The blogging software Typepad is a paid platform offered to bloggers under the form of a monthly 5-dollar fee for a single user (basic membership – TypePad Basic) and 15 dollars (for TypePad Pro) for blogs with multiple users, along with advanced statistics, the capacity to upload text files, storage space depending on the chosen package and customizable layouts which you can pick and apply as an interface for your blog.
Because we’re talking about a paid service, it’s no wonder that the offer is a lot more substantial (besides all these features, the interface is much more useful and intuitive) than in the case of Blogger, which is offered for free to their users. The TypePad software is easy to use and very fast, and for creating a new account you need to pick a user name, password and to choose the details regarding paying that monthly tax. The next step is picking a layout for your blog which can be done by picking one of the nine layouts, in six different styles, placed at your disposal.
As a last step, you need to pick if you want your blog to be public (visible to anyone) or private (you’re the only one who can read it) or protected by a password (anyone who has the password can read it). Typepad is the right decision for those who want to take advantage of a large exposure, this service having the possibility to index your blog through Google, Technorati and FeedBurner, among many others. Unlike the majority of free blogs, Typepad has no commercials on your blog, except if you give them permission. And in comparison with its competitor, WordPress, Typepad is way less known than it, but that’s because it is, after all, a paid service and because it offers very few basic applications. After upgrading to Pro, you will certainly be satisfied.
Among the most important characteristics of this software are: the capacity to write posts in text form, inserting images, inserting commercials, traffic statistics, and if you go pro you have the possibility to create multiple blogs through a single account, all of them with a much bigger customizable power. When it comes to design, Typepad offers only 9 layouts, 6 different styles, with a very low upgrading capacity, but the literal posting is easily and directly done. Just like Blogger, it has an HTML editor with a preview window incorporated where you can insert images, links, files and text, modify the dimensions and colors of text.
Unlike other competitive programs, the blogging software TypePad offers four standard interfaces and 4 combined interfaces which support text, video and audio imput as well as images and includes a side menu where you can insert photo albums, links for subscriptions, links to your favorite pages, along with a fairly large number of widgets. The only drawback, from a design point of view, is that you can’t modify the HTML code and change the basic layouts, whilst in PRO version, you can do this.
TypePad indeed costs quite a penny, more than any other blogging solution, but also offers a lot of modes to promote it, by sending your blog through blo.gs and weblogs.com as well as through Feedburner, Technorati or Google. From a Traffic Statistics point of view, the software works perfectly, offering the possibility to see the total number of accessed pages, the medium daily number of viewers and the average number of viewers per week. It also follows at the same time the referral sites and links your account and traffic that your photo album brings.
The blogging software TypePad is an easy to use program that doesn’t require experience in writing code, in languages such as HTML or CSS, so the only thing that might confuse you is the extra content under the form of links or email addresses.
From a technical point of view, you can find countless online tutorials, FAQ sections or other blogs that give you relevant information when it comes to using this platform. If, still, you don’t manage to work with this platform, you can send an email and explain your problem to the developers. As a hosting service, TypePad brings users their own storage space, a reason why all blogs will end with “.typepad.com”, but you can also connect to a domain held in a different place and link it to Typepad.
The Typepad platform is the most appropriate choice for beginner users, who wish for more flexibility than the one offered by Blogger, and have less technical knowledge than for using WordPress. Before you make a choice, don’t forget that this is, after all, a paid service and offers less options (addons and plugins) than WordPress.