Building a TypePad blog people want to read PDF
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‘‘ B uilding a TypePad Blog People Want to Read ’’ Scott McNulty Building a TypePad Blog People Want to Read Scott McNulty Peachpit Press 1249 Eighth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 510/524-2178 510/524-2221 (fax) Find us on the Web at: www.peachpit.com To report errors, please send a note to [email protected]. Peachpit Press is a division of Pearson Education. Copyright © 2010 by Scott McNulty Executive editor: Clifford Colby Editor: Kathy Simpson Production editor: Danielle Foster Compositor: Danielle Foster Indexer: Valerie Haynes Perry Cover design: Charlene Charles-Will Interior design: Peachpit Press Notice of Rights All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact [email protected]. Notice of Liability The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it. Trademarks TypePad, TypePad Micro, and Movable Type are trademarks of Six Apart Ltd., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affilia- tion with this book. ISBN-13 978-0-321-62451-2 ISBN-10 0-321-62451-3 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in the United States of America To Sean, my brother, for helping tend to practical matters during our childhood (while I didn’t). About the Author Scott McNulty has been blogging for ten years, seven of those on TypePad. He owns more e-readers than one man should and several times more books than are sensible. Scott lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marisa. By day, he’s the mild- mannered chief blogger at Comcast. By night, he blogs about what- ever strikes his fancy at http://blog.blankbaby.com. He has also been known to tweet once or twice under the handle @blankbaby. Acknowledgments Most folks have no idea how many people it takes to produce a good book (and I take all the help I can get). My thanks to Cliff Colby, for once again persuading me to feel the joys of tech authorship; to Kathy Simpson, who proves that it takes more than one bad tooth to keep a good editor down; and to all the people at Peachpit Press who made this book a reality, including Danielle Foster and Charlene Charles-Will. I’d also like to thank Jenn and Kate for encouraging my moonlighting. Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Chapter 1: Why TypePad? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 What TypePad Offers You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Comparing the TypePad Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Chapter 2: Getting Started with TypePad . . . . . . 13 Setting up Your TypePad Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Setting up Your First Blog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Touring the TypePad Dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Navigating Your Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 vi Building a TypePad Blog People Want to Read Contents Chapter 3: Personalizing All Your TypePad Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Working with Domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 About Me Is All About You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Chapter 4: Managing Blogs from the Dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Working with the Dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Chapter 5: Working with Blog-Specific Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Getting to Your Blog Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Basics Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 SEO Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Sharing Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Feeds Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Add-Ons Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Posts Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86 Categories Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 Comments Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 Authors Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Post by Email Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Import/Export Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Chapter 6: Viewing Your Blog’s Statistics . . . . . . 111 Getting to the Blog’s Dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 Working with the Overview Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Chapter 7: Posts and Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Composing a Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Putting Images in Your Posts and Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140 Building a TypePad Blog People Want to Read Contents vii Creating a Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Managing Posts and Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Chapter 8: Managing Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Working with Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Monitoring Trackbacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Blocking Unwelcome Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160 Chapter 9: Designing Your Blog with Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Working in the Design Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164 Viewing Theme Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Displaying Content with a Default TypePad Theme . . . .173 Creating Your Own Theme with Theme Builder . . . . . . . .181 Working with Advanced Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .190 Managing Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .198 Chapter 10: Checking out TypePad’s Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Working with Photo Albums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Configuring a Photo Album . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Managing Photo Albums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215 Using TypeLists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217 Working with File Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Chapter 11: TypePad Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 TypePad Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 TypePad Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 TypePad One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Appendix A: Blogging Terms 101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 viii Building a TypePad Blog People Want to Read Appendix B: Alternative Ways to Post . . . . . . . . 239 Using Blog It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239 Posting via Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .243 Posting via TypePad’s Mobile Web Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .244 Using the TypePad iPhone Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Posting from Third-Party Blogging Applications . . . . . . . 248 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Building a TypePad Blog People Want to Read Preface Because you picked up this book (and perhaps even bought it), I assume that you’re interested in learning more about TypePad (www.typepad.com; Figure P .1) and, by logical extension, about blogging. This book is mainly a TypePad primer, but it also covers how best to leverage your blog for your business. Figure P .1 The TypePad logo. Before I get into the meat of TypePad, however, I need to cover some blogging basics. If you want even more basics, you can find note a glossary of blogging terms in the back of this book.
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