TypePad Explained - Part 3 of Many

First Things First:

Before you jump right into your first post, there are some housekeeping things you will probably want to take care of first.  So let’s do that…

Before we get any further, lets look one more time at the layered menu tabs TypePad uses.  Below you see the “Account Menu” in green. Then in blue you have what I call the “Tabs.”  If you look even more closely, below that you have different pages within that tab.

In the “Account Menu” click on “Control Panel” and you will be presented with an overview page.  The first thing probably want to do is fill out your Profile.  So from the Control Panel, click on the Profile Tab.  Do a good job about this.  It is (another one of) your online identity and, at least in my opinion, provides useful information to your readers about who you are, if they want to know.  Once you fill out the “Author Profile Page” click over to the “About” page to set up, well, the “About” page.  This page let you check mark what information you want on your public profile page available to everyone.

One more thing on the “About” page.  There is only one for all your Blogs in this account.  It resides outside any individual blog.  So if you have a “professional blog” and then a “rant blog” in which you claim some alias, beware - they are linked through your About page.

The last thing on the Profile Tab is the “Mobile Settings” page.  If you are so inclined, you can email TypePad a post.  Why?  I don’t know.  My guess is that this is a hang up from slower than broadband speed internet access, but set it up anyway…just in case.

The next blue tab is Site Access.  Here you can do a couple of different, important things.  Ban spammer IP addresses and words (they are referring to comments you receive).  You can password protect all, none, or some of your site, so if you are also writing a family blog, you can keep it out of the public view.  The last area is the Domain Mapping Page.  This is where you assign your Domain Name to your blog.  We’re going to come back to this a little later, after we’ve posted a few times, and walk you through that step by step.

The next blue tab is the Stats Tab. It’s a little limited, but if you don’t have time to mess with Google Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools right now, it is adequate.  You can see the number of hits, where they went to and what the referring website was.

Next is the Files tab.  These are documents and images you want to store to reference in your site.  Not to be confused with the ability to put pictures in your post.  That is handled in the actual post window (and then stored here if not referenced off somewhere else.)  This would be how you would upload a custom banner or document you created that doesn’t reside somewhere else on the internet.  It uses a simple upload protocol much like anything else.

The last two tabs are “Account Info” and “Help.”  Account info is where you tell them your billing information, upgrade or downgrade your account and can see the last 6 times they billed you.

The “Help” tab is actually pretty good.  While you do get email tech support with the Pro package, most of the time you can find the answer to what you are looking for in their extensive online library of information.  By the way, when you need it, tech support is really good too.

Next time, configuring your blog…

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