Two Hacks: Adding New Typelists to Advanced Templates the Easy Way + Using the Compose Window to Find Style Tags

Hack One: Using the Compose Post tab to copy styles

One of the things I love most about TypePad's compose window is the ability to cut and paste text or images from other sites and maintain the formatting. The most useful aspect of this is that it often allows me to figure out how something is formatted without having to scroll endlessly through the source code for a page. It's also a time saver… Say I want to center an image— there's no easy way to do that without using CSS code in the edit HTML tab. Not a big deal, but I use TypePad largely so I can avoid writing HTML. So if I cut and paste a centered image from an earlier post into the compose window, then I can just replace the copied image with the new one I want and save the trouble.

I frequently use the compose window as a way to copy styles… I'll paste into the "compose post" window, then copy the HTML from the "edit HTML" window when I want to easily use styles in another web document. It's also a great way to format links without having to manually link to pages. Again, just a little bit of a time saver, but useful.

Hack Two: Adding new Typelists to Advanced Templates the easy way

Using the above trick, I discovered a neat little hack the other day, purely by accident. I was putting together a list of links for another site, and copied one of my typelists into the Compose Post window to save the trouble of formatting the links. I also copied the title of the Typelist… When I went into the Edit HTML tab, I discovered that the tag for Typelist titles is:

<h2 class="module-header">Participate</h2>

When you view it in the Compose Post window, it looks like this:

Participate

But when you use it in the body of a Typelist, it creates a heading that looks as though you've added a new Typelist.

Look to your left and you'll see what looks like a new Typelist titled "Participate." Actually, it's just some new code I pasted into the existing Typelist called Info. I wanted to add a section to the sidebar to make it easier for new readers to participate on the blog and call attention to it with it's own header. This was an easy way to do it quickly.

Why is this a big deal? Well, one of the big complaints about Typelists is the difficulty of adding new Typelists to a blog that uses advanced templates. It's easy to modify existing Typelists, but not always so easy to find the right file name to add a new one to your template. Now you don't have to. I don't know about you, but this is gonna make my life much easier!

Tags: typepad, hacks, typepadhacks, advanced templates, design, typelist, blog, blogs, blogging, weblogs

Comments

[Posted: Jun 10, 2006 12:46:12 PM]

John, I'm not sure I understand this one. In trying to add a new TypeeList, I can get a second heading within an existing TypeLists, but how do I create a new one?

[Posted: Jun 10, 2006 5:11:29 PM]

Rich,

I think you're asking how to add a new typelist to an advanced template, right?

to create a new typelist, just go to the typelists tab in TypePad and use the "Create a new TypeList" menu on the far right to get started.

Use a short, one word name for the list. That's important, because otherwise typepad will create a file name that you might not be able to figure out, such as "my_typelist_for_boo". It's much easier to name it something short and then re-name it after you've included it in the template.

Include it in your sidebar template by copying the code that brings in one of your existing typelists and replacing the bit between lists and module.inc with the short one word name.

Once you've saved and republished your sidebar template you can rename the typelist as many times as you want to get the right headline, but typepad will still look for it by it's original file name and will have no trouble finding it.

Hope that's reasonably clear…

[Posted: Jun 10, 2006 6:59:23 PM]

Oh man, that is too easy! I'm so new to advanced templates; I assumed that you had to create and modify typelists through some sort of hack. I am SO glad to hear otherwise. Thanks for clarifying.