But then I discovered Blogger. Using first that tool and then TypePad, I found I could control almost every part of my site quickly and efficiently.

Once I'd put the time in building the templates I could just sit back and post. And although I still constantly tinker with the design of this site, it doesn't feel like fire-fighting any more.

I don't have to worry about accidentally breaking code when updating, and I can make all the posts look exactly the same without even thinking about it.

But... but... with the increased efficiency, I felt I had lost some of the flexibility that comes with hand-coding. Obviously, it's good to use simple, consistent structures in web-design. It makes your readers feel at home and lets them visualise where they are in your site.

But with every post containing identical elements, sometimes weblogs can look a bit, well, samey. Just like a Peter Kay wedding buffet in fact: date, post, permalink; date, post, permalink; vol au vents, chicken legs, cheesecake...

What if you could just style your top post differently to make it stand out? Well you can, and with TypePad Pro advanced templates, it's very easy.

You're not even limited to styling only the top post differently with this technique - you could alter the design for every single post if you wanted, though it probably wouldn't do your website or readers any favours.

*****

Take a look at one of my category pages. The first item has an image and a different style headline and date to all the other items on the page. It also has a dotted line underneath it - unlike any of the other posts.

The trick to this is to use the lastn and offset qualifiers to the <MTEntries> tag. A couple of definitions:

• lastn="N" tells TypePad to display the last "N" posts in the weblog
• offset="N" tells TypePad to offset the list of posts by "N"

The code for my category pages (stripped of HTML for simplicity) looks like this:

<MTEntries lastn="1">
<$MTEntryKeywords$> [the image is in this field]
<$MTEntryTitle$> [big black headline]
<$MTEntryBody$>
<$MTEntryPermalink$> <$MTEntryDate format="%e %B %Y"$>
</MTEntries>

The dotted line

<MTEntries lastn="100" offset="1"> [I don't want to repeat the item above at the top of this list, so I "offset" it by 1]
<$MTEntryTitle$> [smaller orange headline]
<$MTEntryBody$>
<$MTEntryDate format="%e %B %Y"$> [grey date, no permalink]
</MTEntries>

And that's it really. Don't get hung up on what I've done on my category page. You could make the first two posts green and the rest red. Or the first three in Times New Roman and the rest in Verdana. Or how about a big, high impact picture with the top post and smaller thumbnails with the next few? Go mad.

All you need to be able to use are the lastn and offset commands. A simple way to give your weblog a little bit off oomph.

As always, feel free to add your own comments and ideas below.

*****

Hi Chris, It's funny that you're posting an entry on this functionality in typepad. It's actually the one of the next steps of my site design. But instead of using the funtionality to make one entry stand out on the page, I was going to use it more for archiving. That is, I am going to be designing template pages to display 1-10 entries/images and so forth. So readers can tab through pages to continue browsing through the image galleries or reading entries from the main page of the site. One of the main goals of my new site design is to provide good navigation so readers can find content very easily, and thus far, it has worked. I'm seeing visitors browsing through more pages per visit now. And even one of my regular readers said they didn't realize how much content I had. And much of this is due to your tips. So keep them coming.
Natalie, 19 March 2005

Glad it's helpful - I'll be interested to see your new archive pages. Hopefully I'll post an article on hacking with categories in a couple of weeks.
Chris, 20 March 2005