A Year in Review, 2014: the Wrap-Up

What a year 2014 was! We here at Typepad are committed to making Typepad a better service each day, and we've been busy as bees releasing new features and improving the system overall.  This included offering new themes, adding entirely new features, and more, all the while implementing your own feedback and suggestions. 2014 may be over, but 2015 is looking to be an even bigger and better year.

In the past few months we've shared a new series that was all about reminding you of the features we released in 2014. We had a great year last year, and we loved being able to create, and give you, some oft-requested features that helped your blog, your design, and your readers.

We opened with a general review of the features that were released last year–from new themes and layout options to maintenance pushes, as well as responsive features to sidebar widgets that showcase your content. There was a lot to cover, and with our next few posts we did our best to review the items we thought deserved a spotlight.

The first feature we wanted to remind you about was the Spotlight Posts widget. It's a heavily customizable widget to showcase your posts by category, with options for excerpts, thumbnails, or combined selections. It's perfect for highlighting content if you have a multi-focused blog. Make sure to check that out if you missed it before.

The second feature that we thought needed some high-energy fist pumping was our continued efforts to fight spam comments by integrating the Disqus commenting system. What a great way to help build your community by giving additional options to your readers to interact with you and each other. It's a great tool and a great addition to Typepad.

The last two features we shared were the Welcome Message and Signature Module. We know that there are two important things that can help your blog: reaching your readers; and branding. The Welcome Message allows you to give important information to readers, without having to publish a short post, while the Signature Module is a fantastic way to remind readers who the author is and sell yourself as (part of) a brand.

We hope you enjoyed this special topic series, and make certain to check out the Year in Review series–as well as other great series–for inspiration.