blog.noetech.com

TypePad Goes Public

Now that Six Apart has started talking about TypePad I'm free to do the same. I'm not going to go over all the major features, you can read about them on their site, but I have a few things to say (my Typepad blog).

The feature I like the most is the photo albums (You can see mine here). I like being able to make an album and have it automatically listed on my sidebar. Generally I just like the integration. I do wish that they would fit more easily into the style I've chosen for my site though. I want to be able to use my color pallet. As it stands right now you can not choose specific colors. You just get a choice of 6 different styles. I'm hoping these make it into Movable Type eventually.

The other big feature is the template builder. Now someone did a lot of work on this. You can pick between several basic layouts (2 column, 3 column, etc) then you get to choose the color and style all the elements in a incredibly easy to understand interface. Finally you pick what information you want shown and where you want it with a drag & drop interface. It works really well.

TypeLists are their way of handling sidebar info. They can be lists of just about anything, books, movies, weblogs, whatever. What makes them fucking great is their integration with Amazon web services. Books lists automatically show the book cover and music shows the album cover.

It's not all great though. For some reason, and maybe I'm just missing something, you can't sort items alphabetically. Or maybe just not people. Instead they are listed in the order in which they are added. Not what I want to do.

Six Apart hasn't released prices or a time table yet, but they will in the next few days. I think this is going to be a great service for anyone who doesn't want to run their own server, which is just about everyone.

Blogger has some real catching up to do now.