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February 25, 2005
More TypePad wishlists/gripes



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Quickpost bookmarklets
- currently no ability to assign multiple categories to a post through the Quickpost window - this is desperately needed.
- I'm unable to drag and drop the QuickPost bookmarklet to my links list using IE 6 sp2 (although it works fine in Mozilla FireFox)
Pinging
- Does not allow the user to customize the list of where you want to ping (whereas MovableType and WordPress both do)
- workaround: paste the huge list of places you should ping in the edit box for 'Send a TrackBack to these addresses'. (Annoying because you need to do it for every post you create)
Compose Post interface - what I wish I could do without editing the HTML
- change fonts
- real blockquotes (indented on both sides)
- align text (left, right, centered, full justify)
- ability to easily seperate CODE from regular text (so that if I have a snippet of coding that is useful, it's easy to show visitors how to reproduce it)
Built-in 'Email this post to a friend'
- Blogger has it - why can't TypePad? Viral Marketing is the best way of getting traffic to your blog - and if someone finds your post valuable enough to email it to a friend, that's a great way of introducing a new visitor to your blog. I'll see if I can find a third-party workaround for this, but in the meantime, TypePad is lacking this incredibly useful feature.
Lack of RSS Feeds for comments re: a specific post
- this is built into WordPress, and is extraordinarily useful when tracking posts the commented on, as well as posts that have an interesting discussion that you want to follow and you want notifications of when new comments are added
- alternatively, at a bare minimum, allow users to "subscribe to a post", where they are notified by e-mail when new comments appear...
Sharing Templates - make advanced templates distributable
- yes, typepad comes with a great supply largely easily customizable templates. But if you want to do any advanced template customization, you can kiss their easy-to-use interface goodbye because now you're working straight with the code for good. But once you create your masterpiece of a template, you cannot even use it with other blogs within the same TypePad account without manually copying and pasting each and every file from the template set to the new blog. Once I've put all the work into customizing my templates, I'd like to be able to click a button to download the template set and then, on another blog, click a button to upload the template set. This would allow users to share advanced templates not only within a single TypePad account, but also to distribute them for use by other typepad users
February 25, 2005 in TypePad, Weblogs | Permalink | Email This Post
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Comments
I too wish TypePad would allow a default "Mail This" link. I see that MT actually has the functionality, but I can not find reference for it on TP. As a work around I created this code:
a h.r.e.f.=mailto:?subject=Read this post from the $MTBlogName$body=$MTEntryTitle$%0A$MTEntryPermalink$%0A%0A$MTBlogURL$Email This Post/a
It uses a mailto tag that will call up the default mail client. The code doesn't work on all mail clients, and won't do much for web based email user either... I was able to test it on Apple Mail and Outlook Express.
http://www.protectionblog.net/earthlink_protection_blog/
Posted by: Mike Strutton | Mar 13, 2005 1:01:28 PM
BTW, if you use the code I posted in your comments, remove the dots between the h r e f. I had to do that to get past the rule won't allow HTML in comments.
http://www.protectionblog.net/earthlink_protection_blog/
Posted by: Mike Strutton | Mar 13, 2005 1:07:04 PM
Wow Mike, that's an awesome tip! I already implemented it for my index page, and now have to go modify the individual post / archive pages to include the code.
Thanks so much for the help with that - I'll be creating a future post about your clever workaround -and of course I'll give ya credit for it and link to your blog :)
Posted by: Emily from How to Blog | Mar 13, 2005 4:48:47 PM
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