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.

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: 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.

bit.ly integration in the new TypePad

We added a great new feature to Beta this week: real-time bit.ly stats.

Now, when you share you new posts on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, TypePad shortens your post URLs through the bit.ly service. And now in TypePad you can get simple statistics on how often those links are clicked.

To see how this feature works, sign in to the All New TypePad and check the stats for your blog. Below the traffic graph you’ll see a new link:

Whereas SEO is about helping search engines find your blog, Social Media Optimization helps people find your blog in the places they’re hanging out online.

Click the link and you’ll see a page of real-time clickthrough stats on posts that you’ve shared with your friends on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed.Click on the bit.ly URL for each of the entries for more detailed stats directly from bit.ly. Simple!

Sidenote:

If you haven't shared any posts on Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed, then you won't see any bit.ly stats.

If you're not sharing your posts with your friends, it's really easy to set up.  Check out the TypePad Knowledge Base for detailed instructions.

We need your feedback to make this feature better! Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Fast and Fun: the New TypePad Bookmarklet

When we started to rethink the new TypePad, we knew that we needed to make blogging easier than ever.

Today we’re releasing to the beta team one of the coolest recent innovations: the TypePad bookmarklet, Blog It.  The TypePad bookmarlet allows you to easily blog anything you discover online: your favorite quote on a blog, a video from YouTube, a photo from flickr, virtually anything can be blogged instantly.

See the bookmarklet in action and discover the cure for bloggers block. >>

The TypePad booklmarklet is currently in beta. Please try out the bookmarklet today and let us know what you think.

Note: The TypePad bookmarklet is currently not compatible with Internet Explorer 8.

Blockquote's Back (all right!)

We've been adding more people to the preview of the new TypePad, and I really want to thank all of you on the beta team for all of your feedback: the new TypePad wouldn't be possible without you.

I just wanted to highlight one of my favorite features that you've been asking for - the blockquote function:

Blockquote's been back for a while now, actually, but I've heard a lot of people asking about it. In the new TypePad, it's there in the middle of the formatting bar. Try it out!

More and more people are checking out the new TypePad, but we still want to test some new things just for you here in the beta. Next week, we've got one of my very favorite features coming up - I actually did a little dance when I saw the team demo it for us. Stay tuned next week for more...

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.

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.

Update for Beta: Off to A Great Start!

A huge thanks to everyone on our Beta team! You have been giving us some great feedback, and it’s great to see the TypePad community so invigorated. With your help, we’re building something great.

During this Beta, we're also fixing some of your long-standing requests for TypePad. One huge request is improving the overall compose experience.

Starting with today's update, we're giving you some of your most-requested fixes for compose in a series of several updates. Today's improvements include:

• Real blockquote for everyone. Hooray! We know you've missed this feature, so we've been working hard at this one.
• The “return” key in any browser should move you a full paragraph break down, just as you would expect a web editor to work. No more mixing of single/double spacing (<p> and <br> tags, for those of you who had been fixing this in the HTML tab.) Some of you who've gotten used to the workarounds for this in Safari (like I have) may want a quick refresher: a carriage return is a double space, and a shift-return is a single space.
• Viewing a post in the HTML window? Now it’s got cleaner code: the way you’ve lined up your entry should be broken into paragraphs, matching the paragraph breaks you see in Rich Text mode.

We’re listening to your feedback and we're working on making the dashboard more useful, accessible, and interesting. Stay tuned for more updates about the dashboard – how we’re evolving individual elements, like suggestions for people you should follow, stats, and more.

Here's some other requests we're hearing from you that we're working on for upcoming releases to Beta for those of you previewing the new TypePad:

• Stats - how you interact with your stats, and how you can use them to better engage with your readers. There's still some bugs we’re ironing out, but I think we can all say that we’re excited about cool new stats!
• Following – if you’re not previewing the new design, you might not even know what we’re talking about, but we're still in the first iteration of how following will work with your blogs.
• If you haven’t updated your profile and started following people, update your profile now. It is a great way to get to know your readers, follow conversations…and drive traffic to your blog.
• Pages: we’re still tinkering with how pages fit into the workflow.
• You can read Everything TypePad tomorrow for more on the updates and improvements we’ve made for everyone.

Thanks again to everyone who is giving us feedback- if you haven’t tried it yet, we’d love to know what you think, preview the new TypePad today!

Get ready for the summer’s biggest blockbuster: the All New TypePad.

Coming soon to a blog near you!

In the summer blockbuster spirit, we’re inviting you, our Beta team, to a pre-screening of the new TypePad. Starting today, we’re giving you access to the All New TypePad. We've been testing the new version for weeks, and we think it’s an absolute joy to use.  We’re excited that we can share it with you.

Professor Wibbels has put together a quick video to tell you about some the benefits of the new TypePad: ease of use, new ways to find readers and great blogs, better tools to build a vibrant community, and more.

Ready to get started? Click on “Preview the New TypePad” and start blogging. You’ll be able to seamlessly switch back and forth between the old and new with just a couple of clicks. (But we know you’ll love the new one!)

Your feedback will help make the new TypePad better.

This is just the beginning. We have tons of improvements and new features you’ve requested coming your way.

From everyone on the TypePad team, we’re happy you’re blogging with us, and we’re ecstatic you’re going to be among the first to see the new TypePad and to help us create the future of blogging.

PS: Read more about the mission of the new TypePad on Everything TypePad.