Cross-promotion. Sounds like a phrase you'd hear in a management meeting. But it’s worth thinking about if you want to maximise your hits, or lead regular visitors to the further reaches of your website.

A lot of people run more than one weblog - sometimes across several domains tackling different subjects. Even if you don't stretch to that sort of breadth, you’re likely to have static pages you might want to advertise dynamic content on. If someone arrives direct from Google to your about or contact page, surely it's just polite to give them a flavour of the stuff they might expect to read elsewhere on the site?

Smallworldmedia is driven by five TypePad weblogs: three big ones which cover my Portfolio, the Mountain Blog Book and the main weblog, plus a couple of smaller ones to run The Little Picture and the Quote of the Week.

I suspect this isn't that unusual, especially for TypePad Pro fiends - and if you are signed up to the pro level of the service, there are some nice tricks to use.

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Firstly, the simple little list of links. A bit dull, but very dependable. You want to show off the last three entries in your portfolio on your main front page? Here’s how to do it.

In your portfolio weblog, create a template and call it something like portfolio_feed.inc. Then, using some basic MovableType tags, create a little include file, like this:

<MTEntries lastn="3">
<a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a>
</MTEntries>

This produces a neat list of three links which you can place on your front page using a “server side include” command. Pick your spot and add this:

<!--#include virtual="your portfolio folder/file name.inc" -->

(If you want a good explanation of SSIs, try the old-school HTMLGoodies)

Quick and easy, but it’s a bit predictable. So how about picking a nice pithy quote from your last weblog entry and making it magically appear in a “weblog latest” box on your about page? Like this.

BBC News Online use this method to great effect to link to readers’ comments or other related content on the site.

To do this in TypePad Pro you need to use the entry extra fields at your disposal, as described in this article. Choose an unused field and stick the quote in it. Then you need to create an include file exactly as above – but this time the MTEntry qualifier needs to be lastn="1", as you only want the quote from the last entry. In between the MTEntry tags should be whichever entry field you chose, e.g. <$MTEntryKeywords$>.

Include this file wherever you want on your site, perhaps inside some nice quotemark images for that custom-built feel.

Obviously anything you can put in a TypePad entry field can be used the same way. As I have a field for an image, I’ve created an “in pictures” list of recent weblog entries on my archive page – rather than a catalogue of text links.

So, get cross-promoting and reel those punters in… And please feel free to add your own comments and ideas below.

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Great stuff. These sort of Typepad tips are really valuable. Feel free to give us more:) eg. I'd love to know how you do that navbar in the header
Neil MacLean, 14 January 2005

Thank you for taking the time to share this with the rest of us. Last weekend I created a seperate travel log blog to showcase my photos using a template designed to be image friendly. But I wasn't quite sure how to properly intergrate it into my main blog...now I know. Thanks again!!
Natalie, 27 February 2005