Community Project: Share Your TypePad Wishlist

A while ago Bud Parr posted a TypePad Wishlist of features he would like to see integrated into TypePad. He wrote:

I've long mentioned little things on this site that I would love to see as features on TypePad […]

Inspired by John Unger's site, I thought I would collect my list in one place and see if it makes sense; to see if it's merely a wishlist or truly a list of features I think would make TypePad better for all its users. So, some may be repeats from John's site, but this is my own personal list and I consider it just my addition to his.

I immediately liked the idea of other bloggers posting thoughts on how to improve TypePad to their own blogs. In fact, the more I considered it the more I realized that it was probably the best way to gauge which features really hold the most interest for the most TypePad bloggers. It's better than just taking a poll because it would allow people to make suggestions in their own words and to include items not found on the Agenda Page (TypePad Hacks' master list of feature requests).

The TypePad Hacks Agenda has grown from the original 40 requested features and changes to a whopping 65, as reader suggestions are added to the list. This is great! Opening this discussion to allow users to speak out about what they want has generated a really useful overview for the TypePad Design Team. At the same time, as the list grows, I'm afraid that it may begin to feel somewhat overwhelming.

Some items are really pretty simple, such as adding "Email this post" buttons as a design wizard item for Basic and Plus accounts. Others, such as the TypePad stores idea are complicated enough that even writing the design specs of the idea has taken me forever.

I'm told that a lot of the ideas we've listed appeal to the Design Team… it seems there's a good chance many of the items will eventually get implemented. But it can't happen all at once, either.

I think the best way we can help this process move along might be to do a bit of prioritizing. The list would be much more manageable if the team had an idea of where to start to make the greatest number of TypePad subscribers happiest. So here's an idea I'd like to try— it'll be the first Community Project here. If it works well, we'll try some more.

Share Your Wishlist Project:

I'd like to ask everyone to post an entry on your own blog listing the ten features/changes that you would most like to see. Ideally, this will give all of us an idea of which feature requests are in greatest demand. Those can then go to the top of the list, and later on the process can be repeated for a second round. You can select items from the Agenda Page or come up with your own, or both. Here are a few guidelines:

1. Please make positive suggestions. Rather than writing "I hate x," phrase things to read "x would be so much better if y."
2. Include a short description of why you want the feature/change. How would it improve your blog or your blogging experience?
3. Limit your list to the ten things that you feel are most important. It's not important to rank them from 1-10…I'd have a hard time picking my favorite from a list of 65. But I can come up with ten favorites pretty easily. The items can be ranked cumulatively later, by how many lists they end up on.
4. In order to get a good tally, I'll need to know where to find your post. There are several ways to make this easy.

Ideally, if you have an account at del.icio.us, just bookmark your wishlist page with the tag "typepadwishlist." I've created a feed to display links to all the wishlist pages in the sidebar, so this will make it easy for others to find and read your list. If you don't have an account at del.icio.us, either submit a trackback to this page, leave a comment, or email me with a link to your post and I'll bookmark it at del.icio.us for you. You can also tag your page by pasting the following link at the bottom of the post: typepadwishlist

To view posts others have contributed to the Wishlist Project, visit http://del.icio.us/tag/typepadwishlist.

Thanks in advance for participating!