Typeroom Revisited: it goes pro…

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Written by Zach Beauvais

Feb 16, 2008

After covering the Typeroom Light beta earlier, I sent a few questions over to the makers, and they’ve sent back some interesting answers. I should have mentioned that the Typeroom I tried out was a lite version (think 3.2 lager, but without the bubbles). The pro version seems like it will have more options, many of which seemed right in line with my questions…

1. How does Typeroom Lite work with CSS and site templates?

TypeRoom Lite does not actually work with templates. TypeRoom Professional however, does.

One of our most important design considerations when creating TypeRoom Lite was that it had to be instant. We needed a way to introduce people to this concept of “remote CMS”, and instead of going through the explanations, we wanted to just show the view (using their own site as the subject of demonstration).

So while TypeRoom Lite is being released as a product in and of itself (with a free and paid version of TypeRoom Lite), it also has another and possibly even more important, role as a means to preview of the technology on which we are basing our complete CMS.

2. With the premium version, will the system be able to cope with RSS, Permalinks and other essential characteristics of Blogs and syndicated content?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is that we are planning on releasing a minimal version of the professional version to start with so we can iterate with the help of the community. So RSS is probably not going to be in the first release.

Another thing of note is that we are not actually including a blogging engine. A site managed with TypeRoom can co-exist with a blogging platform, but our focus is primarily on hierarchical websites. We feel that a blog engine is a great tool for…well..blogging, but that to manage a larger, more structured website, a blog might not be the best tool (even though you can make word press do just about anything).

3. Will the premium version support templates?/ Will the premium version work so that someone could set up a website using Typeroom as a creation as well as maintenance tool (like open-source CMS’s or WordPress)

Yes. TypeRoom Professional is based off of templates. It also includes support for menus, permissions, drafts and the various aspects of a CMS one finds necessary on a usual basis.

And to answer your question on the building a site vs. just using it for maintenance, we think it might be more of the build option for starters. Retrofitting a CMS onto an existing site is not the easiest task given the complexity of various websites out there. This will be an ongoing challenge for sure.

Thanks to the folks at Typeroom for their clarity. I am really looking forward to seeing where the pro version takes their concept. With the streamlined interface I saw in ‘Lite, I think this might be spot on for the purposes mentioned above–especially for sites already in existence and beginners. I could also see this as a possible solution for small businesses, with limited budgets, to maintain a comprehensive online presence. It will be interesting to see if that is how it’s adopted, and to see how much the Pro version costs. Typeroom also have a demo video so you can see for yourself the slick interface:

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