The TypePad Beta Blog

New Changes to the Dashboard Composer and Recent Activity

We first introduced the Dashboard and Recent Activity stream to TypePad users with the launch of the new TypePad design. Since then we've continued to look for ways to improve your in-app experience. With this week's release, we have several new features on the dashboard available exclusively to Pro Beta users.

As a Pro blogger you want blogging tools that help you create and consume content easily. In your dashboard, we've combined the power of the BlogIt bookmarklet and Quick Compose to create the "Reblog It" composer. To try it out, simply copy and past any URL into the main field, hit the arrow button to the right and "Reblog It" will do the work for you. It's a quick and easy way to share the web with your readers and followers, so try it out by creating a few posts.

Additionally we made some major changes to the recent activity stream to provide you with a better reading experience. You will be able to see more content within post excerpts and notifications for actions like follow and favoriting have been reduced to avoid clutter. Comments left on your blog have been taken out for the time being but we're working on introducing it again in a better way. What do you love and what do you miss? Let us know in the comments below.

Facebook Comment Syncing and Facebook Friend Finder

Social media has become the new traffic and distribution tool for many bloggers. Facebook in particular is a site where our bloggers can potentially reach millions of readers outside of their current audience. We've seen the success of the Facebook Like button and now have two more Facebook features for our Beta members to try.

Facebook Fan Comment Syncing

TypePad bloggers can now boost comment counts and bridge the conversations happening between Facebook and TypePad. Facebook Comment Syncing will synchronize comments made by Facebook users between your fanpage and your blog. For example, a Facebook fan sees your post update in their Facebook news stream and comments on it. With Facebook Comment syncing turned on, that comment will be synced and displayed directly within the comment thread of the post on your blog. If that Facebook fan comments with their Facebook account on Typepad, the reverse will happen, and that comment will sync to display on the post in Facebook. This is a great way to boost up your comment count and connect the conversations happening between Facebook and TypePad.

This feature is only available to bloggers who have added the Facebook Like button to their blog's sidebar, and will only sync comments left by Facebook readers who have hit the like button on your blog's sidebar. To try it out, follow these steps:

1. Go to Blog > Settings > Sharing. Under the first section, ensure that you have "Connected Facebook Like to Your Blog".
2. Then go to Blog > Settings > Comments and turn on the "Facebook Comment Syncing" setting.
3. Select "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page.

Note, comment syncing will not sync comments to the posts you've shared to your Facebook profile via compose. Learn More.

Facebook Friend Finder

The Facebook Friend Finder locates and suggests people on TypePad to follow who are also in your Facebook network. This is a great way to find friends you know and new blogs on TypePad. To try it out, go to your dashboard and click on the link "Find people to follow" at the top of your Recent Activity feed.

Try out these features and let us know what you think!

Having Commitment Problems with Like?

Last week we launched the Facebook "Like" button on TypePad blogs to all of our Beta members. Thank you for all the great feedback! One of the top requests we've received was the ability to "like" on the post level rather than at the blog level. So you'll be happy to know, we're working to make the post level "Like" button available in all TypePad themes. However, we know our Beta Team likes to be on the cutting edge, so here's how you can do it in Advanced Templates:

If you'd like to add a Facebook Like button to your posts, just copy the script below and follow the instructions for pasting that into your templates.

<!-- facebook like -->
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=<$MTEntryPermalink encode_url="1"$>" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; width:450px; height:80px"></iframe>

Add the code in the Individual Archives template and within the MTEntries container tag in the Main Index and Archive templates. The button can be placed wherever you wish but it's generally added in the post footer area (MTEntriesFooter).

You can adjust the above width to fit into your sidebar. For more customization options, check out Facebook's Social Plugins pages.

Lots to Like in Facebook

KNOWN ISSUE: We're seeing reports of the Like button not displaying in IE 6, 7. We're working to resolve this.

Today Facebook announced their new Social Plugins at the F8 Conference. And starting tomorrow, as part of the Beta Team, you will be able to install Facebook's new "Like" button, and connect your blog to Facebook's Open Graph. This will give any visitor to your blog the ability to share your blog with their friends on Facebook. This small but powerful feature will drive awareness of your blog through Facebook and can help drive more traffic to your blog. Yay, traffic!

We posted full details for this at Everything TypePad. Give the feature a whirl and let us know what you think in the comments. And remember, because this is brand spanking new, we do expect some hiccups along the way. 

Happy Liking!

Blogside Search. Oh My!

We're proud to announce that a native, blogside search feature is available to our Beta members. The TypePad team has been hard at work the last several months to build out our very own search infrastructure. Last week we announced our Search API, which allows developers to build upon the great content in TypePad. And now we have an integrated search experience available for the blogside (you can see it live on this blog and on Everything TypePad).

Posts, pages, comments
So what’s being added to the search index? Pretty much everything that deals with the content on your blog. For this initial release, we provided the ability for readers to search for posts, pages and comments within your blog by keyword. 

Design, design, design
Many bloggers have been using 3rd party services such as Google or Lijit Search to power search on their blog. The problem with using another provider is that no matter how great the customizations are, it’s never going to look exactly like your blog. TypePad’s new blogside search feature will be fully integrated into the design of your blog.

Blogside search is available for all current and new blogs on classic themes and theme builder themes by going to:

• Blog > Design > Content
• Categories: Search Module: Add Search module
• Drag and drop the module anywhere in your sidebars

For members using advanced templates, grab the code from our Knowledge Base article. Microblog themes automatically have the search module embedded, so there’s one less step for you there!

Just the beginning…
Now that we’ve built this search infrastructure, the possibilities are endless. But first we need to know what’s working, what’s not working, and how can we make this experience better for you. Let us know in the comments what you think!

Connecting on TypePad has never been easier

Today we released a snazzy blogside toolbar to Beta members. Over the past year, we’ve rolled out a number of social features for our bloggers and the toolbar is another essential piece for connecting blog audiences with TypePad bloggers. The toolbar has two important functions. Firstly, it will help readers engage with your blog by giving them easy access to follow, favorite and reblog content. Therefore as a blog owner, the toolbar can be a powerful tool for building community around your blog. Secondly, it’s a great tool for all TypePad bloggers when surfing the TypePad network because you’ll be able to follow new blogs immediately and easily reblog content that you find.

All logged-in, Beta members will see the new toolbar when browsing TypePad blogs. Additionally as the blog owner, you have the option of showing the toolbar to all your readers, including those not yet in the TypePad network. What does that mean for you? By turning on the toolbar for your entire audience, you’ll help convert readers into active community members by making tools like reblog, favorite, comment and follow much more accessible.

Beta blog owners can turn the toolbar on for all readers by going to:

• Blog > Settings > Basics
• Check the box for TypePad Toolbar: "Show the TypePad toolbar on this blog"
• Save Changes

Sounds awesome, right? Well there’s more! When viewing the toolbar on your own blog, you’ll get quick access to important links to the Dashboard, Edit Post and Stats. The toolbar bridges the gap between the blog view and the TypePad interface – so your management options are just a click away. And lastly, we think the design is pretty great too. The toolbar is small, sits right below the browser window so it doesn’t interfere with your blog design, and it has a neat expand-collapse feature.  

Give it a try, and let us know in the comments about ways we can improve it for you! If you need further settings information, check out the Knowledge Base article.

Making Reblog Better

Last November we released a new feature called Reblog, which makes it easy for your readers to share your content others in their network.  When someone reblogs your content part, or all, of your post appears on the reblogger’s blog with attribution link back to your original post so you get the credit you deserve.

Reblog is a helpful traffic-driving tool but but we wanted it to do more. The new, improved reblog provides you with more insights into who is reblogging your posts and what posts are most popular. 

We’ve added new functionality to address these issues, including:

• Blogger notifications.  You’ll receive an email you when someone reblogs your post and a status update will appear in the Recent Activity section of your dashboard.

• Reader notifications.  The number of reblogs for a post will appear below the post and above the comments along with the profile pictures of people that have reblogged that post.
  

• More followers.  After readers reblog your post they will be prompted to follow you on TypePad to receive updates whenever you have a new post.
  

• Stats.  You can see the number of reblogs for a post in the Feedback section of the Edit Post page. 

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Turning On Reblog

If you already have Reblog on your blog you don’t need to do anyting.  If you don’t currently use Reblog you’ll need to turn it on.  While you’re at it we suggest turning on all your social features, including Favorites and the Follow Me module.

We recommend announcing the Reblog button to your readers so they know they can easily share their favorite posts on their TypePad blog.  Readers without a TypePad blog will be prompted to create a free TypePad Micro blog after reblogging your post.

Tell Us What You Think
We want your feedback before we roll the reblog improvements out to all TypePad bloggers.  After you use reblog for a few days please take a few minutes to answer these questions.  You can post your answers in the comments or give your feedback to our TypePad One support team.

1. What do you think of reblog?  Is it a good thing for you?
2. What do you think of the new notificaiton features?
3. How would you improve it?
4. Is something not working?
5. What do your readers think about it?

Also, we’re looking for examples to highlight when we roll the enhancements out to all users.  If you see an increase in traffic or create stronger connections with your readers from reblog and would like to be featured in our public announcement, please leave a comment below.

Now In Beta: New Design Section and Theme

We have improved the design section and introduced a new theme that is taking advantage of the new design section. Our goal is to make the design section more flexible so you — and outside designers — can add new themes and designs to your blog. One of the biggest benefits is you can create blog designs and preview them before you make changes live on your blog.

We’ve been testing the Design change for a few weeks, but we need more feedback from you. If what to try out the new design, here are few things to keep in mind:

• The new design allows you to duplicate and save your designs. We recommend you duplicate your design and then start tweaking.

• The new model is two step: after you work on a design and save the design, you still need to apply it to your blog.

• You can preview new designs but it may not be an exact preview of all of your content.

New Super-powered Theme: Mosaic
We’ve also introduced a new theme that takes advantage of the new Design paradigm. The Mosaic theme allows you to upload an image as your banner and will automatically “tile” it to fit the space. If you’ve been looking to update your “old fashioned” blog quickly and easily, this is a great way to do it.

Post by Email
TypePad has had post by email for over 5 years. Now in Beta is a huge improvement to the formatting of your post and more “Do What I Mean” (DWIM) capabilities. If you include a YouTube or Flickr URL in your email, we’ll automatically render it with nice formatting. Try it out and let us know what you think.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Now In Beta: Share Comments on Twitter and Facebook

First, a big "thank you" to all the Beta members who provided feedback about the image, video and audio upload tools from the last release. Your feedback has led to some great improvements to the video and audio upload functions and we’ve made them available to everyone.

You had a lot of feedback – to our support team and on the blog – about the new image upload feature so we’re keeping that in Beta while we work on it. We did fix a number of the bugs you identified, but we also want to improve the overall experience. 

So, on to the cool new feature we have ready for you in Beta this week.

Let Your Readers Share Their Comments
We’ve introduced to Beta members a new way for your commenters to promote your blog and publish their thoughtful comments on Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed. You can now allow your readers to directly tweet or share their comment on Facebook as they leave a comment. This is a another way your audience can help you reach a wider audience.

If you are using the default TypePad commenting system (not TypePad Connect), you can turn this on by going to Settings > Comments > and turn on Comment Sharing. 

If you want to have your commenters help drive more readers, give it a try and let us know what you think.

Now In Beta: The Easiest Way to Add Images, Videos, and Audio to your Blog

Innovation is not something that happens with dreaming big and then – wham! – its done. Innovation comes from inspiration, perspiration, and iteration.

The latest additions to Beta are inspired design and engineering efforts that we want to share with you. To truly make them great, we need your suggestions.  Please check out your TypePad blog, try out the new features and let us know your feedback so we can make them extraordinary.

Tweet This Post

We believe your blog is part of an entire social ecosystem online. We’ve added a “Tweet This” option at the end of your post to allow your readers to share and promote your post. If you have already shared your post on Twitter or Facebook, our “Tweet This” feature will use the same Bit.ly URL so you can monitor and analyze your “social” traffic. 

To add "Tweet This" to your blog, go to Design > Organize Content > Post Footer and select "Tweet This."

Bonus: we’ve also styled the Digg and Delicious links so you have the option of logos in addition to the text link version.

Adding video, images and audio

We’ve heard you and we agree. Video should be easier to add to your blog so we’ve made it easier. I'm not going to explain it in great detail, because we want you to try it out and let us know your thoughts.

And images need to be easier, too! Try this out: upload multiple images and try out the new gallery formatting.

And yes, audio, too! Try it out with your favorite MP3s.

As always, we look forward to your feedback. You can let us know in the comments below or contact us through the ticketing system. Thanks, in advance, for your suggestions.