Typepad 101: Create a Photo Showcase Blog

One of the great things about Typepad is the ability to create blogs with many different designs and layouts, including blogs that don't look like a "traditional" blog. Today, we're going to learn how to set up a photo showcase blog.

The photo showcase blog serves as a kind of album or slideshow that puts all the focus on your big, beautiful photos.

The first step is to choose a minimalistic design theme that doesn't distract attention from your photos. We've chosen the Loft theme, one of our great one-click themes, but you can choose from any of our themes, or create your own with the Theme Builder.

Go to the Design > Overview page for your blog and click Choose A Theme. This takes you to a new page where you can view the themes on offer. Loft is one of our featured themes so it's easy to find, or you can select another theme of your choice. Click on the theme you want to use to select it, then click Choose over to the right.

If you're using Loft, you'll be taken to the Colors page to select one of the three available colors. Be sure to select the option "Apply this design to [Blog Name]" (where [Blog Name] is the name of your blog), then save your changes.

Next, you'll want to set up the layout for your blog. We recommend a one column layout to put the full focus on your photos. Go to the Design > Layouts page and choose the "One Column" option, then save your changes. (Please note that depending on the theme you choose, you may see different options on this page. The Theme Builder allows you to customize the width of the main content column.)

To create the album or slideshow look, we're going to configure the blog's settings so that only one photo is displayed on each page. Go to the Settings > Posts page for your blog and look for the "Posts to Display" section. Enter "1" as the number of posts to display both on the recent posts page and on the archive pages. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and save your changes.

If you want to go super-minimalistic, go to the Design > Content page and de-select all the options except "Post Title", then save your changes.

And that's it! Now all you need to do is to start taking photos and uploading them to your blog.

Check out our sample photo showcase blog here - click the "Next" link at the bottom of each page to see how you can page through one photo at a time.

Have you set up a photo showcase blog? Do you have any other design tips? Share them in the comments!