Why did I leave TypePad?

Here is what I provided to Six Apart during the survey I filled out explaining why I left:

It was too easy to setup WordPress on my personal hosted domain at no extra charge. WordPress has features that I felt should have been included with my TypePad Plus account at no extra charge. For example, the ability to syndicate each category feed. When I read what was necessary to get this to work if I DID have a Pro account I couldn’t believe how unfriendly it was. In addition, I prefer that my blog live on my site. I don’t feel comfortable having it on the TypePad site. TypePad’s support for backup and archival are unacceptible in my opinion. Ironically, it was the announcement email from Six Apart informing me I could pull my posts into Facebook, that started me down the path of cancellation. I could not specify the single category feed which I wanted to pull into Facebook. Finally, when I contacted TypePad about my dissatisfaction with the service, the response I got was not satisfying. It’s been great. Good Luck, it was time for me to move on.

 

Other  things I like about WordPress:

• I like how WordPress displays Quoted text
• When logged in as  admin my weblog displays an edit label  below each post that I can click to start editing that post!

Other things I found out I didn’t like  about TypePad:

• An improved editor generated this html when uploading images:

<a style=”DISPLAY: inline” href=”http://kleymeyer.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83455ac0969e200e553d1bd918833-pi”><img class=”at-xid-6a00d83455ac0969e200e553d1bd918833 ” title=”Gow” src=”http://kleymeyer.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83455ac0969e200e553d1bd918833-800wi” border=”0″ alt=”Gow” /></a>

 

Are Air Soft Guns Safe? Part 2

Are Air Soft Guns Safe Part 1

I just received this email  from a friend of my sister’s.  I’ll let the friend’s emails speak for themselves:

From: Kathy  
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 3:03 PM
Subject: Air Soft Wars

Hello friends, 

I am sending this email as a sort of wake up call to all of us who have allowed our sons to play air soft wars.  As some of you know, Jack’s eye was severely damaged from an air soft pellet  on Monday evening at our house, right outside our back door.  Constant reminders of  ”make sure you wear your protective eye gear” and “don’t shoot at each other when you’re that close” obviously did not sink in, leaving me to believe that our boys are just not mature enough to be playing air soft war. Additionally, some of the air soft guns are high powered and are probably meant for targets, not bodies.  

Jack may never fully regain his vision–we won’t know for a few more weeks if he will require surgery on the hole in his retina.  As of now, he has a torn iris, enlarged cornea, and a “traumatic macular hole” in his retina all from the force of one tiny air soft pellet.

He will not be able to finish out the basketball season, may not get to play Lacrosse or Flag Football in the Spring,  and will always be required to wear protective goggles during sports for the rest of his life–once an eye sustains an injury like this, it is always easier to injure it again.

I am not sending this note to cause panic or create drama.  I simply felt that everyone should know the risk their boys are taking when they play this game.  

Sincerely,
Kathy

UPDATE:

From: Kathy
Subject: RE: Air Soft Wars
Date: Thursday, February 12, 2009, 1:13 PM

There is a 50% success rate for improved vision in kids that undergo this surgery.  He currently has 20/300 vision.

Hello again,  I promised each of you an update on Jack once we heard something of consequence.  I am sorry that I am sending this in an email, but I just can’t muster the emotional energy to speak with everyone in person–please accept my apology.

The tear in Jack’s retina has, unfortunately, torn further due to swelling into a full blown hole.  He will have surgery next Tuesday and will be out of school for 2 weeks.  The recovery is going to be our biggest challenge, as he has to remain face down for the full 2 week recovery(50 minutes of each hour the first week & 30 min. of each hour the 2nd week).  This is to keep the gas bubble that will be inserted into his eye in the correct position.

I’m moving my Blog from TypePad to WordPress

After almost 6 years I am looking at moving my blog over to WordPress from TypePad.com.  I feel TypePad is always a  little  behind the curve in functionality.  It took them a while before they supported Pages.  They do not support category/label feeds unless you have a Pro account and you have to jump through some hoops to make it work even then. 

I’ve been using FaceBook lately and was excited to learn that I could get FaceBook to automatically pull in as notes, my blog posts.  I really only want to pull in general posts and not my geeky programming posts which is why I really want to be able to specify a category feed.  I think  this is something TypePad should include in my Plus account which I pay $71.60 per year.  Other services offer it for free and you don’t have to do anything, the feeds are just there!

The last straw was when I contacted TypePad support to share my views on this and got a less than satisfactory response.  Their support has always been pretty good though the answers were often unsatisfactory (we don’t support that, maybe one day).  I stated I felt the category feeds should be a basic feature and they replied they would be happy to pass my note on to their engineers for suggestions on future improvements.   This isn’t an improvement, it is a sales/marketing issue.  Yeah, I’m just starting to feel like a number with them and feeling I can actually get a better product with an opensource solution!

My hosting service LunarPages, which I love, offers to install WordPress for free which I did and I was able to import my TypePad blog without issue.  I’m not done yet, and I still have a bit of work to do but I think I’m going to be happy with the switch. I never did set the domain mapping in TypePad so I have more work  to fix all the links and links to images.  

TypePad doesn’t offer FTP publishing which Blogger offers.  I don’t feel like I truly have control of my own content, until no!

Here  are some useful links:

Painless switch from  TypePad to WordPress

How to move from TypePad.com to WordPress.com