Craig McGinty

Image slideshow on TypePad blogs

I HAVE not seen an English-language mention of how to place a rotating image slideshow on TypePad blogs, but the Paris office recently updated its blog on how to do it.

The steps involved in placing an image slideshow in the main column of the front page of your website are pretty easy.

This widget will work on standard blogs, there is no messing around with Advanced Templates, so first off you need your TypePad blog ID number, this is available by logging in and then going to your blog's overview page and taking a look at the address bar of your browser.

Between the text /blogs/ and /dashboard you will see a long number, often featuring a few letters, this is the ID number for your blog.

Copy and paste this into the first empty form field of Etape 1, the next two fields allow you to personalise the widget to display images from a certain category of your blog, as well as provide a short title to the image carousel.

The category choice is used so you are able to pick and choose the stories and images that feature in the carousel.

To control the placement of stories in the carousel you could pick an existing category and only show these, or set up a new category and from now on when you want a story to be displayed add it to this category and any others you wish.

For example, you might want to add a new category called Featured, within the form field with the text that says 'Souhaitez-vous limiter l'affichage des images à une catégorie de votre blogs ?' type in Featured.

You then have to click one of the two buttons that describe the layout of your blog, this ensures the widget displays the images in the correct column on your site.

At this point you can now choose where to display the carousel, personally I'd keep it to the front page and the category archives, the first option, because it might be a little too much for it to be displayed on other pages.

Moving on to Etape 2 and you are now able to visualise what the image carousel looks like, and if your images are suitable for display.

Smaller images such as thumbnails will have been increased in size so that they look pixelated, so that's why creating a new category comes in handy as you can ensure these stories have full size images that the widget can draw upon.

Then click the install button at the bottom of the page, add it to your blog and then refresh your website home page to see the image carousel in all its glory.

Related:
Widget : Slideshow TypePad
Nouveau widget : carrousel en colonne de contenu

Changes to the editor in TypePad

SLOWLY TypePad are rolling out a new look editor within the service, and today it was the turn of many of the accounts I help people with.

And so I've had a few distressed calls as suddenly the old way of doing things has been wiped out by what looks like a new, snappy option, but which caused a bit of worry amongst my friends.

When I help people start a TypePad site I set it up so that the editor is in a Plain Text format, this means people can easily write articles elsewhere and copy and paste them across.

And most of the people I work with don't need to change font types, size or colour, they just want a simple text editing tool so they can spend time writing and not fiddling around with HTML and layouts.

Congrats to Phil and Landscape Juice

JUST a quick message of congratulations to my pal Phil Voice as his gardening and landscaping blog, Landscape Juice, has been recognised by TypePad as one of its featured sites.

I have helped him with the back office side of things but as I said in a comment the key thing is that Phil has turned up every day with something interesting to say and to link to within his field - readers put a great deal of value in that.

Update: Such green fingered news clearly travels fast as Phil's spin-off site for readers, the Landscape Juice Network, has been featured by Ning, see 100% Landscape Juice.

TypePad and Apple iPhone get cosy

COMING very soon down the pipe will be a way for Apple iPhone owners to update their TypePad sites quickly and easily.

Here TypePad's Michael Sippey provides a quick introduction into how the service will work.

You will be able to write posts, as well as save them for later, but also publish photos directly from the iPhone or add pics from your own image gallery, read more on blogging from your iPhone.

TypePad AntiSpam available for other blogs

ONE of the key elements I like about TypePad is its resilience against spam and bogus messages appearing on my sites.

I very rarely have any spam appearing and even if one or two sneak through because I and others are able to flag it up then the TypePad service is able to nip things in the bud really quickly.

Well now other blogs built on WordPress or Movable Type can take advantage of the service as a plugin has been built for people to freely use.

The TypePad AntiSpam service is now available to many more bloggers and although I am a bit of a fanboy when it comes to TypePad you might want to try it out.

Build a "normal" website with TypePad

ALL the blogs I run, and those I've helped others with, use the blogging service of TypePad as I've found it simple to set up, reliable and pretty flexible.

One of the features I really like is the Pages option, which lets you create standalone web pages free of elements such as comment forms, dates and permalinks.

Themes for you TypePad site

I HAVE just spent far too long looking through a load of TypePad themes you can plug into your site if you are using the Pro account - take a look at The Style Archive.

If you have experience of using Advanced Templates then it shouldn't take too long to give your site a different look, and if you want the full step-by-step instructions check out this TypePad Support page.

Adding Digg and del.icio.us links to your footer

I RECEIVED a question today about adding the Digg and del.icio.us links to the footer of stories and thought I'd explain it here as there is a block of code involved.

The following is for advanced templates in TypePad and is placed in the entry-footer section of the entry-individual template in your chosen position, you'll see how it looks on a This French Life article.

<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&title=<$MTEntryTitle encode_url="1"$>">Add to del.icio.us</a> | <a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<$MTEntry Permalink$>&title=<$MTEntryTitle$>">Digg this</a>

Hope this helps but if you have any questions just post a comment.

Related:
Comment on A few new additions from TypePad

A few new additions from TypePad

A NUMBER of new additions have been served up by TypePad that will help you get your writing in front of people.

The TypePad updates include a range of features including search engine friendly URLs, although they are still truncated, the option to enable comments on Pages you create and improvements to the stats package.

One of the most interesting features is the option to allow readers to bookmark your article to del.icio.us or to offer it up to readers of Digg, two services with a massive following.

Build a website with TypePad Pages

A COUPLE of weeks ago I wrote about the new Pages option in TypePad that lets users create stand alone pages that looked less like a blog and more like a normal website, see Stand alone pages in TypePad.

In that piece I wrote that it wouldn't take much to create a "normal" site that didn't have a blog's characteristics but still offered useful information, say for a start-up business.