updates or digest sent directly to their inbox, others visit a blog reader and read all of their blog updates at once, or they get their blog fix through Social Media.

Here are some of the more common options you can give your readers for getting updates.

Link Back To A Feed Reader

A blog reader is an application that collects and syndicates all of the blogs you follow into one place.  The Subscribe link in your Navigation Bar gives readers your feed URL (ending with atom.xml or rss.xml) that can be added to feed readers.  Make sure you have your Feeds enabled at Settings > Feeds to make your posts viewable. 

Some popular feed readers are Bloglovin' and Feedly.  They both have a selection of "follow" buttons to choose from. You can see how they look here and  here.

Connect to FeedBlitz

By connecting your blog to FeedBlitz, you can share the FeedBlitz sign-up widget in your sidebar.  Anyone who signs up using this widget will be taken to a page showing options to subscribe to the feed via Google, Facebook, and several other services.

Email Updates

If you set up an account with FeedBlitz, you can utilize their Email Subscription option.  Every time you update your blog, an email will be sent directly to your subscribers linking back to your blog. 

Facebook/Twitter

Not everyone wants to get email updates.  People check their social media accounts several times a day, every day.  Offer the option to "like" your blog on Facebook by adding a Like button or badge.

If you share blog updates on Twitter, choose one of their "follow" buttons to let readers know you're there too.   You can also use a service like IFTTT to share your blog updates to your Facebook, Twitter, and more automatically.

By offering different choices to share your blog updates with your readers, you make the most of getting your blog content out to be read and shared with others.

How do you keep updated with your favorite blogs?

New For Beta Users: Post Carousel

We are very pleased to introduce a new and exciting feature for our Beta Team subscribers: The Post Carousel!

You may be asking yourself what exactly is a Post Carousel and why should you add it to your blog? Let us tell you!

The Post Carousel adds a slideshow of the latest posts to the top of your blog. Photos from the most recent posts will rotate through the carousel.  It's a great way to catch your reader's eye as they visit your blog.

You can see a live demo of the Post Carousel hard at work here.

The Post Carousel can be customized in many ways. You can set the maximum number of posts to display and restrict it to just a specific category.  You can choose the title position, automatic start, add a pause button, and much, much more.

To add the Post Carousel to your blog, simply go to Design > Content, check the box for Post Carousel, select the options you'd like to use, and save your changes.  We have more information on this in the Knowledge Base.

Want to give the Post Carousel a go but aren't a member of our Beta Team?  It's easy to join!  Just go to the Account tab, check the Beta Team option, and save your changes.

Beta Team, we'd love to hear what you think about the Post Carousel!  Please open a help ticket with your feedback so that we can make this the best feature possible.

Featured Blog: Atelier Bee

NAME: Angharad Barlow
BLOG: Atelier Bee
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2013
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Essentially a spiritual practice, Angharad Barlow believes that creating a garment is an alchemical process of the body. The ideas, the physical momentum of the hands and creative intentions bound together by a magical stitch conjure up a required reality. She believes what we wear can be used to affect our own vibrations and those around us. Barlow uses shamanic practices and healing arts to filter through her designs working with pattern, color, texture, symbols and the song of the spirit of the cloth.

FOLLOW: Typepad

Typepad 101: A few words about following

We recently reintroduced you to your Typepad Profile, where we covered all the things you can do to customize your profile and make it your own. Now that you've had time to get to know your profile, we'd like to talk to you about the little green button you can see on the left here - the Follow button.

Something we hear from our bloggers from time to time is that you want to find other Typepad blogs to read, but you're not sure exactly how. We want to make it easier for you to discover great blogs, keep tabs on your favorite bloggers, and to help you engage more easily (like with quick comment replies) with your readers, so we're here today to talk about Following people via the Typepad Profile. Once you've pressed that little button on a fellow Typepad blogger's profile and followed them, you'll start to see their activity right in your Dashboard.

Your Dashboard helps you to know when someone you're following comments, follows another Typepad blogger, or adds a post to their Typepad blog. You'll also get a little alert when other Typepad bloggers follow you!

Best of all, it’s fun! Being able to track what your most pithy and interesting commenters say and do is a great way to get inspired to be an even better blogger.

"So, how do I find people to follow?"

For a strong start, check out the Typepad Showcase! It's full of blogs on every subject from parenting to lifestyle to design to tech, and features some of the best bloggers on Typepad.

Once you start following a few people, you can follow the people they're following, or you can also follow the people who've commented on your blog with Typepad Connect.

Using your Typepad Profile and Dashboard is a simple, easy, and effective way to find great new blogs to follow, keep tabs on your favorite Typepad bloggers, and build your community at the same time!

Not so sure you want that content on your Dashboard after all? We've got the skinny on how to unfollow and remove recent activity from other bloggers right here.