TypePad Can Suck It (WordPress Rocks)

The Scream (with apologies to Edvard Munch)

In my inaugural post here I alluded to the large pain in the rear I had setting up my TypePad blog.  The configuring and all that was just fine.  I got my lovely banner and colors fixed up easily.

No, the problem was importing my content from Blogger.

You see, Blogger and TypePad don't speak the same language.  The blog formats are different.  Or at least that's what TypePad's help page and Blogger's help page told me.  Apparently no one at TypePad has bothered to write some little program to make importing Blogger content easy and painless. 

I did, however, have the option of reformatting my Blogger blog, saving it to my computer & then importing it into Typepad.  So I did that.  If at any time in the last 7 days, you went to my blogspot blog & it looked all wonky and unformatted, that's what I was doing.  Saving my content for the 5000th time.

I say 5000th time because it just didn't work.  I followed Blogger's directions first.  It imported about half of my posts.  Then I tried TypePad's directions (which were slightly different).  It imported all of my posts - twice - and no comments.  I tried a slightly different version of the code format and got all my posts but only 10% of my comments.  I tried the same code again and got only 42 posts and no comments.  The same exact code!  And there's no easy way  to start over on Typepad.  I had to go through and delete every. single. post. every time.  That's 342 posts and almost 5,000 comments.  ARGH!

I was a heartbeat away from stabbing myself in the eye with a binder clip just to ease the pain.

So finally, after spending several days and countless hours messing with the code to try and get all of my content imported, I started a WordPress blog.  It took me 3 minutes to export my content from Blogger to WordPress.  It got every comment, tag, and post on the first try.

Then I exported from WordPress to my computer and finally successfully imported all of my posts and comments to TypePad in only 2 tries.

But, Typepad?  If I hadn't been able to export from WordPress to TypePad so quickly?  I would be canceling my 14 day trial period and over at WordPress for good right now.  So take heed and talk to the people at Blogger!  If you want us to come over here from Blogger and pay for the privilege, then you need to make getting here a little easier. 

And, Typepad? If y'all read this and actually care and would like to offer me a free account for awhile to make up for the loads of inconvenience and wasted time, I wouldn't be opposed.  You have my email.

My fellow blogging peeps?  If you're thinking of making a jump to a new blog host, go with WordPress.  It has all the options you have on TypePad and it's a hell of a lot easier to use!

P.S. Now that I've angered the TypePad gods, If my blog suddenly disappears overnight you'll all know why.

Comments

[BOSSY]

Bossy feels your TypePad pain. In fact, Bossy wrote the following Dr. Seuss poem about them:

http://www.iambossy.com/i_am_bossy/2007/09/because-it-only.html

[Lawyer Mama]

Bossy's Dr. Seuss poem was way more original than my "TypePad Can Suck It" post. (-;

[Meryl]

Yeah, when I made the switch a few years ago it was crazy. And I still had to manually import a lot of my old pictures.

The new space looks nice though!

[Julie Pippert]

Or if you are a hacker Blogger you can't import your blog because of code errors and you haven't got the right frame of mind to figure out the patch tool and so you stall out for another year and keep thinking it's not a good time to start up again with the transfer because of this or that and next thing it's another year and you are still on Blogspot.

You know, if you're me.

Which you aren't.

Since you moved and it looks FAB! Congrats and here's a virtual fern for your new spot. :)

[slouching mom]

well, i think you deserve some compensation. not that i have any authority in the matter...

[mayberry]

OMG, that picture. Fantastic. Fingers crossed that everything's copacetic with Typepad from now on.

[Mom101]

I am sweaty just reading this. I can hardly add a blogroll name with out screwing it up (which is why I rarely do).

Congrats on your very own domain!

[Lady M]

Thanks for sharing the wisdom. I need to figure out what I'm going to do when I move!

[Selfmademom]

I've been on Wordpress for a year and a half now and love it!! I think I need a widget lesson from you, though. You have some good ones going on here! Congrats!

[ExPatSW]

My head hurts and all I've done is READ your blog! Glad it all worked out!

Great pic of Big H; he'll hate you for it one day. ;-)

[magpie]

If I might ask, why did you change at all, other than the URL thing? Or was that the kicker?

[Lawyer Mama]

Magpie - Well, you can use your own URL with Blogger too but TypePad has a lot more functions. If I want to have subpages, it's much easier to do on TypePad. If I want to have guest posters or posters with certain posting abilities but no admin abilities, I can do that here.

TypePad can just be customized a lot more without having to rewrite your code. When I first started a 3 column format on Blogger, I had to manually write the code myself. Blogger didn't have a any 3 column templates at that time.

Now, Blogger has added a lot of functionality over the last 3 years but when I want to change something, it seems that Blogger doesn't support it yet and I end up having to figure it out myself. I know a bit of html, but not enough to do it professionally. Consequently I spend waaaaay too much time coding my darn blog.

Here, I (hopefully) won't have to do that.

(Although I'm still having TypePad remorse after trying to import all my content!)

[Gunfighter]

See... this is why I hang out with you. You're smart... clearly much smarter than me (as are most poeple, but I digress). When I switched from blogger to typepad, I asked a techie type to make my move for me... and she was thwarted by the same process.

I'll have to keep all of this in mind.

[Gunfighter]

OK, get this. 90 minutes after reading this post, I was done. All of my blogspot content went from blogger to wordpress, to TypePad.

Next Happy Hour... your dirty martinis are on me.

[Velma]

I'm about to do exactly this, so thank you thank you thank you! Since GF is covering your drinks, I'll buy you flowers.