Teletype's big brand new update
Hi everyone. I am Eve, a product lead here at Teletype. We are coming back after a long stretch of time with some amazing new updates, which I’d like to tell you about in more detail.
But before I do, it is important to say that our team aims to create not only a tool for creating and maintaining a blog, but an ecosystem in which everyone could realize a dream of storytelling, no matter the format or the objective. As Teletype is heavily shaped by your feedback, which we always review very attentively, I hope you are going to be as excited about the rebuilt platform as we are. Let’s take a dive into what’s new.
Auto save
Teletype now automatically saves your work every 15 seconds. So you don’t have to be worried about accidentally closing your browser tab anymore ⏤ your post will be saved.
The added status icon at the top of the page will inform you about the saved changes and if they were successful.
Teletype will also inform you about a lost Internet connection. However, in such a case your data will be saved locally, in your web browser’s cache and won’t be available on other devices. It’s best to wait until the connection is back so that Teletype can save things right and make your work available on other devices as well.
Post settings
This is easily my favourite new feature of all. We’ve simplified the process of customizing how your post looks when you link to it in social media. We’ve moved all the related post settings to a single place and will continue to expand the customization options. You’ll find it under Options at the top of the page when working on a post.
Currently, post sharing customizations allow you to do the following:
- Assign and edit access rights to your post to an outside audience
- Change the picture, the title and the blurb of the link for social media
- Change the URL
- Change the subject category of your post
- Delete the link
Custom URLs
One other awesome new feature is the ability to create a custom SEO-friendly URL for your post. Instead of a Teletype link looking like this: teletype.in/@blog/bcr76dYZ, it can now look like this: teletype.in/@blog/name-my-link.
It makes links drastically more readable and clear for the audience. You can access link name options through post settings at the top of the page.
Keep in mind that we do not save the history of URL changes. If you shared a link with a friend, then changed the URL, the previous link you shared is no longer going to be active.
Post access rights
Introducing access rights for created content.
We’ve noticed some confusion among creators, who did not realize that they could share a link to a Draft for collaborative engagement or feedback. We’ve also received a good amount of requests about making certain posts inaccessible to search bots, consequently protecting them from being indexed. Access rights provide that flexibility. Here is how they breaks down.
A post can have one of these statuses:
- Accessible to all. A post is available to everyone. It’s displayed on the main page of your blog and anyone can access its content. By default, all such posts are set to be indexed by search engine bots, but you can turn it off under “Options”.
- Accessible via a link. These posts are not displayed on the main page of your blog. They are accessible to you, your team writers and they can also be opened by anyone with a direct link. These posts are marked by a special icon on the main page of the blog.
- Drafts. A draft is created automatically every time you start working on a new post. Or in case you accidentally close your browser tab following changes to an existing post. This work is saved in Drafts which you can access upon logging back in.
As part of the migration process to these new access rules, all your existing Drafts were placed into the “accessible via a link” group.
As part of the migration process to these new access rules, all your existing Drafts were placed into the “accessible via a link” group.
Dashboard
Those of you with multiple blogs ⏤ rejoice! A brand new dashboard makes navigating Teletype easy peasy.
We’ve centralized the display of all your blogs on a single page, offering you easy 1-click access in a visually beautiful way. Dashboard is reachable through the notifications menu.
Notifications
Talking about notifications, they have also gotten through an update. The previous notification center was a single feed that would clutter relatively quickly, especially if you have a lot of followers who comment on your posts. With the new Teletype release, notifications are split into two categories:
- Relevant to you notifications
- All other actions
I hope that you enjoy using the new version of Teletype. As I mentioned, your ideas and feedback play a vital function in the development of our service. Our exceptionally humble dream is to build the most advanced publishing platform on the market that is also the easiest to use. With your help, we might just get there quicker 😉