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Posts from May 2018

Spotlight Your Categories On A Front Page

Spotlight Categories

If you don't want a traditional blog structure you can use our Front Page feature to showcase different categories in your blog. Readers can click on an image link and see all the posts in that category. 

Full Site Image

First, you will need to create a page to be used as your Front Page. Customize the page with the text you want, then add the images you created for your categories.

TipWhen designing the image you want to use, we recommend Canva. It is a great editing tool to help you create custom images. Check out our article "Using Canva and Picmonkey to create stunning visual content for your blog" to learn more about using Canva. In our example, the image size was 1000 X 300 pixels wide. 

After you have inserted your images, you need the URL’s to the categories you want to showcase. Go to your blog archive, either by clicking on the link in your navigation bar or adding archives.html at the end of your URL.

Archive in Nav Bar

Click on the category you want to showcase and save the URLs somewhere. Once you have a list of your category URLs, go back to your page and make the images a clickable link.

Front Page Archives

To make an image a clickable link, click on the image, then click on the Insert/Edit Link button. Add the category URL, then click OK. Do this to all the images you added.

Once you have the front page exactly how you want it, you need to make it the front page. Click on the Settings tab, then click on Posts. Scroll down to Front Page, then select Display a “Page” as the front page. In the drop down, select the page you created. Scroll to the bottom and click on Save Changes.

  Front Page Feature

We did our example with a one column template. This will move all your modules to the bottom of your blog. Create a test blog to make these design changes. Once you have the design perfect, you can apply it to your current blog. 

Show off your new blog in our comments! Tell us how do you make your blog, not look like a blog. 


Amazing Tools To Aid In Blogging

Tools for blogging

There are many tools in a blogger's arsenal that help make blogging easy and fun. Here are some tools we use here at Typepad.

Bloglovin', Paper.li, Pocket

Being a trusted source in a community means you need to know what is being said about your chosen subject. These sites will send blog posts about any subject directly to your inbox. Use these posts for inspiration, or reference in your own blog, when you talk about the same subject.

Bloglovin Paperli logo Pocket

Hootsuite

Getting your message out there means posting to many different social media sites. Doing it one by one can take a lot of time. Hootsuite lets you manage your social media channels in one place. You can also look at analytics!

Hootsuite-horizontal-black-registered

Pexels, Pixabay, Gratisography

Not everyone has the time to take the perfect image that fits your post. These image galleries will have the perfect image for you to use, saving time and money. They have CC0 Creative Common License images for you to use freely on your site.

Pexels Gratisography Pixabay-logo.svg

 

Canva_logoCanva and PicMonkey Imageedit_1_4631193216

Once you have the perfect image, you can edit it! Canva and Picmonkey are great editors that can take your images to the next level. Read our Everything Typepad post about both image editors.

Blogging on the go

You may be struck with inspiration while exploring this great big world of ours. Don't worry! You can still create the perfect blog post on your mobile device. You can save a post for later or publish on the spot. Go to Typepad.com on your mobile device and log in. Explore our  Mobile Compose experience and let the journey begin! 

What tools do you use to help you blog? Share in the comments below! 


Featured Blog: Between The Lines

Between The Lines

Shaan Hurley has been with Typepad since 2003! His blog, Between the Lines, is all about Autodesk products and technologies. He has the inside scoops because he is an employee there.  What is Autodesk? Well , it is a company that “makes software for people who make things!” He writes about anything related to design and technology, sprinkled in with some personal fun photography. Check out Between the lines and go behinds the scenes at Autodesk.

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Excellent TED Talks for Inspiration and Motivation

Ted

If you are like me, you can get lost in a good TED Talk binge. From Cognitive Science to Farming, TED has everything you need. Recently during a trip down the rabbit hole, I found some that I thought would inspire my fellow Typepad bloggers. These are videos to help you get the motivation, time, and understanding you need to keep blogging. 

Success, failure and the drive to keep creating

Elizabeth Gilbert was once an "unpublished diner waitress," devastated by rejection letters. And yet, in the wake of the success of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' she found herself identifying strongly with her former self. With beautiful insight, Gilbert reflects on why success can be as disorienting as failure and offers a simple -- though hard -- way to carry on, regardless of outcomes.

How to get better at the things you care about

Working hard but not improving? You're not alone. Eduardo Briceño reveals a simple way to think about getting better at the things you do, whether that's work, parenting or creative hobbies. And he shares some useful techniques so you can keep learning and always feel like you're moving forward

How to gain control of your free time

There are 168 hours in each week. How do we find time for what matters most? Time management expert Laura Vanderkam studies how busy people spend their lives, and she's discovered that many of us drastically overestimate our commitments each week, while underestimating the time we have to ourselves. She offers a few practical strategies to help find more time for what matters to us, so we can "build the lives we want in the time we've got."

Go ahead, make up new words

In this fun, short talk from TEDYouth, lexicographer Erin McKean encourages — nay, cheerleads — her audience to create new words when the existing ones won’t quite do. She lists out 6 ways to make new words in English, from compounding to “verbing,” in order to make language better at expressing what we mean, and to create more ways for us to understand one another.

How to start a movement

With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two.)

How boredom can lead to your most brilliant ideas

Do you sometimes have your most creative ideas while folding laundry, washing dishes or doing nothing in particular? It's because when your body goes on autopilot, your brain gets busy forming new neural connections that connect ideas and solve problems. Learn to love being bored as Manoush Zomorodi explains the connection between spacing out and creativity.

Share the Ted Talks that inspire you in the comments below! 

 


Featured Blog: Sparkle Tart

Sparkle Tart

If you are interested in sparkly products and projects, water coloring, art journals, doodling, making cards, and much more check out Sparkle Tart. From Australia, Kate loves art and showcasing her creative side for all to see and be inspired. Art should be fun and her blog provides excellent tutorials to help you get started. Explore her blog today and learn how she got the name Sparkle Tart.

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