Farewell to Typepad

Typepad is cool. I beta-tested it, I’ve been a member since 2003. But I don’t really need it. I host my own MT blogs and there’s WordPress and so on. The blogs I set up on TP to test it suffer from neglect. Recently I was reminded of TP and went to log in only to learn that my account was in arrears. I paid for another month, but now I’m exporting the contents of my three blogs over there and will import them into two blogs over here.
The technical blog I set up over there, “Stealing Sheep,” will be imported into RFB, as it mostly consists of posts about Typepad and a few about FOAF and RDF.
The music blog, “Layer of Meta,” will become a category of wake up!, personal, journal-type weblog.
The photoblog, “Mr. Spontaneous,” will be folded into the “seen” category of the aforementioned wake up!
That is all.

Test of Liza's trackback ping metablog

At least at the Plus level I don’t seem to be able to tell TP to automatically ping this address for each post. I’m going to check and see if I can do it manually now.

Ah, moved

This blog is now at xian.typepad.com, and it’s just a sandbox right now. If anything comes of it, I’ll point a custom domain this way (xianlandia.com isn’t doing much).
Possible uses in mind:

1. Photoblog. Not a Photo album, but a blog of just photos. Each entry one photo, etc.
2. A demo blog for my Seybold seminar in September in San Francisco.
3. xian.typepad.com/independents_for_dean
4. that’s all I got so far. The last thing I need right now, frankly, is another blog. Then again, the trick is to think of something you’re not capturing that you’d like to be. Plant a stake and allow it to gather to itself an accumulation of related ideas. If it ends up being useful for you it will probably be useful for other people (unless it’s pure therapy, and even then – debatable).

Things I don’t want to use TypePad for:

1. Blogging about blogging
2. Blogging about TypePad
3. Yes, I know I’m violated (1) and (2) this instant.
4. Random driblets
5. World domination

Also, since I opted for the Plus level (2), I can only host three blogs here at this domain, which means probably one or more of the names that I’ve used so far will have to thrown over the side. They are all pretty random and whimsical. Linotype off of TypePad and trying to go for a touch of class, as if old-fashioned typography standards were to be observed. Note the absolutely generic design!
Then there was Plate o’ Shrimp, which may or may not have been intended as a blog about me learning about FOAF or a blog about writing about coincidences, but is really neither aside from a wide-wale fashion nightmare. It’s a funny name but is it that funny? Would it work for a photoblog? Uh…
Lastly there was Mr. Spontaneous, a title for a comic book a friend and I were once talking about doing. I tried to use it to make a group blog for three of the funniest people I know, but the group blog feature was limited to beta testers during the test period and to Pro users in this dawning new commercial era, plus I can make infinite group blogs with my Movable Type installation, so if I really want a jamboree there you go. Maybe Mr. S. will be the photoblog, and I’ll kill plate o’. I’ll export any entries if worth keeping.
I’ve already broken any links to linotype.blogs.com (unless I beg Ben to put a permanent redirect at the old address at least until someone else want to actually pay to use it) so it’s a little late to worry about the permanence of every snapshotty instant of time on the Web.

Decisions, decisions

OK, I went for the Plus level and a year’s service. I’m still hoping to change the root URL and I’ll probably wipe the other two blogs I created for experimental purposes because I’ll only be getting three here with that level of service.

My TypePad address is changing

I’m still trying to decide which level of TypePad user to become, even though my heart lies with Movable Type and the rumored Pro version of that to come.
I need to find out, can I buy in at one level and lock-in the beta-tester lifetime deal, and then change my level at a later time?
Here are the issues that matter to me: I could live with just one TypePad blog (especially if allowed to upgrade later without losing discount equals true), without keywords, excerpts, and extended posts, and without moblogging (my phone isn’t a camera). I can live without postdating, but I really like the multiple authors option. This is an interface to be shared. So that’s the first strike against Basic.
Don’t care about per-post options. (They’re nice, but eh.) Search and replace is cool, but only Pros get that and I don’t use it much in MT. Custom templates are good, but Mena’s default templates and the tool for manipulating them are so cool that you really don’t need the option (especially if you can’t use plug-ins anyway). Same thing with all the markup-editing privileges.
But wait, no photo albums! Agh. That rules out Basic. Oh, plus Domain Mapping (coming soon), without which, Basic hosting violates Robb’s Law and thus is destined to function as a sort of training-wheels environment, as Blogger or Diaryland (for some, certainly, not all).
So it’s down to Plus vs. Pro.
Unlimited blogs versus 3. Well 3 is enough. I can do infinite blogs with MT already, and I don’t think TypePad is the place for my next venture. Now, a teacher on the beta list expects to make blogs for each class and probably typelists of students, etc., so that would make sense.
Again, Pro has the multiple authors feature, which is cool. I’d love to host a good group blog, but will I? And can’t I already do that with MT? (I realize installing MT is a pain and I am just narrating my own comparison and decision processes, not making universal pronouncements applicable to one and all). The template editing is nice, but it doesn’t sell me on Pro.
So it’s down the multiple author, infinite blog thing vs. up to 3 blogs, one author only. I’ll figure that out soon and see how it compares to just under $50 difference a year between Plus and Pro.
Regardless, I am going to change (if possible) my root TypePad blog URL from linotype.blogs.com to xian.typepad.com. I kind of like the name Linotype, and if I go for the Pro account with unlimited weblogs, maybe I’ll find a use for the name, or keep calling this blog Linotype even with the other address. Who knows! It so doesn’t matter, to me, because this is just for fun. Other people are choosing the one true name of their blog and the one ideal URL and it matters. It matters! Naming things is one of the last magic spells we have.

On the first day of TypePad…

This week Six Apart will be highlighting a different set of features every day and simultaneously lifting the limited NDA terms for beta testers with regard to those features. By the end of the week we’ll be free to talk about anything TypePad.
I’ll try to post some comments about the featured features sometime today.

TypePad beta tester mailing list

Ray Angel, who is running the community-encouraging @TypePad blog, has started a YahooGroups mailing list for TypePad beta testers. Details for joining and adding a badge to your weblog here: @TypePad: TypePad Beta Yahoo Group

Yum! Foodie weblog

In my continuing random survey of good TypePad blogs, I have now stumbled upon a lovely weblog about food, one of my favorite topics (hey, if it pertains to pleasure in some form, count me in): The Food Section.

Are we not snobs?

@TypePad is doing a good job of covering the TypePad OG movement.

TypePad community emerging

Apparently, if you build a “recently updated” page, they will come. Start over at authenticgeek to join the party talking about a TypePad community. See elsewhere for TypePad Snob (TPS) syndrome.
It will be interesting to see how the software complements the automated update page as a community-builder. Easy photo albums, a place for your picture, encouragement to include information about yourself, the built-in commenting feature (especially for blogspot users who lacked it with Blogger – Livejournalers, of course, have a thing or two to teach the rest of the blogosphere about building community through weblogs), all of these things contribute to our ability to see each other as people and connect on a human level.
Then, as the thing scales up, people tend to clump together based more on shared interests, with the underlying technology less of an identity-building factor. In this incubation period, though, the feeling of camaraderie is much easier to come by, and I predict that strong relationships will come out of it.
And let’s not forget Movable Type. Lovely and lickable as TypePad undoubtedly is (when I buy my real account, I’m going for the typepad.com domain and not blogs.com as on this linotype blog – I’ve just learned in the past the risks of burning out a username during a beta test: I used xian@pbi.net when Pacbell was testing their online service and then learned that xian was 86’d forever from their system and so I could have xian@pacbell.net, which would have been my first choice for a username over there), I still love Movable Type and of course want it to inherit the entire TypePad UI and feature set.
As Collen points out:

Ok, so, Blogger has a shirt and livejournal has 4 shirts but there is no Movable Type shirt! I would so wear an MT shirt. Who’s with me?! … Hello?