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.
