Bursting at the Seams!

This coming weekend we will be conducting the final stages of a much needed cage move in our data center, as we have completely outgrown our space. We are not moving our machines far, but we are moving them. Thus, while the move is taking place (on January 22, 2005 at 11:00pm PST) the TypePad application may be unavailable, and access to published weblog content will be intermittent. We have scheduled this service outage during a time in which traffic is at its lowest to minimize the impact to our users and their readers, but we would still like to apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Update: the move is complete. It took a little longer than we expected, but the system was brought back up at around 2:30am and is now fully located in the new cage. Thanks for your patience!

Mixed Media Templates Get an Upgrade!

It has been busy at Six Apart, and while we had to deal with a little hiccup this past week, we wouldn't want the week to go by without some good news to report as well. Last night we released some major enhancements to Dave Shea's mixed media layouts making them less fragile, and substantially more compatible with all of the most popular web browsers available.

If you have never seen these special weblog layouts, and especially if you moblog or publish a lot of photos then you most certainly should check them out, as our mixed media layouts are ideal for displaying images and other multimedia content. If you need assistance updating your weblog with the new layouts, our help system has a great article to help you.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot... In our never-ending War on Comment Spam we rolled out a relatively minor change to our service that we expect to have a significant impact on the degree of comment spam our users are subjected to. Working with a number of thought leaders in the weblogging community, we are the first hosted weblogging solution to deploy the rel="nofollow" attribute in all of our comments and trackbacks. But perhaps more importantly, we have deployed this feature to the largest number of webloggers to date. To learn more about how a little change to your HTML could have a dramatic impact on comment spam, check out our post on Six Log.

Temporary Service Degradation – January 13, 2005

This morning between the hours of 12:00 am and 8:30 am Pacific time on January 13, 2005, the TypePad application suffered from a temporary service impairment. The problem occurred during a scheduled maintenance window while performing a system upgrade. During this time access to the TypePad application was severely impaired due to load issues associated with our database. While the ability for people to post comments to TypePad weblogs was hindered, published weblogs were not affected in any other way. The problem has since been recovered from, and steps are being taken to assure that the problem does not happen again.

The TypePad team, and all of us here at Six Apart would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.

Add Your Amazon Wish List to Your TypePad Weblog

In the spirit of the season, today we added a new feature to TypePad:  you can now share your Amazon Wish List with your readers and friends. Through the combined magic of TypePad and Amazon, with a few clicks you can have a selection of items from your Wish List appear in the sidebar of your weblog.  There’s no need to hunt down your cryptic thirteen digit Amazon Wish List identifer -- all you need is the email address that you've associated with your Wish List, and TypePad does all the work.

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Comment/Trackback Management, and IE Keyboard Shortcuts

Internet Explorer users will be happy to hear this handy little tip: many of the same keyboard shortcuts you take for granted in Microsoft Word, also work when editing a post in TypePad. For example, use Ctrl-b while you are typing to toggle bold font face on and off; and the same is true for Ctrl-i (italics), and Ctrl-u (underline).

For those of you who have really active and talkative audiences visiting your blogs, you can always view a list of comments and trackbacks on a post-by-post basis by navigating to the "Edit Post" page. However, for those of you looking for an easier way to see all the comments and trackbacks coming into your blog, navigate to Weblogs > Manage > List Comments or List Trackbacks. From those screens you can more easily manage all of the comments and trackbacks coming into a blog you administer.

Buy One Weblog, and Get One Free

Following our announcement last week, the TypePad team at Six Apart is happy to announce the release of our 2004 Holiday Promotions. Under the Buy One Get One Free promotion, subscribers who renew or upgrade their TypePad account for up to one year will also receive a one year subscription at the same level to give as a gift. Under the Give the Gift of TypePad promotion, existing TypePad subscribers are free to buy as many TypePad subscriptions as they wish at great holiday prices. One year subscriptions start at just $39; that's just $3.25 per month! They make great gifts for the kiddies... and grand-ma too.

To learn more about these special promotions, read our frequently asked questions.

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Winter Themed Photo Album Templates Are Here!

We here at TypePad constantly seek to improve upon and add to our selection of design templates, and today we are happy to announce a new series of winter themed photo-album styles (Candy Cane, Elegant, Snowman, and Winter Wonderland). These new designs are perfect for the season, and are an excellent way to display your favorite snapshots from family gatherings, gift-opening extravaganzas, and ski trips.

To select one of the new templates, in Design, click on the "Style" link and choose a template from the pull-down menu. When you've found the one you like, click "Save Changes" and TypePad will apply the design to your album automatically.

Avoid the Malls: Give the Gift of a TypePad

For those of you not wanting to venture off into the mad post-Thanksgiving Holiday Shopping sprees in your local stores and malls, Six Apart has the perfect excuse for you to stay home, feast on Thanksgiving Day left-overs, and still get all of your holiday shopping done. Starting next week, TypePad customers will be able to visit TypePad.com and purchase “the gift of a TypePad” for anyone on their holiday shopping list at a special holiday promotional price. An annual subscription of our TypePad Basic, Plus and Pro services will be reduced to just $39, $69, and $99 respectively, allowing you to save up to 55% off a yearly subscription to be given as a gift to anyone you know.

But wait! That’s not all. For a limited time, TypePad customers can get a free TypePad subscription to give as a gift this season. Simply renew your subscription to TypePad on an annual basis, and you will receive a free yearly subscription (at the same level) to give to someone on your holiday shopping list this season.

We expect our weblogs to be flying off warehouse shelves, so after your Thanksgiving weekend run, don’t walk, to your computer in the other room and visit TypePad.com and take part in these special promotional offers… while supplies last!

New Photo Album Templates and Other Fixes

Today we've posted more than a dozen new photo album styles, including two new seasonal designs (Autumn Leaves and Autumn Harvest), designs that are perfect for showing off the new baby in the house (available in both blue and pink themes, of course), and some color scheme additions to our classic styles.  To explore the new styles and apply them to your photo album, simply click on the style link in "Design" and choose the style from the pull-down menu. When you've found the one you like, press "Save Changes" and TypePad will apply the new album design automatically.

Additionally, based on feedback from members we've made a few small enhancements and squashed some minor bugs.

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Rich Text Editing and Spell Check Come to TypePad

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve added two new features to TypePad:

• Rich text editing, aka “WYSIWYG” (What You See is What You Get); and an
• Integrated spell checker.

One of our most important goals with TypePad is to make it easy and fun for you to add new content to your weblog. While some folks might enjoy writing "raw" HTML, we’ve been using rich text editing around the office for the last few weeks, and have found that it’s easier to write, review and edit posts before publishing them to our weblogs.

If you are just discovering TypePad sign-up for our free trial and see how fast and easy it is to create and maintain a professional looking weblog.

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