People who want to start blogging often ask me which tool they should use, Typepad or Movable Type? 9 times out of 10 my answer is Typepad. That's odd, you might think coming from someone who runs a blog all about Movable Type. The answer has more to do with who is asking the question than the relative merits of either program. Both products are created by the team at Six Apart and both are based on the same technology. The main difference between the two is that Typepad is a fee-based hosted service and Movable Type is software that you license to run on your own server or web host. The reason that I more often recommend Typepad is that, unlike Movable Type, you don't have to...

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Movable Type offers five default stylesheet templates to use with your MT website. If you are like me, not a web designer and only possessing a cursory knowledge of CSS, you may not want to stray too far from the defaults. But then that doesn't leave us with a lot of choice in the number of default styles from which to choose. Fortunately, Typepad (Six Apart's hosted service based on Movable Type) has several default styles that will work with the new Movable Type templates.

I've tested the following Typepad styles on the new default MT3 templates, with the sidebar on the right hand side, and they appear to work fine. If you have changed your MT3 templates layout at all, for...

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Just to clarify the China/TypePad situation that was covered in the Guardian Unlimited Weblog today.

We have heard reports from some Chinese TypePad users that they can not access their public weblogs but can access the TypePad application. We've heard from some weblog readers in China that they are able to access TypePad weblogs.

We are pretty confident that there is not a technical reason on our end for the problems some Chinese users are having accessing their sites.

Frankly, because we are not in China, we can't be 100% sure of the exact cause and effects of the situation and to what degree our customers are being affected. For the record, I did not state that the Chinese...

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Though we don't link to every review of our products, sometimes we like to pass along ones that are especially in-depth or insightful. The latest is EContent magazine's review of TypePad. The reviewer's summary:

TypePad is a terrific tool to set up a professional-quality blog in just an hour or so. Perfect for individuals or businesses, TypePad requires no Web design or HTML skills. With the WYSIWYG editor, creating a post is as easy as using Microsoft Word. TypePad is what Web-based services are supposed to be: easy-to-use, powerful, professional, cost-effective, and fun. Many services make the claims, TypePad actually delivers.

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The folks at Vpop have made a special version of their UltraBar toolbar for TypePad users, the TypePad UltraBar for Firefox users. It adds some quick links to key TypePad features to your browser if you're using the (excellent) Firefox browser from Mozilla.

This TypePad toolbar runs on any platform that Firefox supports.

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Over at Six Apart News, Ben writes about the motivation behind us holding a one-day internal hackathon at the company. Besides being a nice break from the usual work our engineers do, this hacking session led to the feature set of our latest TypePad release -- which we have been internally calling our "Scratchathon Release."

Ben writes -- in his post -- about the goal of the "Scratchathon":

So we decided to have a one-day hacking session that we called a Scratchathon--as in, scratching an itch. We stopped the usual project work for a day, and engineers on all of our products spent the day working on features like those described above. The focus for this session was on implementing...

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We had some issues with the TypePad XML-RPC API last night, but they're all resolved now. If you want to keep track of these types of updates for TypePad and TypeKey, you can follow the Six Apart Status Weblog, which also has an XML feed.

If you want to get started with creating an application or service that posts to TypePad, you should check out the ProNet Resources page, which includes documentation of the TypePad Atom API, including support for posting to Photo Albums and TypeLists.

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David Ely has a clever writeup about Setting up a Sideblog in TypePad shows you how to use advanced templates to include more than one of your TypePad blogs on a single page.

It's not for beginners, but if you're experienced with template tags and want to do something more complex with your TypePad site, it's a very clever solution.

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une very stylish fille - sideblogs in TypePad - September 11, 2004 01:44 AMDoc wrote a great post about how to recreate his Quotation of the Day feature in TypePad, which inspired me to create a sideblog (and ultimately redesign everything to accomadate it). His instructions are very clear so I suggest you

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LivingDot, popular hosting service and one of our Movable Type Hosting Partners, has just announced the LivingDot TypePad Booster Package. This collection of services lets you add a domain name, email accounts, and additional disk storage to your TypePad account, and they'll even help map your domain name to your TypePad site.

If you (or your clients) are running a high-traffic TypePad site, or are doing a lot of media serving for things like podcasting, it's a great complement to the core TypePad service, and it's as little as an additional $7.95 per month.

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We know you already love blogs, and now you can share the love: TypePad gift accounts are now available. If you're already a subscriber, renew for a year and get a free account to give to a friend. We've also got our best discounts ever on an annual subscription to TypePad. Check out Everything TypePad for full details.

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We've just announced our partnership with Kanoodle which will let TypePad customers easily add contextual ads to their weblogs if they choose.

We plan to enable this feature on our Typepad service early next year, and we'e very excited to give TypePad weblogs the chance to easily generate revenue. Stay tuned as we'll be giving Professional Network members first notice on new ways to make money with your sites.

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Two of the most-requested features for TypePad users have just been added: rich text (WYSIWYG) editing and spell checking. It's easier than ever to post with the new formatting tools, so if you're recommending TypePad to your friends, they can now color and style their fonts easily. Be sure to check out the list of little refinements that make the new editor really shine.

And since a lot of ProNet members like to set up TypePad sites for their clients, friends, or family to use, and you'll be glad to know that you can still post in raw HTML if you want. Plus, you can use the newly beefed-up file manager to manage all the files on your TypePad account, including HTML and CSS files....

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Bambi Francisco of CBS MarketWatch (who has her own TypePad site) mentioned the following in her list of holiday gift suggestions:

Speaking of the tech enthusiast, many people are getting into blogging. Blog just entered the Merriam-Webster dictionary this year. Read my Net Stocks column. Your daughter, son, niece or nephew may want their own blog. Typepad.com is offering a special deal to Typepad subscribers. The blog hoster, which hosts my blog at www.bambi.blogs.com, is offering a two-for-one-blog special!

It's not a bad gift idea. Journals are popular gift items. Just think of this item as a hipper, cooler, more advanced journal. They may not only appreciate it, they'll think...

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The TypePad team has just added an elegant new way to include your Amazon wishlist on your TypePad weblog. There's a slick display of images of items from your wishlist, and a simple interface for looking up your list just by entering in your email. With the holidays in full swing, you'll want to update your TypePad site post haste.

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If you're looking to share the joy of blogging this holiday season, you'll want to keep an eye on the TypePad gift offer we'll be making available next week. In addition to discounts that let you save up to 55% off a yearly subscription, you can get a free annual subscription to give as a gift when you renew your annual TypePad subscription.

Find out the details in the post on Everything TypePad, and check back in next week to sign up.

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On Monday we told you about the launch of TypePad UK and now we're glad to let you know that TypePad Finland has launched. If you've been waiting for Finnish localization, your waiting is finished.

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One of the coolest and least-heralded features of TypePad is the mixed-media templates, which let you combine photos and images into one clean layout. We've just revamped them completely to work better than ever and you can check out the details over on Everything TypePad.

And if you want to read more stirring thoughts from Byrne Reese, our TypePad product manager, check out the interview about BookQueueToo and QuickLink, the two new Movable Type plugins that Byrne's released.

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In our previous post, Ben pointed out some of the issues that led to TypePad's poor performance in October. As he mentioned, a large portion of the Six Apart staff was working day and night to solve those issues and deliver our customers the performance they're paying for. Barak's post detailed a number of the specific tactics we were taking.

And so, over the past week, we've made a very significant number of changes: we've upgraded database hardware; we've optimized the application in a number of different places, including stats, publishing, and general database access; we've upgraded our network; we've added more application hardware; etc.

And over the past three days, we - and...

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A beautiful example of a community that's just starting to embrace blogging, Hewn and Hammered is, according to the site's creators, "dedicated to any and all aspects of Craftsman, Mission, Prairie and related architectural and design styles."

It's well worth a look, and makes good use of TypePad's features, ranging from Reading TypeLists to Photo Albums to domain mapping the site to hewnandhammered.com.

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Hewn and Hammered - thank you - November 5, 2004 08:43 AMWow, more new people. I'm feeling really special this morning. Mr. Dash likes us, and Typepad made us a featured site today; I've noticed a huge upsurge in traffic. Thanks, Anil. But what would be really...

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Wondir is an interesting service for asking and answering questions on the web, and now there's a simple way to ask and answer real-time questions on your TypePad weblog.

Just follow the simple steps outlined on the Wondir blog, and you can add a scrolling Wondir display to a TypeList on your sidebar. Wondir's instructions come complete with screenshots, and the display instantly becomes active once displayed.

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