typepad web pages

i blog with typepad. i really like them. i want an interface that is simple, flexible, and you don't have to be a geek to get your head round. over the years typepad keep adding bits and pieces all of which increase the power of their system. they have recently added a very simple tool that i wish they had added a long time ago - typepad pages. it' dead simple - you can create web site pages as opposed to just blog entries...

so what? well i have thought for a long time that for many small businesses or charities or community groups or whatever a blog is a great way to create a site as the interface is easy and you quickly have a dynamic site taht several people can contribute to. i tried it last year with dekhomai which was created using typepad. it would have been a lot easier if this pages feature had existed. the way i got round it was to create a page as a blog post - the problem is that it is dated by the entry at the bottom of the page. you can see i created the dekhomai shop page in this way. well now it would just be a page without the blog date and entry details at the bottom - here's one i have made using the typepad pages thing pasting the contents of the original one - dekhomai shop. simple eh? the default for posting pages is that they will include all your info from the sidebars from your blog but you can create templates how you like. my jonnybaker blog has been on an advanced template for several years which means i have to edit the html to adjust the content of sidebars etc. but typepad has got to the stage now where if i was starting from scratch i would stick with their interface (which is what i did with dekhomai). if you use advanced templates in typepad you need to create a template before creating pages which looks easy enough to do... this all makes me thnk i am going to have rethink my blog at some stage in the next 6 months but life's too busy at the moment.

so to my mind typepad has just moved from a blogging tool to a web site creation tool... nice

Comments

[Tom Allen]

I spotted this the other night and its a great improvement which will be great for churches and community groups who want to use typepad to manage their website.

One of the things I am exploring during my sabbatical is how typepad can be used to democratise websites eg in a Diocese instead of having a webmaster who controls (and slows down) the website, each officer would have a weblog which they would instantly update. This facility will be great.

What is does not appear to let us do yet is place a web-page within a category as the opening fixed greeting page, which would be really useful. So for example at a parish level if someone clicked on "Baptisms" they would be welcomed with a fixed intro webpage with perhaps the parish policy and links to other resources, and a link to up-to-date daily posts which might be contributed by several people within a parish.

What asmazes me is how Typepad don't announce this kind of thing more actively - it effectively replaces web software for most home and community group users.

[stewart]

wordpress have had a pages feature for ages. And it's free for a blog. You can also use wordpress to power your own domain. Worth a look for churches and groups.

[jonny]

i have seen quite a few people use wordpress - i'm sure it's good too...

[Ron]

I'm testing out Wordpress now, and its very easy to use once it's all set up. The set-up (under my own domain name) has been extremely complicated to me, a novice at such things. I've also been exploring using a new service, weebly.com, which provides an amazingly easy interface for both web pages and blogs, which can be linked. It's a little too simplistic for my needs, but perfect for a small church or group to have an easy web presence. I look for it to be greatly enhanced over the coming months.

[Makeesha]

I've been recommending wordpress to small businesses, non profits, churches, etc for quite awhile now. it's actually where our community is too http://www.thenakedchurch.net

[chad]

I really like this addition in typepad. It makes it really easy to use typepad for just about anything. I am excited about finding different ways to integrate it into the sites I work on.

I recommend wordpress to alot of people that are starting to blog and I wish that it would have been around when I started years ago. What I like about typepad is if you pay the 14.95 a month, you have unlimited use of typepad and it's features. By tweaking the advanced features a little, you can use typepad to make any sort of site that you want.

But I agree.....wordpress is really sweet looking.