Weblogs

Configure

Changing Your Weblog Name or Catchphrase

Your weblog name is the title that displays in the text banner for the weblog pages. It also shows as the title for your weblog in recently updated directories, if you choose to make your weblog public.

Your weblog description or catchphrase is a short description about the weblog and displays under the weblog name in the page banner.

The weblog name and description can be changed at any time. On your Weblogs tab, click the Edit Configuration link for the weblog you want to edit. This opens the Weblog Basics page where the weblog name and description are entered.

Type the new weblog name and/or description and click Save Changes. After saving, publish your pages to see the update on your site. A Publish button appears at the top of the page after clicking the Save button. Publish all files and click View Weblog to view your weblog in a new browser window.

If you are using a banner image by Setting Your Theme, the image will display on the weblog instead of the weblog name and description.

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Changing Your Weblog Folder Name

Your weblog folder name is the name of the folder in which your weblog files are kept on the server. This folder name is appended to your TypePad web address and is used when you or your readers would like to visit this weblog.

On your Weblogs tab, click the Edit Configuration link for the weblog you want to edit. This opens the Weblog Basics page where the weblog folder name is set.

Edit the folder name and click Save Changes. After saving, publish your pages to see the update on your site. A Publish button appears at the top of the page after clicking the button to save. Publish all files and click View Weblog to view your weblog in a new browser window.

Also see: Setting Your Home Weblog

IMPORTANT: Once you create your weblog, we recommend that you do not change the folder name. If you do so after your weblog is created, links to your weblog will be broken. Additionally, if you have uploaded any images, the paths will be broken and the images will not display. We provide this option for users who feel that it is crucial that they are able to change the path but also understand the consequences.

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Configuring Your Weblog Archives

Archives are the pages where your posts are stored. A post is archived immediately as it is created, and then you select how many archives to display on the main index page for the weblog with the “Number of posts” (or days) setting when Setting Your Weblog Post Options.

Archives can be displayed and organized by date (Daily, Weekly, Monthly) or by content (Individual, Category):

Daily: Works best with shorter posts or with many posts during the course of a day.
Individual: Works best with longer, essay-style posts. This archive type is required if you have comments enabled.
Weekly: Works best if you vary between long and short posts and have a relatively steady amount of posts. This is optimal for 15 to 30 posts during the course of a week.
Category: Ideal for categorized posts or weblogs that are organized into topics.
Monthly: Works best with shorter posts and can accommodate 30-50 posts during the course of a month.

On your Weblogs tab, click the Edit Configuration link for the weblog you want to configure archives for, then click the Archiving link. This opens the Archiving setup page where the archive types are chosen. You can select no archiving, a single type of archive or multiple types.

Select the type(s) you would like to use by checking or unchecking the boxes and click Save Changes. Publish the weblog to see the update on your site.

Note: If you want to have comments enabled on your weblog (meaning that your readers will be able to post comments in response to your weblog posts), be sure to select “Individual” as one of your archiving options.

Display links to your archives in your sidebar by selecting the Archive Links check box when Setting Your Content Selections.

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Using Categories With Your Weblog

Categories can be used to organize your weblog posts for easier reference, archiving and display. Using categories is optional.

In order to display categories on your weblog, you must enable category archiving. Enable category archiving by Configuring Your Weblog Archives.

To assign a post to a category, see Basic Post Fields.

On your Weblogs tab, click the Edit Configuration link for the weblog you want to edit categories on, then click the Categories link to open the setup page for Categories.

Default Categories

When you create a new weblog, a default set of categories is provided to get you started:

Books
Current Affairs
Film
Food and Drink
Games
Music
Religion
Science
Sports
Television
Travel
Web/Tech
Weblogs

To enable a default category, click the checkbox next to the category name and click Save Changes.

To disable a default category, uncheck the box next to the category name and click Save Changes. Disabled categories do not appear in the Category drop-down menu on the Compose a New Post/Edit Post page.

Whenever you write a weblog entry that uses one of these default categories, TypePad will list your weblog post under the appropriate category on blogs.com. This is a great way to bring readers to your site who are looking for specific content as well as an unique opportunity to discover new weblogs based on interest. You can select whether to update the directory or not when you post to one of the default categories. Note: this feature is coming soon.

Custom Categories

To add a new category to your weblog, simply type in the new category name in one of the blank fields for Custom Categories and click Save Changes.

If you want to change the name of a custom category, type the new name in the field of the category name you want to replace, and click Save Changes.

To remove a custom category, click Delete next to the category name.

The custom categories you have set will appear in the Category menu on the Edit Post page.

You can also add a custom category from the Category menu on the Edit Post page. From the menu, select Add a new Category. A popup will appear where you can type the name of the new category and click Add. The category will be saved, and your post will be assigned to the category.

Displaying Categories on Your Weblog

Basic Templates

Categories are displayed on a weblog as a list in the sidebar or in the post footer by setting it for display in the weblog content.

On your Weblogs tab, click the Edit Design shortcut for the weblog where you would like to add the list of categories, then click the Content link to enter the content setup area for the currently selected template set.

Display a list of the categories in your weblog sidebar:

Show a listing of your category names (the ones that have posts assigned to them) by displaying the Categories option in your template set. If category archiving is enabled for the weblog, the category names will also link to the archive page for that category.

Check the Categories box in the Your Sidebar Content section and click Save Changes. A list of your categories will now be displayed in your weblog sidebar.

Display the category name in the footer after each post:

Show the category or categories that a post is assigned to by selecting a post footer that displays the category name.

Check the box for the Weblog Post Footer option and use the drop-down menu to select a footer that has Category in it. Click Save Changes and each of your posts will now have the category or categories displayed after it (in the post footer) on your weblog.

Advanced Templates

Categories are displayed on a weblog using advanced templates with the Category Tags (advanced templates do not have a Content link on the Design tab).

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Setting Your Weblog Publicity

In the Publicity setup for your weblog, you answer a couple of questions about what you would like to do when you update the weblog.

On your Weblogs tab, click the Edit Configuration link for the weblog you want to edit, then click the Publicity & Feeds link to open the Publicity setup page.

Would you like your weblog to be public?

Public means that your weblog will appear on TypePad’s Recently Updated List and can be indexed by search engines. Your weblog will also be eligible to be selected as a TypePad Featured Site. Note that there are tens of thousands of TypePad weblogs being updated at every time of the day and night. The Recently Updated List only displays the ten most recently-updated weblogs, and it is likely that soon after you have updated your weblog, ten other people will have updated theirs. This means that the other weblogs will displace yours on the list, and that is the most likely reason why you are unable to catch your weblog appearing on the list.

Setting a weblog as “No” for publicity means that code will be added to prevent Google and other search engines from indexing the pages. To update the archive pages with this code, publish all files for the weblog with the Publish button on the Design tab for the weblog. Note: Setting a weblog as “No” for publicity does not password protect the site. Password protection is configured by Setting Up Password Protection.

Would you like to notify third-party services when you update your weblog?

This means that whenever you save a new post, another website will automatically be contacted and told that you have updated your site. Then, you’ll appear in the site listing, driving more traffic to your weblog. While this is great for publicity, this process sometimes slows down the speed in which your post is saved. If you notice saving taking a long time, you may want to turn off this notification.

You can choose to update blo.gs and weblogs.com. The next time you post to your weblog, pings will be sent to the services you have selected. At the current time, it is not possible to add any other sites that you want to ping.

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Syndicating Your Weblog

What is a feed?

The term "feed" is used to describe an XML document published by many weblogs that contains a list of recent posts and entries made to the weblog that publishes it. This document can be read by other weblogs as well as applications called "feed readers" or "feed aggregators" in order to automate the process of syndicating your weblog's content or for generating links to your weblog.

Visitors to your site can subscribe to your syndicated site feed (your RSS feed) in a desktop or web-based news aggregator. This allows your visitors to automatically know when you’ve updated your site and to read your content in a variety of different applications.

On your Weblogs tab, click the Edit Configuration link for the weblog you want to edit, then click the Publicity & Feeds link to open the Syndication setup page.

Select whether you want to provide excerpts or a full post. Most weblog readers who use aggregators or news readers appreciate the option of being able to read an entire post in the tool itself. If you select excerpts only, the reader will have to view the rest of your post in the standard web browser.

Atom

See AtomEnabled for information on Atom.

The Atom feed for the weblog is located:

http://<your TypePad domain>.typepad.com/<weblog folder name>/atom.xml

RSS

The RSS feed for the weblog is located:

http://<your TypePad domain>.typepad.com/<weblog folder name>/index.rdf

Here are some (non-functional) examples:

http://example.typepad.com/my_weblog/index.rdf
http://example.typepad.com/my_weblog/atom.xml

You can display a link for your RSS feed on your site by Setting Your Content Selections and selecting the Syndicate Link for display. This link can then be dragged and dropped into a news reader to subscribe to the feed.

The templates for your weblog also have the auto-discovery code included, so if the news reader supports auto-discovery, the link to the feed will be picked up automatically.

TypePad and Aggregators

An aggregator or news reader is an application (desktop, web-based, plugin) that allows you to subscribe to “feeds” of weblogs and news sites. Usually, these applications are scheduled to check and see if any of the sites you have subscribed to have been updated and if they have, the new version of the site (usually a post) will appear for you to read. Aggregators are great because they bring weblog updates to you, instead of you having to actively look to see if your favorite reads have been updated.

One popular news aggregator and reader is Bloglines. Bloglines is a popular, free and web based, allowing you to access it from any browser, on any system.

There are a number of popular aggregator clients that run as desktop applications. On Windows, one of the more popular desktop clients is FeedDemon (feeddemon.com), which makes it easy to add feeds and view them in a newspaper-style view or as individual entries. A similar view that can be integrated directly into Microsoft Outlook (not Outlook Express) is available with the NewsGator (newsgator.com) plug-in. NewsGator can also be configured to allow posting directly to TypePad from within Outlook.

On the Macintosh, most users prefer NetNewsWire (ranchero.com) as their desktop aggregator, and NetNewsWire Pro adds the ability to post to TypePad directly from within the application.

In general, any desktop or web-based aggregator which reads RSS feeds is appropriate for use with TypePad, and we recommend trying a few to find out which aggregator client best complements the way you work with TypePad.

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Podcasting

What is "Podcasting?"

Podcasting is a method of publishing media via the Internet, and allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files. Podcasts are most often audio files (in an MP3 format), but can technically be any multimedia file format like Quicktime, MP3, AVI, Ogg, etc.

When a user creates a post on TypePad that references a multimedia file on the Internet, that file immediately becomes discoverable as a podcast via their weblog's feeds (what is a feed?). This allows others to subscribe to your podcasts and be notified when new ones become available.

Add Your Podcast to Your Sidebar

To make it easier for others to subscribe to your podcast, select the "Podcast Link" option in your weblog's content selections.

Add a link to your podcast

Inviting Additional Authors

(Inviting authors is available with Pro membership.)

You can invite friends and family to post as authors on your weblog. If they are not already a member of TypePad, they’ll have the opportunity to sign up for a free guest account.

Guest authors have weblog posting rights and can be either a Junior Author or an Author:

Junior Author: Junior Authors can post drafts that the site owner needs to review and publish. Junior authors can edit their own posts. Junior authors are not allowed to upload images and files.
Author: Authors can post drafts for review and posts that will be published to the weblog without the site owner’s review. Authors can only edit their own posts. Authors have permission to upload photos and files to the weblog.
Administrator (Business Class Accounts only): Administrator can share in the administrative functions of weblogs. They cannot share in the administration of Photo Albums and TypeLists). For more information, contact Six Apart Sales.

To invite authors to post on your weblog, click the Edit Configuration link on your Weblogs tab for the weblog you want to add the author(s) to, then click the Authors link to open the Weblog Authors setup page.

In the Invite Additional Authors to your Weblog area, enter the name and email address for the author(s) you would like to invite. Click Send Invitation(s) at the bottom of the page when you are finished.

Invitation Message

You can enter a message to send along with the invitation, or use the default:

I’d like to invite you to be a guest author on my TypePad weblog. Just follow the instructions in this email message, and you’ll be able to quickly sign up for the service and post within minutes.

Your guest(s) will receive an email invitation to join your weblog. The status of their invitation is shown under Open Invitations. You can also cancel the invite from here.

Managing Authors

Under the Current Authors heading on the Weblog Authors page, the authors for the weblog are listed along with their access level. Here, you can change the access level for the author, or remove an author from the weblog by clicking the icon next to the author name.

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Accepting an Author Invitation

If you are invited to post as an author on a weblog, an email invitation is sent to you by the weblog owner. This email contains the special link for you to follow that leads to the You’ve been invited to join a TypePad weblog! page at the TypePad site where you view your invitation.

Here, you can accept or decline the invitation. If you’re already a TypePad member and want to accept the invitation, enter your login information and click Accept Invitation . If you do not want to accept the invitation, you can send an optional message to the weblog’s owner and click Decline Invitation.

If you are not an existing TypePad member and would like to accept the invitation, you can register for free guest access by clicking Register for Free. Here you will sign up for your user name and password to log in to TypePad. Enter your information and complete the registration by following through the steps.

After registering, you will then see the Accept Invitation button to accept the invite. After accepting, you will be forwarded automatically to your Weblogs tab. The weblog that you were invited into, and are now a member of, will be listed. You will also receive a registration confirmation email message after signing up for TypePad.

To access the system from now on, log in with your TypePad user name and password at the TypePad homepage:

http://www.typepad.com

Also see: Posting to Your Weblog, Editing Your Author Profile, Changing Your TypePad Password, Recovering your TypePad Password

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Setting Your Weblog Post Preferences

The post preferences set the configuration for the display of your weblog posts.

On your Weblogs tab, click the Edit Configuration link for the weblog you want to edit, then click the Preferences link to open the Preferences page.

After making changes to the display options, click Save Changes. To see these changes reflected on your public site, use the publish button that appears after saving.

Number of posts to display on front page of your weblog: Select the number of posts to display on the front page of your weblog.; You can select to display by number of days, or number of posts. If you select days, then only posts that are dated within that number of days will display on your weblog main index. Selecting the number of posts will always display that number of posts.
Order of posts displayed: Select whether you want your posts displayed with the oldest posts first (ascending order) the newest posts first (descending order).
Format for date display: Select the format in which you would like dates on your weblog displayed.
Format for time display: Select the format in which you would like times on your weblog displayed.
Language for display: Select the language in which you would like dates and headers on your weblog displayed.
Default Text Formatting for new posts: Specifies the default Text Formatting option when creating a new post. This will affect all future posts and has no effect on existing posts.
Number of words in excerpt: If you choose to syndicate your site and use excerpts only, this setting controls the number of words provided in excerpts.
Default Posting Status: Specifies the default Posting Status when creating a new post. This will affect all future posts and has no effect on existing posts.

The options displayed are already set to the default values that usually work best for most weblogs. Unless you specifically want to edit an option, you are not required to change any of the values.

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Setting Your Weblog Comment and TrackBack Preferences

Comment and TrackBack preferences set the default behavior for comments and TrackBacks.

Also see Managing Comments, Enabling Comments on Your Posts, What is TrackBack?, and Managing TrackBacks.

On your Weblogs tab, click the Edit Configuration link for the weblog you want to edit, then click the Preferences link to open the Preferences page.

In the Comment and TrackBack Preferences section, you can set the following preferences:

Hold comments and TrackBacks for approval: Select whether you want to hold all comments and TrackBacks. This allows you to moderate and approve all comments and TrackBacks posted to your weblog. They will not be published until they have been approved.
Default Comment Status: Specifies the default Comments Status when creating a new post. This will affect all future posts and has no effect on existing posts.
Order of display for comments: Select whether you want reader’s comments displayed with oldest comments first (ascending order) or newest comments first (descending order).
Comment Authentication: Select an option for comment authentication:

Required - users must first create or log in to an existing TypeKey account before submitting a comment
Optional - users can submit comments without first logging into TypeKey
Off - comment authentication is disabled

Require email address from unauthenticated commenters?: Select whether you want unauthenticated commenters to be be required to submit an email address along with their comment.
Allow HTML in comments?: Select whether users will be permitted to use HTML in submitted comments; otherwise, HTML will be stripped out.
Auto-link URLs?: Select whether all web URLs submitted in a comment will be transformed into links. NOTE: if you have enabled Allow HTML in comments, this option is ignored.
Notify the author of the post via email when new comments are submitted?: Select if you would like to be notified via email when someone posts comments to your site.

Default TrackBack Status: Select if you want new posts to have the Accept TrackBacks check box selected by default. This will affect all future posts and has no effect on existing posts.
Notify me via email when new TrackBacks are submitted?: Select if you would like to be notified via email when someone sends a TrackBack ping to your site.

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