So, TypePad was down for, like, forever, and then it came back up. And it came up only to December 11th. But I was out partying, like, all day. So a whole lot of my posts fell off RSS aggregators and stuff for hours. Ack! Anyway, I just republished a heckuvah lotta stuff.
You suck, TypePad, but I shall tolerate you until I find a better solution that also preserves my pseudonymity and has a comparably low maintenance time. And I don't mean Blogger. Blogger sucks too.
Mine keeps reverting back to December 9 (presumably my last update in the backup they loaded). No idea why. Sometimes it shows the most recent entry ("Political Sociology") and sometimes it doesn't. I've republished the whole site, republished individual entries, etc. Maybe I'll need to update or something to fix this silly problem?
Posted by: Craig | December 16, 2005 at 11:42 PM
I suspect. I guess I'll give TypePad another chance since this is the first downtime I've experienced myself since using them.
Posted by: Mandos | December 17, 2005 at 01:51 AM
I know a lot of people complain -- especially those with multi-author blogs -- but, for the most part, it is an acceptable system. My site is essentially a vanity-blog. I talk about myself and little else. I don't expect what I write to appeal to much of a larger audience. And, anything that I thought might appeal to a larger audience, I'd post it to Long Sunday instead. (Mind you, LS is also on Typepad.)
I guess the real question is: do you (I?) have the time to set up Movable Type on a third party host? do you (I?) have the time to maintain it? It's clearly a more powerful tool, but with all things more powerful on computers, the required skill-set (one I don't have!) is much greater than it is on an administered system like Typepad. The last question is; can you export archives from Typepad to Movable Type?
Posted by: Craig | December 17, 2005 at 01:49 PM
You don't have to use MT, you can use WordPress (which is free and also apparently quite powerful), and yes, you can export your TypePad blog to either case.
I could probably set up either system quite easily on a third-party host. Twisty Faster did it very recently just before the TypePad outage (blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com). She is, apparently, not at all technically apt, and there are some problems, but it is quite doable.
I'm more worried about cost and pseudonymity issues, but apparently www.bluehost.com offers very cheap space and a pseudonymous domain and CGI/PHP hosting, which are essential for MT or WordPress. So if I find any more annoyance with typepad, I can switch. I even have the skillset to do so efficiently for you, if you want it. No charge.
But yeah, TypePad is as yet insufficiently bad for me to switch. This is a vanity blog too, but, dammit, for this to be vanity someone has to look at it! :)
Posted by: Mandos | December 17, 2005 at 01:57 PM
When I was looking into options for blogging, I noticed that many hosts will set up P.O. Boxes under their name for the DNS registry information so that your own name doesn't show up on a WHOIS.
It is something I might do in the future. I've paid for the whole year for Typepad, so, for the time being, I'll stick with them. To an extent, it depends on whether I'll stick with 'blogging' or not.
Posted by: Craig | December 17, 2005 at 02:11 PM
Oh, I'm going to hold out for a year before paying for a year's worth of service.
Posted by: Mandos | December 17, 2005 at 02:17 PM