A few years ago I wrote an entry about how to merge two TypePad weblogs onto one page so that you can have a “sideblog” with links in it. That method should still work, as does a Links TypeList, but I’m using del.icio.us to do it nowadays.
As a Sideblog
If you’d like your links to appear on the sidebar of your site, use this option.
- First, create a free del.icio.us account and post a few links.
- Within TypePad, select the weblog you want to use, go to the Design section, and click on “Change Content Selections” to select items in your sidebar.
- Under “Feeds”, click “Add a new feed”.
- In the pop-up box, enter:
http://del.icio.us/username
where username is whatever you chose for del.icio.us. - Choose how many items you want in your sidebar, and press “Save”.
As Daily Posts
You can set del.icio.us to make a daily post with all the links from the last 24 hours.
- Log into del.icio.us, and go to:
http://del.icio.us/settings/username/daily
where username is your del.icio.us account name. - Click “add a new thingy”.
- Enter the following:
- jobname: any name you’d like. I used “typepad”.
- outname: the name of your weblog, as it appears in TypePad.
- outpass: your TypePad password.
- outurl: http://www.typepad.com/t/api
- outtime: the hour of day you’d like the links posted, in GMT. 0=midnight GMT, 23=11 PM GMT.
- outblogid: Your TypePad blog ID. If you go into TypePad and select your weblog, the URL will look like this:
https://www.typepad.com/t/app/
weblog/manage?blogid=somenumber
Enter in the number at the end. - outcatid: The ID of the category you’d like to publish into. I haven’t gotten this to work, but it works fine without it.
- Press “Submit Query”.
You’ll have to wait until your out_time to see if it worked, but once it does it’ll post an entry every 24 hours containing all the new links you’ve entered into del.icio.us.
Pros and Cons
Both approachs have their virtues. Using a sideblog keeps links out of the main flow of your posts, which is nice if you want to seperate what you write from what you link to. It also keeps links out of your XML feed. Readers who want to read your links can subscribe to your del.icio.us feed, but people reading your TypePad feed will continue to just get “real posts” you’ve written.
Using digest posts is good if you’d prefer to keep everything in one column. The daily post method will put the links into your feed, so anyone reading your feed will get everything on your site. If you don’t post entries that often, but you post links every day, this’ll keep content flowing on your site, which might be a good thing. On the other hand, it may also mean that your page will be filled mostly with links to things instead of full posts, and some people don’t like to be reminded about how prolific they’re not.