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January 9, 2007 2:42 PM PST

Terapad pushes a slick hosted blog and site-publishing service

by Rafe Needleman
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Terapad sites are more than blogs

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Terapad is a hosted blogging service (like WordPress and TypePad) with a bit of a difference: It's utterly overflowing with features that go well beyond blogging. Want your blog to have a store attached to it? Terapad has a store module. How about a jobs board? A discussion forum? An events calendar? Check, check, check. What's really surprising is that the additional modules are not bad. Although it's billed as a blogging platform, Terapad is more: it's really a small hosted site management solution. But it's as easy to use as a blogging tool, which is its killer feature.

Now, while the additional features in this system will be good enough for a lot of users, none are best of breed (although there is a very nice WYSIWYG blog post editor). If you want to run a serious online store, check out a dedicated solution such as Shopify. If you want a calendar, use something such as Trumba. Also, I didn't see an easy way to add sidebar widgets to Terapad sites. And if you want to choose from more than the six built-in templates, use a another blog host or prepare to dive into Terapad's CSS files. Finally, there's no bulk uploader for media files.

Not too many blogs understand events.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

But if you stick with the simple modules Terapad offers, you'll find a coherent and simple user interface (compare, for example, SiteKreator), which is a big bonus. I can think of no easier way for an individual or a small business to experiment with different content types. To top it off, Terapad is free. (If you pay, you can get your site without ads.) You can also use any Web domain you own for your Terapad site (instead of a generic URL, such as http://rafe.terapad.com/), and you can have multiple authors on the site and on your blogs--most other hosts offer these features only in their premium packages, if they offer them at all.

I hope Terapad sticks around for a good long time. It's a great product, and it's sure to put pricing, feature set, and usability pressure on existing services too.

Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
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Widgets on Terapad
by stephantual January 12, 2007 1:16 AM PST
Rafe, the widgets can be added via the 'settings' tab - and can be embedded either directly in the sidebar or as part of the header. We're also working on a widget manager.

Not only we're going to stick around for a while, but we're also going to improve every single module we offer as we go. If this is version one, just imagine what v2 will be like :-D
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by mallikarjun12 January 12, 2007 8:15 PM PST
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by programlar January 5, 2008 4:45 PM PST
thanks nice text
http://www.new-software.org http://www.turk3.org
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by seoblogcentral01 May 9, 2009 1:39 AM PDT
Friends!,..
Do you know VBulleting Blogs ?,..vBulletin Blog is a fully featured blogging add-on that enables community members to create their very own online blogs within vBulletin. Giving members a place to post thoughts, ideas and musings will keep users returning to the community again and again, and advanced administration features allow forum owners and moderators to keep control and integrate Blog into vBulletin?s existing look and feel.

Thanks
www.seoblogcentral.com
seoblogcentral - vbulletin,jelsoft,forum,bbs,discussion,bulletin board,message board,blog,discussion forum
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