Typepad 101: Six Ways to Protect Your Copyright

June 24, 2015

Last year, we introduced the Copyright module as a new feature. This is a quick and easy way to add a copyright notice to your blog's sidebar.

On the Design > Content page for your blog, locate Copyright in the listing of modules and click the Add Module button. The module already has a copyright symbol and your blog's name in it. If that's all you need, click OK to add the module and then drag and drop it to the desired place in your sidebar. You can also add more text if you want or edit the existing text.

The Copyright module isn't the only way to add a copyright notice to your blog, however. Maybe you use sidebar header images to dress up your blog's design and you'd like to have your copyright notice match this.

Create the image that you wish to use and then go to Design > Content again. Choose the Add a sidebar image module. Select the desired options in the pop-up window and then browse for the image that you created. Click "Insert Image" to upload the image and then OK to add the module, then drag and drop.

Perhaps you're a big fan of Creative Commons licenses that allow people to re-use your content in specific ways that you choose. Creative Commons provides badges that you can add to your sidebar. Head on over to their Choose a License page and set the options that you want. You will then see some code that you can copy.

Back at Typepad, go to Design > Content and choose the Embed Your Own HTML module. Paste the Creative Commons code into the module and click OK to add it, then drag and drop.

Maybe you want to put your copyright notice at the bottom of the page instead of on the sidebar. For this, you can use the Advanced option for the Blog Footer module. On the Design > Content page, locate Blog Footer and click the pencil icon to edit it. In the pop-up window, choose the radio button next to "Advanced". There may be some code already present, which creates navigation links. You can either leave this as it is or remove it. Type in your copyright notice, then click OK to update the module.

The Blog Footer will appear on every page of your blog, but perhaps you'd like to put the copyright notice immediately underneath each post so that people can find it more easily (maybe you're worried they won't scroll all the way down).

Go to Design > Content and locate the Signature module. Click the pencil icon to edit it then type your desired copyright message. Click OK to add the module.

All of these options are great, but they work best for short copyright notices. What if you would like to set out a detailed content use policy for your blog? For this, you can use an informational page. Look for the yellow Compose button and click the arrow to the right. This will open a little menu where you can choose New Page. This will take you to the Compose editor where you can write and publish your content use policy.

To make it easy for readers to find your policy, copy the URL for the page you just created, then go back to Design > Content. Locate the Navigation Bar module and click the pencil icon to edit it. Add the title of your page and the URL to the list of links, then click OK to update the module.