How do I split my Typepad entries into two parts?

It definitely is one of the many, many things you can accomplish with Typepad, which is a remarkably sophisticated blogging solution, albeit one with a complex and puzzling user interface. Indeed, if there were only a few features or capabilities, it wouldn't be an issue, but as far as I can tell, there's precious little that you can't do in a Typepad blog!

(for those of you who aren't aware of this tool, please pop over to Typepad.com to learn more)

To accomplish what you seek, you need to start by logging in to your administrative interface for your weblog. Click on the "weblogs" tab along the top, then click on the name of your weblog. You'll then see a set of administrative options that looks like this:

Click on "Post" on this tab and now you'll see your familiar new entry window. Scroll down, near the bottom is a small link that you want to click on:

Now, click on "Customize the display of this page" and you'll get a pop-up window that looks like this:

That's where you need to make the requisite change, believe it or not. To allow your weblog entries to be in two pieces, simply choose "Advanced" for the Post Screen Configuration (you can see I've already selected it on my own Typepad weblog).

Now you'll have two entry boxes, one called "Post Introduction", another called "Post Continuation (Extended Body)" and a third called "Excerpt".

The first two allow you to split your postings as you desire and the third is worth mentioning too: if you have an RSS feed in Typepad and aren't happy with how its 40 word excerpt is coming out, you can type in custom excerpts in the "Excerpt" box and have them show up in your RSS feed instead. Very useful!

Now just start splitting your postings into these two parts and you'll find that the Typepad tool automatically does the right thing in terms of splitting content across the index page and subsequent page.

Hope that helps you out!

Update: According to my blogging pal Patty Laushman of The Uptime Group, you can only add the second section and have the weblog automatically split things if you're signed up for the Premium Typepad service. The Basic service doesn't offer this feature. Good to know!