Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

TypePad Account FINALLY Upgraded

My TypePad account has finally been upgraded to the new platform and I'm excited. I think I'm among the last of the millions who use TypePad.  I was told it's because I have multiple blogs on my account (10) and multiple authors on several of the blogs. The migration is tricky and they didn't want to screw up my blog.

The system gets better and better. But, there's a downside...I realized I have to update the tutorials in the Build a Better Blog System AGAIN. The entire design module has been redesigned for the better. It's so much easier now to customize your TypePad blog.

If you own a copy of Build a Better Blog ebook, stay tuned for new tutorials coming soon...

Thank you TypePad. You're doing an awesome job on creating a powerful blog platform for professionals.

Attention TypePad Bloggers: Many new upgrades...

TypePad has been upgrading their platform for nearly a year now. Most accounts are on the new platform (except mine) so you may be noticing some changes to your dashboard.  If you're not reading the Everything TypePad blog, I suggest you review some of the recent posts detailing the changes.

The one you want to study first is the post on comments and profiles. TypePad has developed TypePad Connect as a new way to manage comments and create a profile. You can see my TypePad profile here. It integrates your Twitter status updates and comments you've made on connected blogs.

Next Generation Comments and Profiles on TypePad
Changing the URL (Filename) of Your Post
AutoSave to the rescue
Q. How will I know when I'm on the new TypePad?
Updating your blog's design is now faster & easier
New! Add a horizontal navigation bar to your blog

Tutorial Update: Mapping Your Blog Domain

A quick note to let you know we have recently updated the tutorial for mapping a domain to your TypePad blog.  You can get the new tutorial here.

Not sure why you should map your domain?

When you set up your blog on TypePad, the URL for your blog includes TypePad's domain:  www.yourblog.typepad.com

For example, the underlying domain for this blog is nextlevelpartner.typepad.com/babb but the domain you see, that's mapped over the TypePad domain is www.buildabetterblog.com. Which is better? :-)

Rather than promote TypePad, you really need to brand you, your company, your book...whatever your blog is about.  You need to register a domain and then map it OVER the TypePad domain so you are promoting YOUR business and establishing your online brand.

TypePad creates Known Issues Blog

Last month TypePad released an update to their Compose function. Since then there has been a flurry of posting from happy and very unhappy users. Because I've been a customer about 4 years, my account has not been upgraded so I cannot speak from experience about the upgrade.

However, I did see today that TypePad has created a blog to address the known issues in order to keep their customers apprised of bugs and fixes. 

If you're having problems with the new Compose function, be sure to check out the new blog to track the developments.

I appreciate that TypePad is doing its best to fix bugs as fast as they can and keep us all informed. Maybe by the time my account is upgraded all the bugs will be fixed! :-)

TypePad Upgrades Compose page

Just saw a new post on Everything TypePad that the compose screen is being upgraded on all TypePad blogs. But don't expect it to be live yet.  They are rolling the upgrade out over the next few weeks. For example, this blog does not have the upgrade yet.

From all accounts, you will have more control over how you compose your posts.  There will be more options for formating your text and photo alignment as well as the font.  One of the best new features will be the ability to set you links to open in a new window rather than driving your readers away from your blog. If you've been coding links manually, that's all over now. Thank goodness.

The list of new compose features is quite extensive so rather than repeating them here, check out the FAQ for the new editor. I will be quite pleased when this upgrade is activated on my account!

TypePad vs Wordpress vs Blogger

Nearly every week someone asks us which blogging platform they should use. As most readers of this blog know, we prefer TypePad. OK, we're biased because all our blogs are on TypePad. Well, not all. We also have our main hub site on SquareSpace and we're having a website built on the Wordpress platform so we can get more familiar with it.

As a guest blogger, I've also used Movable Type, Blogger and Wordpress.  This week we were copied on an email to Tom Antion by one of his clients who we met at Tom's recent ButtCamp in Los Angeles:

Hi Tom, I’m near the end of my trial run on TypePad.com and so far I’m more impressed with Blogger and WordPress as blog sites.

Patsi and Denise offered a lot of value on Blogs at your event in LA and I know The Blog Squad likes TypePad best, but I don’t...yet.

Can you see any reason for me to extend my subscription with TypePad? If not, I’ll let it lapse and build on my other two blogs.

Since we were cc'd, I responded:

Blog Designers: TypePad is Looking for You

Are you a blog designer? Or a graphic designer who designs blog themes? If so, Six Apart ( parent company of TypePad, Movable Type, Vox and LiveJournal) is looking for you.

A contest is currently underway for blog design themes. You may enter your design through April 4. Contest details here.

Design It with Style

Inspire bloggers around the world to bring their ideas to life by entering the HP"What do you have to say?" theme design contest. All you have to do is design a theme that showcases your personal style and creativity. The winning themes will be made available to millions of bloggers on TypePad, Vox and LiveJournal. If your theme is chosen as the winner, you will get some cool prizes from HP.

When I saw the announcement last night, there was one entry. Today there are now 24! If you're a designer you can get a lot of exposure so go to it!

TypePad Adds New Feature to Link ALL Your Accounts

Thanks to client Stephanie Calahan of Productive and Organized, I found and implemented yet another new feature on TypePad.

You can now set up links to ALL your social networking sites/profiles. Once you set it up, you have a TypeList that has links to your accounts on Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc., etc. I've set it up on my About page which you can see on the left sidebar.

It's really, really simple to do:

TypePad adds more new comment features

According to the Everything TypePad blog, more new features are being added to the Comments function.  But nearly a month later, I still haven't seen the last set up upgrades rolled out to my account. And I've been a customer for over 3 years.

When am I going to get to automatically close comments on older posts? And when can I set up comment pagination? When am I going to be able to set up comment feeds for posts and pages? Seems like it's taking an awfully long time to roll out these upgrades.

I'm not complaining too much. I love TypePad and being a long time customer and evangelist for the platform, I really want add these functions now.  Getting comment feeds is something I have wanted a long, long time.

If you have these featured enabled on your TypePad blog, how are they working for you? Do tell.

Track Comments on Your TypePad Blog

In our Better Business Blogging class yesterday, we were talking about outreach: how to connect with other bloggers to drive more traffic.  This includes commenting on blogs and how you respond on your own blog to comments.

One of the features NOT on TypePad blogs is the ability to subscribe to comments so you can follow a particular conversation and get notified when someone leaves a comment to something you commented on.  Patsi found several sites that allow you to add some code or plug-in so your readers can track comments: