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Blogs for the rest of us: TypePad makes it easy

By Paul Andrews
Special to The Seattle Times

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For a long time, Web-logging has needed a Google.

I know that's a lot of g's for one sentence. But I'm serious. The world of blogging has cried out for a really simple, geek-free version to catch on with the general public — sort of the way Google made searching so much more intuitive that it transformed the way just about everyone finds out things.

The Googlelike blog may have arrived. Six Apart, a San Francisco software maker whose Movable Type publishing system made a big splash, recently released a consumer service called TypePad that bridges the Average Joe gap for Web logs.

Web logs — frequently updated, journal-styled Web sites — have been around for several years and are dramatically adding dimension to the way information works on the Internet. But blogging software heretofore has required a certain comfort level with basic Web programming.

TypePad At a glance Function: Web-log software URL: www.typepad.com Description: TypePad automates coding so that anyone can publish a Web log by pointing and clicking on menus. What it does best: Simplification. If you can compose a text document in a word processor, you can publish a Web log with TypePad. Main strength: Versatility. TypePad offers numerous design templates and three incrementally sophisticated levels of service. It also handles photos better than typical blogging software. Weaknesses: Some of its menus are tricky to navigate. Its templates are difficult to customize. Pricing: 30-day free trial. After that, $4.95 a month for Basic, $8.95 for Plus and $14.95 for Pro. Right now subscribers get a 10 percent lifetime discount.

TypePad makes starting a blog as easy as clicking on the "Word" icon on your desktop. In fact, TypePad may accelerate a potential trend toward word-processing functionality on the Internet. It also has a powerful photo-album service, a woefully inadequate area for previous blogging software.

And TypePad offers three levels of expertise, enabling the user to gradually sharpen skills and progress, with experience, to more sophisticated uses.

Most blog software is pretty much limited to a one-size-fits-all approach — and it helps enormously if you are geeky enough to know some HTML (hypertext markup language for Web formatting) and scripting code.

If there's a negative to TypePad, it's this: After a free one-month trial, it costs money. Not a whole lot — starting at $4.95 a month and going to $14.95 monthly for more power and features.

But that's more than most blogging software, some of which is free. Six Apart seems to be betting that notoriously penurious Web users will pay a premium for usability and breadth.

In a way, blogs are supplanting Web hosting for the average consumer. In that respect, TypePad and other blogs cost less than hosting services.

Before I go further into the competitive aspects of blogging software, I should offer a disclaimer. Nearly three years ago, I started blogging with Manila, offered by UserLand Software, then based in Silicon Valley. Back then, Manila was free to individual, nonbusiness users.

Today, UserLand offers Radio, which costs $39.95 (including a year of hosting) and has powerful syndication services, automating news feeds, Weblog updates and other information to Web users on a subscription basis. UserLand's chief Dave Winer is renowned for pioneering Web-publishing standards.

In August, I moved my blog, which had been languishing in UserLand, over to TypePad and signed up for the high-end service, which I pay for. I do not, however, accept advertising or otherwise make money on my blog (as a freelance writer, I only wish!).

The above is a roundabout way of saying that as a professional journalist, I will be as disinterested as possible in this evaluation, but the reader needs to know I'm preaching what I'm practicing (so to speak).

A new medium

For those unfamiliar with Web logs, you're missing a transformational medium in the evolution of communications. Blogs are the digital equivalent of the diary, the journal, the personal perspective, the self-advertisement, the insider commentary, the literary monograph, the family photo album, the home movie. Which is to say, they aren't any one of those things specifically, but they provide a global electronic venue for all of them.

Blogs automate all the gnarly tech stuff so that anybody can have his or her own interactive Web site. With archives. With photos. With hyperlinks, video, music, whatever.

Here's one way to think about it: If you have a Web page on Yahoo! or MSN or wherever, you really ought to start a blog. Chances are your Web page will be dead in a few months, and all the work you put into it — as well as the content itself — will be lost in the mists of the ether. But your blog lasts as long as you want it to.

Next week: A look at RSS, a news syndication and aggregation program that allows users to automatically receive updates to news sites and Web logs.

Moreover, Google indexes blogs. So if you keep your blog public (as opposed to gating it with a password), chances are your contributions will live on to further enhance the information-sharing powers of the Internet — via search services.

In addition to their conventional broadsheet flavors, blogs offer publishing potential for everything from that favorite Thanksgiving turkey recipe to Christmas photos and the new baby's first video.

"We see blogging for a broad consumer audience, not just for punditry," said Anil Dash, vice president of business development at Six Apart.

The best-known blog providers are UserLand, Blogger (Blogger.com, originator of the medium, which was purchased by Google), LiveJournal and now TypePad.

Salon, the Web magazine, also offers a UserLand-powered blogging service, a smart move that other publishers would do well to consider. And Apple Computer hosts iBlog as part of its bevy of "i" software products for Mac users.

Setting up a blog has never been that hard, since the whole point is to automate the Web-publishing experience. You sign up, pick a template or design, click to open and start typing.

To format text — in bold, or headline type, or as a hyperlink — all you need do is treat it as you would with a word processor. You highlight the text to be formatted, then click on the icon associated with the type of formatting you want to do. Making hyperlinks is just as easy.

It does take a bit of time to master idiosyncrasies in the interfaces of blogging software. Customizing my UserLand site inevitably required learning some HTML and fiddling with style sheets. If you look at it as a puzzle or game, you will stay sane and keep your blood pressure out of the red zone. Otherwise it can drive you to distraction.

What I like about TypePad are the ease-of-use nuances it brings to blogging. It assumes you're coming to its world cold, and walks you through each step of the blog-building process with menus and a very well-done Help section.

TypePad also pays attention to user suggestions and posts user queries with responses for public consumption in cases where others can benefit.

This constant feedback-loop aspect of user query and response is a hallmark of successful tech companies, including Apple, Google, Amazon.com, Netflix and others. You feel in the "smartness" of their product improvements that they're paying attention, and their caring makes you want to contribute more.

TypePad offers a variety of standard templates and lets you customize typeface, sizing, design and layout with any of them. You can also tinker with the code, but you need to be at the most costly "pro" level to do it.

As with other blogs, TypePad allows you to broadcast your site to the Web via RSS (an automated news-aggregation program that's referred to as Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary).

TypePad also offers domain pointing, so if you own "bigears.com" you can have that be the URL for your blog (instead of a TypePad URL, e.g., bigears.typepad.com).

TypePad offers full archives. And you can edit not only the page of the day but archives as well, a feature I appreciate as a professional writer.

TypePad's killer-app contribution is with photo albums. You can create albums as effortlessly as typing a memo. TypePad browses your Mac or PC for the photos you want, pulls them over and lets you assign titles and captions at will. You can also choose from four album designs — I like the thumbnail-with-text option — and add or subtract photos at any time. And you can link the albums to your blog for easy access by visitors.

This is worlds beyond what other blog services offer. Moreover, TypePad makes it easy to add photos to the daily blog, then customize fit and display. Other blog services typically handle in-text display of photos awkwardly.

A convenient TypePad shortcut called QuickPost allows you to post a comment to your blog from another site, without having to go through sign-in and call up your blog.

This is particularly handy if, say, you're on Amazon.com and want your blog to link to a book (or other product) you like. QuickPost automatically fills in all the relevant book information, making the linkage step a snap.

Room for improvement

Some minor cavils: TypePad only permits one "author" image. I have three TypePad blogs — one for technology, one for mountain biking and another politically oriented site — and would rather have a different author image for each.

The same limitation applies to photo albums. You can't pick and choose which albums you want displayed on different sites. I don't want my tech photo albums on my mountain-biking site, and vice versa.

Some of the menus are a bit unintuitive still, especially when changing configurations and republishing your site. But TypePad continues to listen to users and improve its usability.

I encountered a line-spacing bug apparently related to Internet Explorer 6 only. TypePad said it is working on the bug, but I've not had confirmation that it's fixed.

One blogging aspect that TypePad appears to be pioneering has to do with business models. It offers tips on getting set up with Google's AdSense, an advertising venue, and on earning money through Amazon Associates.

Any revenue can be used to defer the cost of subscribing to TypePad. If you hit it right, as did one TypePad user who set up a TiVo-oriented site, you might even make money.

A new star of blogging has been born. If TypePad continues to evolve it could emerge as a platform for all kinds of personal-publishing services on the Web.

Paul Andrews is a veteran technology reporter in Seattle who writes the weekly E-conomy column in the Business/Technology section.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company