Craig McGinty

Spam comments on TypePad blogs

JUST a word of warning to those using TypePad to run their blogs, it would appear sites are being targeted by spam - I've received two or three on most of my blogs over the past couple of days.

I must say that this is the first time I've had problems with automated spam for a long while, just make sure you delete them as spam from within your admin page.

I have looked around the web to see if there is anything official but only found other sites saying they have received spam, hopefully TypePad will update the Six Apart Status page soon with details.

Stand alone pages in TypePad

AN important new addition to the TypePad service has been announced that allows you to create stand alone pages, for example offering contact details.

In the past the only way to do this without using Advanced Templates was to create a page and back date it so it didn't appear on the front page and make any updates when required.

But as TypePad explains it is now a simple option of writing a "New Page" instead of post, giving it a file name and then linking to it from a sidebar.

Email address changes on comments

FOR those people who are using TypePad there has been some updates in the admin section of the service (see TypePad Hacks), but also by default email addresses won't be displayed on comments.

I sent a message to TypePad this morning and they got back to me to explain that they had decided to turn off the automatic display of an email address, after feedback from users.

The main reason is of course to stop spammers harvesting addresses off sites and may prompt people to leave more comments if they feel safe from such online practices.

If people leave a website address when posting a comment that will be displayed as a live link and any existing comments with email addresses will also remain live.

To turn these off you would have to edit the comment-list template within TypePad, but it would be useful if you could do this with just a simple check box option with the admin section.

A workaround for hand coded links in TypePad

YOU can use this tip to place unique links in the side columns of your TypePad blog, for example, when you want to link to your own review of a book from a list of titles.

So if you are not completely clear on how you would write out a link so that it displays properly on your site, try this method instead.

I will use a link to a book review as an example, so first off log in to TypePad and start a new post.

A tag cloud for TypePad

ONE of the difficulties of managing a big website with many articles on it is making sure your readers can find what they need easily.

Although search engines can help with this, some way of ordering or 'tagging' individual articles is a great way of pointing people to items that may interest them.

Drop in on TypePad Hacks

ALL of my sites are run using the services of TypePad, which I have found to be very simple to use and allows me to spend more time writing and less time changing the site's code.

But like anything the more you use something the more you notice little things that you want to change, however you might not have the experience to do what you want.

That's where John T Unger's TypePad Hacks site comes in, it offers a host of hints and tips on making your site work more effectively and so ensuring your visitors gain more from it.

Although many of the articles are written by John himself, the beauty of a blog is that you can draw comments in from others and ultimately produce a killer hack that is easy to do, and often only takes a few minutes to implement.

Already Sixapart, the company behind TypePad, has seen the site and are following the changes and ideas that it generates.

 

Now think about that, the customers get to offer their thoughts, whilst the business learns how to make their product better.

Technorati Tags: typepad, hacks, great site

Displaying ads at the foot of articles

IF you are looking to earn some money from running advertising on your website then you need to get your adverts in front of people.

One of the best ways is to place the adverts close to the footer of your articles as it then gives people something to click on, and so earn you some pennies.

I use this feature on my French site, for example, on this article about preparing your house for winter if you go past the list you will see the ads.

Displaying categories differently in Typepad

ONE of the things I get asked quite often about Typepad is how to change the display of categories from the default alphabetic way.

You can order them by the time they were created, through the configuration tab, but it's a bit long winded.

Another way is to create a Typelist which allows you to feature your own text, HTML and links etc.

To do this click on Typelist and create a list, on the type option pick 'Notes' then give it a name. Maybe Sections?

Then in the window you can enter regular HTML so it could be something like this:

<a href="http://websitename.typepad.com/foldername/
cottages/index.html">Cottages</a>
<a href="http://websitename.typepad.com/foldername/
pool/index.html">Pool</a>
<a href="http://websitename.typepad.com/foldername/
guestbook/index.html">Gardens</a>

Each category is just an index page for the articles you place in it so you can create as many as you want - but I'd try to stay to less than ten for ease of use.

Then make sure that 'Sections' is featured when you go into design and drop the Categories from the column.

Make sure you keep the option to organise articles in Categories, you are using the feature but just setting them out differently.

Promise it isn't as difficult to do as it sounds!

New features from TypePad

AS competition amongst blog services heats up TypePad has announced a number of new features to their package.

The most important addition is the support of podcasts as they now provide an RSS2 feed that reads attachments within your posts.

Using extended posts in Typepad

ONE of the things I am asked quite often is how I set up Typepad to display an opening paragraph and then a link to the rest of the article, just like this.