The TypePad Beta Blog

Stats, Dashboard, and Guest Authors

A quick update on our stats - we had some issues with the stats we were using and y'all let us know this was a big reason keeping you from staying on the preview of the new design. So we changed today to have a better presentation of your TypePad stats that's similar to what you saw in the classic design. We're not done with how we're going to make stats even better, but we all know that stats are important!

We added a feature that lets guest authors schedule posts, which is a suggestion we had from our Get Satisfaction forums. Thanks again for letting us know you wanted to see this!'

Reply to comments via email in TypePad Connect wasn't working as expected - we've got this sorted out now. Thanks for your patience.

The dashboard on the preview now has pagination, which is cool for those of us who are loving following other bloggers there. Have you found someone you love following? (My latest fave is my friend and longtime TypePad blogger Mat - his writing is right up my alley.) Let us know your suggested people to follow in the comments.

We're getting closer...

Thanks to everyone on our beta team who has been giving us such amazing feedback. We've been hearing some questions on a couple of topics in particular, so I wanted to post an update on a few key things to make sure you know what's happening.

Stats are essential to knowing what works (and doesn't) on your blog. In the preview of the new TypePad, the stats are not appearing consistently, and the data that's being presented isn't as accurate as it needs to be. So we've been back in the idea lab cooking up how to best get you the things you want from stats - more visual cues, more referrer links, more useful and reliable information. We also want you to be able to easily access your own third party solutions that can give you more rich detail about your traffic.

Your own stats are still there in the old version of TypePad, so if you want to take a look, you can click back to the previous version to see the stats you're used to. We know that's a major pain point in the new design, so hang in there - things will get better in the next couple of weeks.

New themes are something everyone asks for! We added a bunch of new themes from our team in Japan. Check them out here.

We're working on really cool new ways to customize your blog just the way you like it. You can also read our knowledge base for some great tips and tricks for customizing your blog with CSS.

Your dashboard is evolving too, thanks to your insight and feedback. You'll see changes there in the next few weeks too. It helps you see more about activity on your own blog, and to also discover cool new blogs.

People you follow is going to evolve too. The people we suggest on the dashboard that you follow are just to give you a feel for how some of the new features can work, like following other TypePad bloggers and finding other great blogs to read.We're glad you're telling us how we should be making it work for you, and want to incorporate those suggestions into the new TypePad.

Want to know what else we've been up to? Read more about it on Everything TypePad.

This Week's Update: Stats and Compose in the New TypePad

We’re taking all of your feedback and making adjustments and fixes all of the time to your Beta experience. Thanks for all of your participation and feedback. From your responses, we made some updates today to compose and stats as your most requested areas to fix this week.

Stats update: thanks for hanging in there while we worked with our new stats! We’ve still got more we want to do, and if you want to see your old stats and you’re previewing the new design, it’s easy – just click back to the old design.

• We fixed the ‘recent referrer’ issue – this was one that you let us know loud and clear you needed to see updates on.
• We’re giving you more historical data on stats, and tweaking how best to present you with those on the new TypePad.

Compose! We’re loving using the new compose editor in the new TypePad, but there’s still some bugs, of course, since it’s beta. Here’s the biggest ones so far, according to your feedback:

• Enter didn’t work as expected in FF3
• Shift+Enter didn’t work as expected in Safari

Following: we’ve updated how the interactions on your dashboard work, and explained a bit more about following other bloggers here. http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/learn-more.html
Some other things we’re working on that will be coming soon:

• More stats improvements
• Automagically posting an update to Twitter with scheduled/draft posts
• More comment fixes and improvements
• More ways to use your dashboard
• Cool new features to track your best posts

For those of you who haven’t previewed the new TypePad yet, we’ve made the link to switch to the new TypePad even bigger  - we’re excited about the preview, and want you to give it a try today.

Status on Stats

Hi everyone - we're still working out some kinks in the stats when you're in the preview mode of the new TypePad. If you'd like to access your old stats, simply switch back to the old design for now to view them. We're working on this, and should have another update for you soon.

The First Day: Feedback, Ideas, and Known Issues

First of all a huge thank you for a wonderful start to previewing the new TypePad, and for all your detailed feedback. Keep it coming! This is how we're going to make the new TypePad the best that we possibly can - with your ideas, feature requests, and feedback.

Here are some of the known issues with the preview version of the new TypePad.

Stats

Where are my stats from before May 6th?

At this time, you can only see stats starting on or around May 6th. That's because we're using a brand-new platform for our stats. But don't worry, your historical data is still there - for now you'd have to switch back to the old version to see it (remember, you can switch back and forth between the two version as many times as you want).

Load times are slow - what's up with that?

Sean mentioned that stats are a bit slow to load, particularly on the first time. We're also working on this - it'll get better.

Where's my referrer information?

It's here, but we're seeing from your feedback (thanks Natasha!) that it's not easy to find: it's the "Recent" link in the Top Referrers section of your stats. We've already started working on a better placement, but for now, here it is.

What's this "follow" thing all about?

AKA - But seriously, why is Ginevra following me?

Following is a new piece we've recently added to your TypePad profile, but it's not done yet. We're still working on some cool ways that following will work. For now, it's just sort of oddly addictive for some of us, but it'll definitely be different than what you see today. Let us know what you think!
 

People you should follow

The list of recommended people to follow is currently limited, but we're working on how to make this more dynamic. We are working on a ton of of improvements to make these recommendations a lot more relevant to you.

Thanks again for being a part of the Beta team, and keep an eye out for more updates.