Everything Typepad

Spotlight On: Tax Prep!

There are so many great blogs on Typepad, covering every subject you can imagine from business to bartending, parenting to printmaking. We regularly scout for great blogs in the Typepad Showcase that fit a particular theme and are guaranteed to inspire. Today, we've rounded up some of the best of Typepad's tax business and law bloggers, seasoned professionals who are here to help and educate. Click over and visit - after all, 'tis the season!

Don't Mess With Taxes:
Texas journalist Kay Bell translates taxes into money-saving English, helping make your tax tasks less, well, taxing.

Economist's View:
Economics professor and CBS News finance writer Mark Thoma offers up lessons and editorial narrative on a variety of money and tax related topics.

Tom Copeland's Taking Care of Business:
Tom Copeland has carefully crafted a great blog on running a childcare business, focusing on everything from record keeping to taxes to money management and retirement planning.

TaxProf Blog:
Smartly edited by Pepperdine University School of Law Professor Paul L. Caron, TaxProf Blog offers up smart advice and news from around the tax world and academia.

Our Taxing Times:
Our Taxing Times is a blog about US taxes, the tax system, and the tax preparation business from the perspective of a tax professional and business owner.

We hope you enjoyed this week's roundup of fantastic Typepad blogs! Check out more great business finds right here. Interested in joining the Typepad Showcase? Submit your blog today - you might just see yourself in the spotlight!

Typepad University: Adding Instagram Pictures

If you're like most of us on the Typepad team, you love Instagram.  You love taking pictures while out and about, trying out all their nifty filters, and sharing them with your friends via social media.

But what if you want to share these pictures with your blog readers?  Using IFTTT, it's a straightforward process!

IFTTT is a service that lets you create connections between other services where no connection previously existed, using their special blend of channels, triggers, and actions (read more here). Just create an IFTTT recipe, add your ingredients, and boom: you're photo blogging.

Instagram hasn't yet added an option to publish directly to your blog from the app, but thanks to IFTTT and Gmail, cross posting from Instagram to Typepad is not only possible, but hassle-free.

To get started, either log in to IFTTT or start an account (it's free!), then click Create a Recipe:

The next steps are pretty obvious! Just start clicking:

And then!
Next, choose a "trigger," the thing that makes the cross-posting magic happen. If you want to have any new photo you post to Instagram appear on your blog, just choose "Any new photo by you." Want to have only specifically tagged photos post to your blog? No problem! Choose "New photo by you tagged" - you'll specify which tag during the next step.


Then just click Create Trigger, and IFTTT will take you here: Next, choose an action channel - in this case, we'll want to choose Gmail, so make sure you already have a free Gmail account. Click the red Gmail icon, then click Send an email and enter your information, starting with your Typepad Secret Email Address (make sure to use your own - it will not look the same as the one in the example), which you can find at Blogs > Settings > Post by Email. Next, you'll want to customize the rest of the fields or leave them as is - for instance, you may want to edit the Body field if you'd prefer for your post not to say "via Instagram."  You can also leave this blank.
Click Create Action, and you're almost done! Finally, give your recipe a name, and click Create Recipe. That's it! IFTTT will take you back home, where your new recipe is on and ready to go. There, you can turn your recipe off and on, delete it, share it with others, and edit, check, or view it. IFTTT runs triggers about every 15 minutes, so if you don't see your next Instagram photo on your blog right away, don't worry. It will appear there in short order.

Once you do that, your Instagram pictures will be created as new posts that look similar to this:

Are you looking to add your Instagram pictures to your sidebar instead?  If so, we've got you covered!  If you're using one of our responsive themes, you can use the widget described here.  If you aren't using a responsive theme, you can follow the steps here.

Have any questions or need help getting IFTTT started?  Just ask and someone will be happy to help you out!

Compose Editor: Changes to the Spellchecker

Today when you use the Compose page, you'll notice a change with the Rich Text editor.  The spellcheck button will be missing.

Don't worry, though!  You'll still have spellcheck available. The Rich Text editor's spellcheck was conflicting with many browser-based spellcheck features. While the built in check was great before browsers added spellcheck, now it's redundant.
 
As such, we decided to make it easier for you to take advantage of the spellcheck right in your browser which gives you features available to add new words to the dictionary to use across all webpages, including when composing your Typepad posts.
 
If you don't already have spellcheck enabled in your browser, you can enable it from the Edit menu in most browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

We hope this makes composing your posts much easier.  If you have any questions, we're always here to help!

Featured Blog: Britt Arnhild's House in the Woods

NAME: Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland
BLOG: Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2005
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Embarking on her tenth year of blogging with Typepad, Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland is a veteran blogger who writes in a red house surrounded by a blue garden near Trondheim, Norway. Her blog covers everything from food and family to farming and travel in her daily life, all accompanied by delightfully charming photos.

FOLLOW: Typepad

Typepad On Pinterest: Clockwork Lemon

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, Clockwork Lemon!

Stephanie spends most of her waking hours in the kitchen and has a deep passion for baking.  She considers flour as part of her daily outfit.  She shares her fun kitchen experiments on her blog and tempts you with her great food photography.

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.

Become a better blogger with Desk!

There are few things in life more rewarding than creativity. As dedicated bloggers, we know that your favorite primary creative outlet is writing. It's ours, too, and that's why we understand the challenges that balancing life and blogging can present.

It's with achieving that balance in mind that we introduce you to new tools and ways to make blogging easier, whenever we encounter them. After all, we all want to be the best bloggers we can be, and when you love writing, it shows.

Meet Desk, an app 13 years in the making.

Its developer, John Saddington, has been blogging publicly since 2001, and originally built Desk for himself. Luckily, he decided to share his work with the world. Here's what he has to say about blogging with Desk:

Writing is tough, and after 14 years of blogging it hasn't gotten much easier from when I first started! What I've learned over time, though, is that working with the right tools and creating accountability via community can go a long way in making my efforts more fun, enjoyable, and productive!

With that in mind, we've got a small giveaway on a tool that I've created to help writers do what is most important: Write. I call it Desk App.

In addition, I've created a 10 day free online workshop to help you get your blog back in shape, 10 Days to a Better Blog. It's simple and there's no obligation but I hope that it can encourage you to refresh your blog for 2015!

Want to try Desk App yourself? We have five copies to give away to Typepad bloggers. Just share this post on Twitter or Facebook, and leave a comment to let us know where you've shared. The first five Typepad bloggers to comment (make sure to include your link!) will receive this app (worth $29.99, and the winner of the prestigious Apple "Best App of 2014" award), absolutely free.

Rolling Out of Beta: Integrated Domain Registration and Mapping

A month ago, we announced a new feature for our Beta Team to try out that integrated a way to register a domain name and map it to your blog.

We're pleased to announce that testing has gone well for this feature and we've started rolling it out to all of our bloggers. Expect to see this new, exciting option in your own Typepad account soon (if you don't already have it)!

If you'd like to get first crack at features like this in the future, simply go to the Account tab and sign up for the Beta team!

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.

Featured Blog: The Wise Robin

NAME: Chontelle Bourne
BLOG: The Wise Robin
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE:
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Chontelle Bourne (known as Charlea to some) is a mama, partner, and photographer, working toward a career in midwifery. Her delightfully charming lifestyle and family blog reflects her love of natural fibres, creative living, gentle parenting and making things.

FOLLOW: Typepad | Pinterest

Typepad 101: Creating a Sidebar Photo Grid for Featured Posts

The Spotlight Posts module allows you to very easily showcase a category of posts in your sidebar. Today, we're going to show you how to use the module to create a grid of images in the sidebar. This is great if you want to showcase several posts but don't want to take a up a lot of space.

Note: This tip utlizes the Custom CSS feature, which is available at the Pro Unlimited level and above.

First, we need to add a bit of CSS to the blog to format the grid. Go to Blogs > Design > Custom CSS and paste in the following code:

.module-featured .feat-container { margin-top: 0; }

.module-featured li {
    float: left;
    width: 90px;
    border: 0;
    padding-bottom: 5px;
}

.feat-text { display: none; }

.module-featuredposts { margin-bottom: 200px; }

The last line of code is the only part that might need adjusting. If your grid is one line of images, adjust that down to 100px. If it's more than 2 lines, adjust it to 300 or 400px, etc.

Next, go to Blogs > Design > Content and select the Spotlight Posts module. You should choose to show thumbnails with the Left option and deselect the "show excerpt" option. All of the other options can be filled in however you'd like.

After saving, you should see the grid on your blog, like the following screenshot.

That's it! Pretty cool, right? If you use this tip, tell us about it in the comments so we can see.