As TypePad continues to grow and improve, I'd like share my three main feature requests, proving every developer's suspicion that even the most loyal and satisfied user always wants more!
Subscribe to comments
The author of a weblog can be notified whenever a comment is posted on his or her weblog and this works very well. But as a reader of other blogs, I know how often I stumble upon an interesting conversation, contribute my comments, and then have to remember to visit that exact post again in the future to see what else was said. Userland's Manila software allows anyone to subscribe to a conversation and be notified via email whenever a new comment is posted. I've received emails months later from someone who found the thread via Google and is just now offering a new perspective or solution.
Better site stats
As services like FeedBurner become more popular, they begin to pull people away from where their stats should be. TypePad provides a minimal amount of information: total number of hits since the site launched, the average per day, and the total for the past 24 hours. It would be great if you could view a trend report of your site's traffic along with simple totals such as 5 Highest Traffic Days and 5 Most-Read Posts. It would also be wonderful if TypePad could track the number of RSS subscribers.
Preview = Draft
My third request is a minor one, but something that strikes me as simple and intuitive. When you click Preview while composing a post, why not have that automatically save a Draft of the post? Currently, Preview refreshes the page, but does not save your work even though the average user would expect this to be the case. As desktop apps such as Outlook and Word save drafts without user intervention, I believe it is even more essential that web apps offer similar help, particularly when you're dealing with unreliable browsers and internet connections.
I have every confidence that these improvements and more are being worked at this very moment! I eagerly await the next year of TypePad development.
Do you know it is possible to do a comment feed for yourself on Typepad? I knew I wanted one for myself but didn't know how to do it, but then found Michael Hanscom's friendly post about it at http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2004/02/rss_templates_f.html and was able to make it work. You have to have a TypePad Pro account.
Posted by: Katherine | November 29, 2004 at 09:53 AM
you should see the newest updated to typepad pro, makes my head spin.
Posted by: chris | January 25, 2006 at 11:09 AM