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NAME: Heather Knape
BLOG: Eating Dirt
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2010
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Eating Dirt was originally meant as a way to record what grew in Heather Knape's garden and how her family liked to eat it. Over time, it has morphed into a robust blog that links the seasonal produce from Knape's garden and CSA box with recipes and books. On any given night, you can read about what her family is eating, where the recipe is from, and how it turns out.
You're an active, happy Typepad blogger with a passion for helping other bloggers. When it comes to engaging your audience you've got all the right moves, with stellar communication skills and plenty of experience with social media. Your customer service skills are bar none, and you dig making other people happy. You love design, HTML, and CSS, and you're pretty good at it, too.
Sound familiar? Then have we got a job for you.
The Typepad Team is looking to grow by hiring one new Community & Support Administrator. It's a part-time position, which is perfect if you're looking to fill your extra time with a fun, challenging job that will net you the camaraderie of a great team - oh, and some cold, hard cash, too.
Check out our official listing below, and if you think the job is for you, head over and apply right here.
Typepad Community & Support Administrator (part-time)
Customer Service | US - Remote, United States
We are looking for an active blogger who has a passion for helping others blog with Typepad by responding to questions from the community. The right person will elegantly answer questions from bloggers with a wide range of product expertise. Issues can include helping users sign in to Typepad, troubleshooting code errors, providing recommendations for updating a blog's design to name a few. This is a remote position and equipment will be provided.
Responsibilities:
- Prioritize incoming inquires from the Typepad community
- Answer questions about getting started with and using Typepad
- Troubleshoot and resolve customer issues
Requirements:
- Extensive knowledge of the Typepad blogging platform
- Excellent customer service service skills and desire to delight
- Ability to provide instructions for both new and experienced bloggers
- Excellent communication skills - email, social media, forums, chat, etc
- Experience with Windows and Mac operating systems
- Experience with Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari browsers
- Familiarity with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social media tools
- Availability to work Saturday and/or Sunday for at least 8 hours each week
- This is a part-time position for 20 hours per week
Preferred Skills:
- Previous experience in web or email based customer support
- Experience with CSS, HTML, and website design
- Knowledge of mobile platforms - iOS, Android, etc.
- Knowledge of SEO
- Actively blog using Typepad
- Availability to work evenings and weekends
Today's release is all about a new theme and bringing back our Beta team. We'll have an email out to all of you beta team members in a bit, but we didn't want to hold back on sharing the news with everyone until then. Before we get more into the Beta feature, let's discuss the theme.
Raising the Bar
The latest theme is Highbar, which features the sidebar content pulled up to the top of the browser window, even with the banner and blog title.
With four color variations to choose from, you're sure to find one that fits your blog's style. You can make it even more suited to your blog by customizing it with Custom CSS if you're an Unlimited subscriber or higher.
Beta Feature
Now available for Beta users, who are also Unlimited subscribers or higher, is a Head module! Found at Design > Head, there is now a customizable field that is similar to how the Custom CSS feature works. Any content you add into the Head section will be inserted into your blog's HTML, but, and get this(!), it is placed directly within the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags.
The Head section is a feature that's been asked about for a while, and we're ready to deliver! What's more, we're ready for the Beta team to test the feature with everything you've got. Throw your custom meta tags, jQuery scripts, and more at it. Report anything you think is a bug with how the feature works.
To avoid any issues, make sure to use the Head module with a test blog until you're confident that what you're adding works. Now, if you go and break your test blog because you added something that doesn't belong in the Head section (check out the sidebar tips on the Head page to find out what those items are), then your first step should be to review your code and any instructions you're following. If, after that, you're not sure why the code broke, your second step is to open a ticket and direct us to the blog in question, followed by detailed information on what your attempting. We'll be happy to take a look and provide assistance.
If this sounds awesome and you're NOT a Beta user, then go to Account > Summary and opt into the Beta team. We look forward to hearing from you.
A few weeks ago, we introduced you to the Zemanta Automatic Recommend Links & Posts Feature which we've been rolling out to our subscribers. As of today, everyone should have this feature.
In case you missed it before, this allows you to it automatically add related posts from your blog to the bottom of each your posts. The above link has more details on the feature, but this video helps explain what's in it for you and your readers:
Have any more questions? Our Knowledge Base can help you out or you can click the Help link within Typepad to open a new help ticket.
Welcome to Typepad 101! Whether you want to add some new features to your blog's design, or simply make your blog more functional, Typepad 101 has you covered.
With the release of the additional column width options yesterday, you can include larger images within the body of your post using the custom image options.
To display 850px wide photos in your posts, for example, you can select a 900px width for the main content column at Design > Theme Builder. If you are using another design, the Custom CSS feature available with the Unlimited plan can be used to increase the column width.
Click the Insert Image button when composing your post. In the pop-up box, select Custom and choose Custom from the Image Size drop-down menu. Enter 850px in the text field.
Typepad Beta bloggers will see a slightly different layout
for the Insert Image box with similar custom options.
The width of 850px is chosen to accommodate for the 15px of padding on each side of the main content column and selecting a width with a 50px increment to maintain image quality. (See the post on maintaining image quality for more tips.)
You may wish to center the image within the column as it will be slightly narrower than the column. After inserting the image, you'll see the wide image embedded in your post. Double-click on the image to open the Edit Image options, select the center alignment option, and click Update Image.
Now, you have the tools you need to create a great blog to highlight your photos!
Today we are happy to announce some much needed updates to the Theme Builder. We have even more updates we'll be providing this year, but this first batch of changes were a bit overdue.
First up, a brand new default style to build from or use as-is. With a light gray background, and uniform font and color selection, the Theme Builder is light years away from its original "earth" form.
When comparing the two styles above, take note of how much wider the new default is now compared to the previous. It's the voodoo that we do to bring stuff to you, du--de (we admit that fell a little flat, but we're not Salt 'n' Pepa).
Okay, not really. It's not magic of any kind, but it's still our favorite of this release: new column widths (*arm pump*)! Before today's release, the Theme Builder had only a handful of widths to choose from for both the Main Content and Sidebar columns. After today's release, however, there are two whole handfuls--no, really! No longer are you forced to choose between narrow sizes or Fluid for the Main Content column; nor shall you be limited to small sidebars.
Check out these screenshots of the new options:
These changes mean great things for all users, but here are some examples that we're stoked about:
- Plus subscribers have even more control over the look of their blog and aren't forced to upgrade just to change the column widths;
- A variety of widths means that the Theme Builder is a fantastic fit for all types of blogs, particularly now for the photographers, scrappers, crafters, and, well...everyone(!);
- The new sidebar widths mean there's room to allow for wider content and a better fit for advertising, images, videos, and other secondary content.
There are so many things to enjoy about these updates, and we hope that everyone is as excited about them as we are. It's definitely been a long time coming, but what's thrilling is that these are only one small chunk of all the updates and new features we've got in store for Typepad.
Want to stay in the loop for when those new features are released? You know what to do--keep checking back here for more news! You can also join the Beta team to help test new features (hint: we've got something ready for Beta testers soon, so sign up!). And, as always, we'd love to discuss everything having to do with Typepad with you and other bloggers, so hop into the community forums if you're not already an active participant.
Today, we want to address the recent spam attack that caused many of our bloggers to experience a sudden and very unfortunate influx of comment spam. We were just as frustrated as you were by the situation, and fixing it was our top priority.
Last week, we worked closely with Impermium to fix the problem. They quickly made several changes to limit the number of comments that were getting through the filter. Additionally, we changed some default behaviors on our end which should also help reduce the spam you receive.
If you're noticing legitimate comments are being caught in the spam filter, you can publish those via the Comments tab by selecting the "spam comments" in the drop down menu.
We're working hard to figure out why this is happening, and we need your help. If your legitimate comments are being caught, please publish them and open a Help ticket that includes a link to the comment. Essential information like this will help us get to the bottom of things more quickly.
We appreciate you sticking with us as we continue the good fight against spammers!
You try to frighten me. Admit so, sir. This is some new form of torture.
- Alex in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange
For the last 10 years, media watchers and content creators have been talking about how consumers are time-poor, and advertisers have to fight that much harder to get the attention of consumers. And yet media is not sold based on how much time people spend engaging with the content. I'm not talking about buying a 30-second TV spot, or a 15-second radio ad here. I'm talking about people reading an article and taking the time to comment on it or share, people playing a game and posting a high score, or watching a video – again and again.
Advertisers are still, despite all the research into online habits, buying into supposed impact strategies. The worst of these are homepage takeovers (often found on content site homepages – the traditional portals and media properties). Never mind that the average time spent on these content pages can be fractions of a second. If you go to MSN's homepage, you're probably there to go to Outlook (formerly Hotmail), similarly with Yahoo! or AOL. If you're on a showbiz gossip site like MailOnline, TMZ or DigitalSpy, you’re busy scanning down the page for headlines or images that catch your eye.
And this is where the false logic of numbers comes into play. The unique visitor scores for these kinds of home pages will look reassuringly high, even though there's little quality time spent with the content. Advertisers like the idea of a campaign that's “impactful” (even if it isn't a real word), and by “impactful' they mean big. [Read more at Say Daily's The Week in Venn]
Welcome to Typepad 101! Whether you want to add some new features to your blog's design, or simply make your blog more functional, Typepad 101 has you covered. If you're at a plan which doesn't include Custom CSS, you can upgrade to put these tricks to use on your blog.
While Typepad gives you great design options right out of the box, some times you just want to jazz things up. It's easy to do this with Custom CSS and the options are as unlimited as your imagination. Here's just some of the ways you can spiff up your blog.
Social media is super important in today's world. What better way to highlight your own social media links than by putting fancy social media icons on your blog? This is a great way to show off your own individuality and put your links out there at the same time.
Your own name and brand is another thing you can easily promote on your blog by adding a signature to the end of each post automatically. This is another excellent way to get your own personality integrated into your blog.
If you want to get even fancier, how about adding your own custom sidebar module headers? Just look at the cute examples in that post. Wouldn't your blog look great with something like that?
Perhaps you're using a border on your columns but it doesn't extend the whole way down the sidebar. This might be a bum you out, but it's something you can change without much work.
On the other end of the spectrum, maybe you're using a design that's perfect except for one little thing. Custom CSS can also help you hide design elements so that your design is exactly how you wanted it.
In addition to all of these changes, don't forget you can work even more CSS magic with Google Web Fonts. Changing up a font or two on your page can breathe new life into just about any design.
The Knowledge Base has other great articles on Custom CSS. Our overview article is a great jumping off point.
Have any questions? Need any help? We're always here for you!
NAME: British Library
BLOG: Medieval Manuscripts
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2006
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: What do Magna Carta, Beowulf and the world's oldest Bibles have in common? They are all cared for by the British Library's Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts Section. This blog discusses the library's digitization projects, and sheds a little more light on subjects once kept in the dark.
When you brand yourself properly, the competition becomes irrelevant.
- Dan Schawbel, Millenial Branding
We can all learn a lot from people, not just companies, when it comes to building a brand. The personal brands of celebrities can really teach us a lot about what it takes to be successful in the advertising world today - and tomorrow. Here are a few examples of what some really well-crafted personal brands can teach us:
1. Transparency gives your brand more authenticity. Louis C.K., the famous comedian that sells out shows and has attracted a massive following online and off, knows a lot about transparency. He doesn't play by the traditional entertainment rules and recently released an exclusive comedy special on his website for only five dollars. He asked his fans to not steal the video and put it on illegal websites. His willingness to interact with his fans and be upfront about everything made it a huge success. He posted a screen shot of his PayPal account which showed that the special made over a million dollars. The relationship he has with his fans is that as long as his products aren't stolen, he will continue to produce great content. Advertising agencies should be mindful about how much they spin and deceive others through the media. If you're honest and genuine, you become a likeable brand.
[Read more from The Week in Venn on Say Daily]
Welcome to the Typepad Master Class! If you've ever wanted to delve into more advanced trickery with your blog's design, the Master Class is for you. Topics covered in this series are for the adventurous or advanced blogger, so an intermediate to advanced level of knowledge of HTML and CSS will come in handy. Additionally, these guides will often require Custom CSS or Advanced Templates, so a Pro Unlimited account is necessary to access those areas and achieve the look and effects we cover. Interested in upgrading? Just head over to the Account link in your Dashboard and click on Billing Info to get started.
With the integration of the Zemanta widgets, allowing you to add related posts and links to your blog, it's the perfect time to share how to make customizations to fit your blog's design. You'll need to have access to Custom CSS to complete this class, so make sure you're a Pro Unlimited user or higher.
The Default Look
When you use the Zemanta widget to add related posts to your blog, the widget will appear at the bottom of the post you publish. The default style of the widget will display like the image below:
Simple enough to fit in with any design! But what if you don't want the default look? We have two customization options below: (1) very basic changes, perfect for making the widget fit your color scheme; and (2) advanced changes, for those of you who like to shake things up a whole lot. It's pretty cool.
Basic Changes
The basic customization involves changing the style of the widget title and border color--two very simple and quick alterations that can make the widget fit your design's color scheme better.
Our example above involves small adjustments that have a decent impact. The title now appears in all caps, has had a bump in font size, and now shows off in a medium turquoise with some extra padding in the hips. The border color has been changed to match the new title color as well, tying it all together.
The CSS:
/* change border color of zemanta block */
.zemanta-related { border: 1px solid #02849C; }
/* change header title */
.zemanta-related-title {
color: #02849C; /* font color */
text-transform: uppercase; /* all caps */
font-size: 12pt; /* increase size */
padding: 3px 10px 0px; /* make some room */
}
You can edit the hexadecimal color codes (prefixed with #), border style (1px solid), and text transformation (uppercase), to make it fit your own blog's color scheme. If it's not enough of a punch for you, then check this out...
Advanced Customization
The advanced customization shown below makes use of the basic changes just discussed, then lies to its dad and sneaks out of the house so it can attend the DTV dance-off.
*note - the thumbnail size has been increased slightly;
were it to be increased any higher, the images would appear pixelated.
Pretty great, right? Now let's talk about it behind its back.... The first image shown depicts the new default look with advanced styling applied. The second image shows off the slick hover state when you place your cursor over one of the articles. Didn't know that it could look so good? Neither did it!
A lot of changes occurred to make the above happen, and it's easier to review the notes we added to each line in the CSS than try to list them out in paragraph form. Suffice to say, pretty much everything in the widget was touched. Please take the time to review the property notes so you know which line affects which part; it'll help you when you want to make your own edits.
Since the advanced customizations use the basic CSS changes we already addressed, you can get started by pasting in the earlier basic code. Once that's in place, copy the code below and append it to your existing CSS at Design > Custom CSS.
The CSS:
/* remove box shadow around each article */
.zemanta-related a { box-shadow: none !important; }
/* reposition each article with margins */
.zemanta-article-ul { margin: 10px 0 10px 15px !important; }
/* style base for each article */
.zemanta-article-ul-li {
width: 320px !important; /* width of article */
background: #eee !important; /* background color to stand out */
padding: 20px 10px !important; /* give it some room */
}
/* adjustments for article link */
.zemanta-article-ul-li a {
float: left !important; /* float */
width: 150px !important; /* set new width */
padding: 0 0 0 10px !important; /* adjust spacing */
font-size: 10pt; /* increase font size of post title */
margin-left: -20px; /* reposition to left 20px */
}
/* adjustments for thumbnail */
.zemanta-article-ul-li img {
width: 100px !important; /* increase size of img */
box-shadow: 1px 1px 5px #333; /* add fancy shadow */
margin-left: 20px !important; /* fix position of img */
}
/* set hover state to make it pretty */
.zemanta-article-ul-li:hover {
box-shadow: 1px 1px 2px #000; /* add shadow */
background-color: #C0E4EA !important; /* change background color */
}
That's all there is to it! Are you stoked to try these changes in your own blog? Did your nerd power level up and you're eager to make your own customizations? If so, make sure to share what you accomplish with us and your fellow bloggers over in the community forum!
Each week, we scout for great posts in our Typepad Showcase that fit a particular theme and are guaranteed to inspire. This week, we've rounded up some of Typepad's best animal loving bloggers for a fun Friday trip to the zoo (and the dog park)! Click through each photo and visit, stay awhile, and try to stop yourself from saying awwww! We bet you can't.
Let's go!
The Washington Humane Society (WHS) Field Services Officers have seen it all, and still every day holds never-before-seen situations. Check out the first in their new monthly series of stories from the field:
Every dog lover has wondered at one time or another just how - and what - dogs think. Luckily, Rolling Dog Farm brings us a truly amazing look into the subject via the New York Times:
The Pet Blog Lady is at it again! She recently had the singular opportunity to send interview questions to the one and only (Twitter and YouTube famous!) Loca the Pug, who lives in Belfast, Ireland:
And finally, our good friends at Zooborns bring us more news of Salzburg Zoo's new baby South American Tapir. Here's a clue - it's a girl! Tune in to the zoo's webcam, and submit your own girly name suggestion for baby tapir!
We hope you enjoyed this week's roundup of fantastic Typepad blogs! Check out more great blogs from animal lovers right here. Interested in joining the Typepad Showcase? Submit your blog today - you might just see yourself in the spotlight!
You may remember last year when we upgraded our Zemanta integration by adding Related Posts to the Compose page. We've now upped the stakes again by adding their Automatic Recommend Links & Posts feature.
The Automatic Recommended Posts feature does just what you think it does - it automatically adds related posts from your blog to the bottom of your posts. Think of it as the easiest way to add a related posts widget, right from the Compose screen. Starting today in Beta and for 25% of our subscribers, you'll see the option to automatically insert Recommended Posts from your own blog. This is a great way to generate more page views without doing any additional work.
Additionally, if you choose to sign up directly with Zemanta you can participate in their Promoted Content exchange. This means that your content will be promoted across their network to get you new readers and highly relevant 3rd party content will appear on yours. If you meet their size requirements you are also eligible to earn money by displaying sponsor content.
Also note that when you check the box and turn on automatic recommendations the feature is activated for that post and all future posts until you uncheck it. Past posts are not affected. Please tell us below in the comments if you'd like a simple way to turn on Automatic Recommended Posts for all your posts: past and future.
But why link to other bloggers? What's in it for your readers and, more importantly, for you? We'll let Zemanta answer that for you:
We'll be rolling the feature out to the rest of you within the next few weeks, so keep watching your Compose page!
We do have one known issue right now that we wanted to make you aware of. If you click the "Automated" related links, make sure not to select any of the links manually. This will cause a duplicate in your posts.
The folks at Zemanta are working on integrating them soon, but for now, you'll need to just either manually select their related posts OR click the "Automatic" checkbox and update their post, but not both.
Have any more questions? Our Knowledge Base can help you out or you can click the Help link within Typepad to open a new help ticket.
Welcome to Typepad 101! Whether you want to add some new features to your blog's design, or simply make your blog more functional, Typepad 101 has you covered. This tip is suitable for bloggers at all levels - no special tricks or upgrades needed!
Pinterest has become one of the most popular ways to curate your passions and share them with your blog readers. We're big fans of how Pinterest works with Typepad blogs, and over time we've shared various tricks with you, from adding a hovering pin-it image to verifying your blog, and lots more.
It's been almost a year since we showed you how to embed a Pinterest pin in a blog post. Recently, Pinterest has made some changes to how embedding pins works, so we're going to go over that today, and as a bonus, we'll also teach you how to add a Pinterest Profile Widget to your blog's sidebar!
Let's get started.
First, let's decide which pin we'd like to add to our post. Go to the pin page, then click the Share button in the upper right hand corner, and choose "Embed". This one looks good:
You'll be taken to the Pinterest Button and Widget Builder, where you can get everything set up for embedding pins now and in the future. Make sure "Pin Widget" is selected, and click the Build It button:
Next, you'll want to scroll down the screen, where you'll see two fields with code, labeled "Insert the Link" and "Load the JavaScript". We're going to start with "Load the JavaScript," so highlight and copy the code that you see there:
Next, log in to your Typepad account, and from your Dashboard, click to Design > Content. Choose an Embed your own HTML module, and click to add it via the button on the right. In the pop up box, add a label that will help you identify what's in there, and paste the Javascript into the box below:
Click OK, then drag the module to the bottom of your blog's right sidebar to make sure that the code is as close to the bottom of your blog as possible (if your blog doesn't have a right sidebar, you can add the code to the Advanced section of the Blog Footer at Design > Content). You'll only have to do this once, so leave it in place and next time you embed a pin, you can skip that step!
Next, go back and copy the code under "Insert the Link":
In your Typepad account, click to compose a new post, and when you're ready to add your pin, switch to the Edit HTML tab and paste the code there (Pro Tip for Rich Text lovers: Compose your entire post, then switch to Edit HTML and add your pin embed last, leaving the Compose editor on the HTML tab when you click Publish instead of switching back to Rich Text for this post - this will ensure a perfect embed). Publish your post, and your pin will appear, just like this:
You're done!
If you'd like to add a Profile Widget, Board Widget, or Follow Button to your blog's sidebar, this next step is for you. Go back to the Button and Widget Builder (or click here) and select which item you want to add to your sidebar. Today, we're going to add a Profile Widget, which will display your recent pins on your blog's sidebar.
Choose your item, add your Pinterest URL, and click Build It:
If you've already added the Javascript from our "Load the JavaScript" step above, then you won't need to do that again - adding the script once will work for all of Pinterest's widgets across your blog. If you haven't, then scroll back up and complete that step.
Next, you can either choose to set an image width and a board width and height by clicking "Show Advanced Options," or you can simply go with the classic default option. Click "Build It" and scroll down again, then copy the code under "Insert the Link".
In your Typepad account, click to Design > Content, and once again choose an Embed your own HTML module and add it. There, add a descriptive title, and into the box, paste the provided code. Click OK, and drag the module wherever you'd like your Profile Widget to appear. Save your changes, and you're all set. Your Profile widget looks like this:
Whew! That was fun, wasn't it? Now your blog is just a bit more fancy and equipped with new ways to share and promote your Pinterest content on your blog, and vice versa.
So how do you use Pinterest to engage your readers? Leave us a note in the comments or share your ideas in our community forum - you just might inspire other bloggers!
NAME: Lisa Fine
BLOG: Vermont Vittles
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2012
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: A marathon runner in training, Lisa Fine blogs about vegetarian recipes, homesteading, racing and hiking, and tidbits about life in Vermont. Punctuated with charming anecdotes and great photographic detail, you'll find this blog all sorts of inspiring!
Storytelling is by far the most underrated skill when it comes to business.
Gary Vaynerchuk, master marketer and entrepreneur
Even before social media and the Internet were glimmers in Al Gore's eye, "word-of-mouth marketing" was important to brands. That's because people have had conversations about brands since the dawn of time. I still remember, when I worked at a sporting-goods store in high school, my manager telling me that a customer will tell two people about a positive shopping experience but will tell seven people about a bad one. I can't say how valid those numbers are, but the gist rings true: Conversations between consumers about brands are far more influential than any advertisement has been or ever will be.
If you don't believe me, just ask Nielsen. Its 2012 survey of global trust in advertising, which asked consumers what influenced their purchase decisions, found that 92 percent of respondents trust (completely or somewhat) recommendations from people they know. Even if they don't know someone, they still trust that person's opinions more than any other kind of advertising (70 percent trust consumers' opinions posted online). A distant third was editorial content (owned media). So there's no question that while paid, owned and earned media are partly responsible for growing awareness and loyalty, they are no match for the influence of people. [Keep Reading The Week in Venn]
Spring Fling - a brand new theme
There's still some Spring left, and we want to celebrate it with the release of a new theme, Spring Fling.
With four color variations, Spring Fling is a fun and light design that can beautifully showcase photographs and videos, as well as allow for wide sidebar content. Setup a test blog and try it out today!
Typelist update
To add to the customizations that you can make to your blog via CSS, we've incorporated something that will let you modify individual Typelists. Now with custom IDs, you can style each Typelist added to your blog as separate entities rather than settling for the same style across them all.
But how do you take advantage of that? Easy! After adding a Typelist to your blog, use your browser to view the source of the blog so that you're looking at its code. Look for your sidebar content where the Typelists exist. In the first DIV wrapper, you'll see an ID. That ID will be a lowercase version of your Typelist title, with multiple words separated by an underscore instead of a space.
For example, if you added a Notes Typelist with the title "Welcome", you'd see the following in your blog's source code:
To style this module, and only this module, you would use the ID "welcome" in your CSS, indicating that it's an ID and not a Class. That would look like #welcome.
#welcome { background-color: #cccccc; }
#welcome .module-header { border-top: 5px solid #333333; }
The above CSS would set a gray background color to the entire Welcome Typelist, and add a dark gray border to the top of the header. No other Typelists would be affected by the CSS.
If the title of the Typelist was "Welcome to my blog", then your ID would end up as "welcome_to_my_blog" and the CSS indicator would be #welcome_to_my_blog.
This addition means Big and Totally Awesome changes can be made to your blog's design. We'd love to see how you use this new ID option, so make sure you share your changes with the rest of the community in the community forum!
If you've ever created your own blog design, either from scratch or via our Theme Builder feature, you know that choosing just the right colors can be a little daunting. The colors you choose will have an immediate impression on visitors to your blog. Bright and bold colors convey confidence and joy while dark or subdued shades can convey professionalism and a serious tone. Color selection is a way to tell readers who you are before they even read your content.
The Basics
First, bright or unique colors are fabulous but it's very important that your content remain as legible as possible. Consider using bright colors as accents and keeping your post text black or white. If a visitor can't read your content, they simply won't come back.
Further to that, try to make sure that links look like links. That means they're somehow different from the surrounding text - a contrasting color, bold font, underlined, etc.
Think of color in blog design as spices in your food - the blog text is the star of the show and colors enhance the overall flavor and add personality. If you're unsure about color, add a little bit at a time - you can always change it back if it doesn't feel right.
This Introduction to Color Theory for Web Designers has a great section about contrast and legibility.
Finding Inspiration
One of the great things about color is that it's everywhere we turn. You probably have a favorite photograph or piece of art - would those colors work for your blog? How about an advertisement or piece of fabric that grabbed your attention? There's absolutely no limit to where you can look for color inspiration.
If you are starting with a photo, either to use as a banner in your design or just as inspiration, try uploading it to Pictaculous and the site will spit out color palette suggestions. If you're not great at picking colors yourself, this takes all the guesswork out of the process.
For even more inspiration, look to sites like Colour Lovers and Design Seeds. Both sites have palettes that you can use as starting points with your own design. The color combinations are unique and trendy, which will keep your blog's design on the cutting edge.
Another great way to find colors for your blog's design is to explore sites you're already using, like Flickr or Pinterest. We recommend collecting sources of inspiration and seeing if there are common bonds, like a particular shade or combination of colors.
Where do you turn for tools and inspiration for selecting colors for your blogs? Share your ideas with other Typepad subscribers over at Get Satisfaction. We look forward to being inspired!
NAME: Rebecca Caridad
BLOG: Manzanita
TYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2012
WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT: Blogger Rebecca Caridad is a talented artist, photographer, and crocheter based in Boulder, Colorado. Her crafty lifestyle blog features gorgeous photography and projects guaranteed to inspire!